Gender Differences In Friendships Research Articles

Does gender-bending help or hinder friending? The roles of gender and gender similarity in friendship dissolution.

We explored how gender and gender similarity affects friendship dissolution following the transition to middle school. We predicted that both gender and gender similarity (measured by perceived similarity to own-gender and other-gender peers) explain dissolution trends and that less own-gender similarity or more other-gender similarity predicts more friendship dissolution. We considered gender and gender similarity at both the individual and dyad level (reflecting the discrepancy between friends). Participants were 198 students in Grade 6 (42% Latinx, 21% Caucasian, 10% Native American, 8% African American, 2% Asian American, and 17% mixed backgrounds; 77% qualified for free/reduced meals) in reciprocated same- or mixed-gender friendships followed from fall to spring of the academic year. Multilevel multimember logistic regression models, nesting friendships within each participating individual, demonstrated that girl-girl friendships were less likely to dissolve than boy-boy friendships, and mixed-gender friendships did not dissolve more than same-gender friendships. Feeling similar to one's own gender predicted less dissolution, but feeling similar to the other gender did not increase friendship dissolution. There was no support for the hypothesis that feeling similar to both genders (i.e., androgyny) protected against friendship dissolution, nor was there any support for the hypothesis that dyad-level differences in gender similarity would predict dissolution. The discussion focuses on the importance of conducting individual and dyad-level analyses as well as including gender similarity constructs when studying gender differences in friendships and their trajectories over time. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

MLA Honored Scholar of Early American Literature, 2013

The MLA's Division for American Literature before 1800 is charged with recognizing the extraordinary contributions of scholars to the field of early American studies. The Executive Committee for 2013 has unanimously named Ivy Schweitzer, professor of English and women's and gender studies at Dartmouth College, as the Honored Scholar of Early American Literature for 2013. This award is only given on rare occasions, but Professor Schweitzer's record of scholarship, teaching, and service to our field makes her richly deserving of the honor. Schweitzer's first book, 7-he Work of Self-Representation: Lyric Poetry in Colonial New England (1991), energized the field of early American studies through its theoretically informed and historically grounded analysis of the gender politics of Puritan poetry and culture. Her second book, Perfecting Friendship: Politics and Affiliation in Early American Literature (2007), established how classical model of friendship became crucial public and political ideal in our period, and demonstrated how racial, class, and gender differences in friendship tested the limits of egalitarian democracy. Her most recent manuscript, American Impersonations: Revisiting Feminist Literary Strategies, draws on and extends Schweitzer's decades-long commitment to feminist theory. In addition to her sustained commitment to feminist approaches to early American literature, Schweitzer's work has consistently expanded the scope and reach of early American literary history. In her capacity as editor for the pre-1800 period section of the Heath Anthology of American Literature, Schweitzer has expanded the representation of texts to include many that might once have been seen to fall outside the boundaries of conventional form, content, or language. She also coedited, with Susan Castillo, the important anthology The Literatures of Colonial America (2001, reprinted 2005), which brought together for the first time truly transnational representation of pre-1800 American writings. This anthology, along with its companion volume, has helped to transform both the study and the teaching of early American literature within more multinational, multilingual, and transatlantic frameworks. She continues to break new ground in her current work as director of the Occom Circle Project, digital scholarly edition in the form of website for works by and about Samson Occom held in the Dartmouth Libraries. Schweitzer's career seamlessly unites outstanding achievements in research, teaching, and service. Over and over, remarks by her students and colleagues tell the same story: they speak of Schweitzer as friend, a mentor, and a model, someone who teaches by example. She is person who has always supported students and faculty of color, women, and queers. …

