Through thick and thin?: Young adults’ implicit beliefs about friendship and their reported use of dissolution and maintenance strategies with same‐gender friends

Abstract

AbstractDespite the documented importance of friendship for the well‐being of young adults, there is a paucity of work mapping factors associated with friendship dissolution and maintenance during this developmental period. We examined whether implicit theories of friendships – specifically, growth beliefs (i.e., the belief that friendships can be developed) and destiny beliefs (i.e., the belief that friendships are either meant to work or not) — were associated with endorsement of dissolution and maintenance responses in two types of challenging situations occurring with same‐gender friends. One hundred forty‐five undergraduate students (80 females, Mage = 20.71, SD = 1.46) completed an online questionnaire. Participants read twelve hypothetical situations depicting transgressions by a friend (i.e., violations of friendship expectancies) or conflicts of interest (i.e., differences of needs, desires, or opinions) and reported how likely they would be to engage in strategies reflecting maintaining the friendship or dissolving it, either by ending it completely or diminishing its quality. They also completed a scale assessing implicit theories of friendships. Participants endorsed dissolving the friendship more strongly when the friend had transgressed than in conflicts of interest, whereas maintenance strategies were endorsed more strongly in conflicts than in transgressions. Moreover, higher destiny beliefs were associated with greater endorsement of ending the friendship and weaker endorsement of maintaining it; in contrast, higher growth beliefs were associated with greater endorsement of maintenance. Findings provide new insight into when and why young adults may dissolve or maintain a friendship.