Similarity of Friends in Three Countries: A Study of Children's Drawings

Abstract

Similarity is a very basic feature of friendship; examining it through pictorial representation avoids many methodological problems that arise with verbal instruments. In this study we compared children's drawings of themselves with a friend, in order to determine whether or not children from different countries introduced the same amount of resemblance between the drawn figures. We also explored whether the pictorial strategies adopted to represent similarity were the same or not. We examined countries that differ along three large-scale dimensions (individuality vs. collectivism; peace vs. war; multiethnicity vs. ethnic homogeneity), each potentially relevant for the friends' similarity: Italy (100 Ss from Rome, 100 Ss from a smaller town), Bolivia (152 Ss from a town and 67 Ss from a forest village), and Lebanon (150 Ss from Beirut). Data were scored with a Similarity scale, which we created and validated as a part of an earlier study about friendship in Italian children. The scale compares the drawn f...