Gender Differences in Gossip and Friendship

Gossip has been related to friendship as it can increase the bond between people and sense of belonging to a group. However, the role of gender in the relationship between gossip and friendship has not been examined in the literature. So, the present study examined gender differences in the relationship between friendship quality and gossip tendency with a sample of 167 female and 69 male Western Canadian undergraduate University students using the Friendship questionnaire and the Tendency to Gossip questionnaire. Given gender differences in friendship, with males being more agentic and females more communal, the relationship between gossip and friendship was predicted to be stronger in the males compared to the females. Friendship quality was positively correlated with gossip tendency in the males, but this effect was not present with the females. The information gossip scale was strongly associated with male friendship quality. This finding may be related to the greater emphasis on status with males, and that possession of knowledge and control of information is a method of attaining status. Physical appearance gossip was found to be more prevalent in females, but not related to friendship quality. This type of gossip may be a more of a competitive threat to the relationship in females. Achievement related gossip was also related to male friendship quality, which reflects the greater emphasis on individuation in male friendships.

Structure, Content, and Socioemotional Correlates of Girls' and Boys' Friendships: Recent Advances and Future Directions

Children spend considerable time in gender-segregated friendship groups in which they develop gender-typed interpersonal styles that have implications for their adjustment and ability to interact with the other sex. However, most of what we know about gender and friendships comes from studies that included girls and boys but were designed to address other questions. Accordingly, studies such as those in this special issue that were specifically designed to examine the role of gender are especially valuable for learning about girls' and boys' friendships. These essays contribute to our understanding of girls' and boys' friendships in terms of structure (e.g., how many friends girls and boys have), content (e.g., how friends interact), and adjustment correlates. These contributions are discussed and suggestions for future research are provided. Suggestions include that future studies (a) work to increase our theoretical understanding of why gender differences in friendship occur, including by taking social cognition into greater account; (b) examine broad age ranges and follow youths over time; and (c) challenge findings about girls' and boys' friendships that are supported by relatively few studies.

Girlfriends and Boyfriends Diverging in Middle Childhood and Coming Together in Romantic Relationships

This conclusion to this special issue on gender and friendships considers how these studies confirm, challenge, and extend the two cultures (Maccoby, 1998) and emotional trade-offs (Rose & Rudolph, 2006) perspectives. An intriguing but rarely tested feature of the two cultures framework is that gender segregation and the different peer cultures that result might lead to challenges when girls and boys come together in romantic relationships in adolescence and adulthood. This conclusion highlights the possible implications of gender differences in friendships in middle childhood for emerging romantic relationships in adolescence. The period of gender separation in childhood is followed by a period in which the strong forces of sexual attraction emerge, drawing the two sexes together. But the prior period of gender segregation has created gender divergences in modes of relating to others that call for considerable negotiation between people engaged in the formation of new heterosexual relationships. Maccoby (1998, p. 12) The essays in this special issue offer new insights about how gender may influence girls’ and boys’ friendships and how friendships relate to adjustment during the age range of middle childhood. Reading these essays and the commentaries by Bukowski and Rose makes clear that the study of gender and friendships is rife with challenges. Foremost among these is that even the scholars who design and carry out these studies cannot help but see

Friendships and Romantic Relationships of Black and White Adolescents.

Prior research on adolescent peer relationships has focused on interpersonal dimensions of friendships but not of romantic relationships, and has rarely examined minority groups. We used a random sample of 122 adolescents to examine race and gender differences in friendships, romantic relationships, and the congruence between closest friendship and romantic relationship on five interpersonal domains: mutual support, self-disclosure, hurtful conflict, fear of betrayal, and interpersonal sensitivity. Significant race by gender differences in the difference between relationship type for both positive and negative dimensions of relationships were found. White girls reported significantly higher levels of self-disclosure in their friendship ties in comparison to romantic relationship, whereas white boys reported nearly equivalent levels. In comparison to white adolescents, Black adolescent girls and boys had similar levels of self-disclosure in their romantic relationships as their same-sex friendships. With regards to negative elements of relationships, girls reported more hurtful conflict in romance than friendship, whereas boys reported an opposite pattern. Results highlight the importance of consideration of race and gender influences on youth interpersonal skills within peer and romantic relationships.

Personality and gender differences in friendship needs and experiences in preadolescence and young adulthood

Personality and gender differences in close same-sex friendship needs and experiences were investigated in two samples. Participants were 312 university students (217 women, M age 1/4 19.5) and 491 preadolescents (269 girls, M age 1/4 11.87). Participants completed several questionnaires yielding scores for communion and agency (personality), communal and agentic friendship needs, actual communal and agentic provisions of a best friendship, and affective functioning (satisfaction with the best friendship, loneliness). Findings revealed that close friendship serves both communal (connection) and agentic (social prominence) needs. Agency and/or communion predicted friendship needs and experiences and affective correlates of failure to meet friendship needs (friendship satisfaction, loneliness). Thus, friendship is not a homogeneous experience, but is shaped by the dispositions of the individuals who comprise it. Gender differences emerged in communal and agentic friendship needs and experiences; however, consensus among male and female participants regarding the functions of close friendship fails to support strong claims regarding gender-differentiated “worlds.”

Effects of gender and physical distance with an old friend on same-sex friendship

This study examined the differences between interpersonal relationship of same-sex old friends (OF) and that of new friends (NF). It also investigated the effects of physical distance with an old friend and gender on the friendship. Respondents were 208 undergraduates, 86 men and 122 women, who chose one of most intimate person each from same-sex friends they had made before and after they entered a university, and answered questions to describe their relationship. Results showed that relationship satisfaction and tired feeling were higher for OF than NF. Spending time together and talking over telephone were more frequent for NF than OF, but for each occasion together or over telephone, OF spent longer time than NF. OF expected more self-disclosure between them than NF. Gender differences in friendship expectation were similar to previous findings (Wada, 1993, 1996). Furthermore, gender and physical distance both influenced the frequencies of OF spending time together and over telephone. These findings are discussed in terms of gender differences in friendship.

Adolescents' disclosure to best and good friends: The effects of gender and topic intimacy

AbstractThe disclosure of 227 7th‐ through 12th‐grade adolescents to four other persons – their closest same‐ and cross‐sex best friends, and lesser‐but‐good same‐ and cross‐sex friends – about 40 topics varying widely in intimacy was examined; in addition, each subject rated every topic's intimacy. A (2) gender × (2) friend's gender × (2) closeness × (3) age × (3) intimacy level ANOVA yielded two large main effects (partial ω2 > .15), closeness and topic intimacy. Three large interaction effects – gender by friend's gender, friend's gender by intimacy, and gender by closeness by intimacy – were also found, as was a moderate‐sized closeness by gender by friend's gender interaction (partial co2= .08). A number of other effects were statistically significant but of only small magnitude. The perceived intimacy of 6 of the studied topics varied across age groups, and one topic, “your weight” was rated differently by males and females. The data are discussed in relation to previous research on adolescent gender differences in friendship and disclosure.

MEN, WOMEN, AND FRIENDSHIP:

Using data from 52 in-depth interviews with working-class and professional men and women, I examine gender differences in friendships. Men and women respond to global questions about friendship in culturally specific ways. Men focus on shared activities, and women focus on shared feelings. Responses to questions about specific friends, however, reveal more variation in same-sex friendships than the literature indicates. Men share feelings more, whereas women share feelings less; furthermore, the extent to which they do so varies by class. I argue that conceptualizing gender as an ongoing social construction explains the data better than do psychoanalytic or socialization accounts.

Friendship in Adolescence

This article reviews current theory and research on adolescent friendship and offers a framework in which friendship is developmentally characterized by reciprocity, co-construction and consensual validation. Three areas of research are reviewed: (1) the relative influence of parents and peers, (2) popularity among peers, and (3) gender differences in friendship. These conclusions are drawn: (1) although peer influence increases during adolescence, parents remain strong socializing agents throughout adolescence; (2) popularity status is associated with social behavior. These behaviors are related to differential developmental outcomes for adolescents; (3) studies on the socialization of gender need to take into account the cultural context and historical changes in male-female distinctions. After years of neglect, social scientists have found friendship to be an important vehicle for psychological and psychiatric development. For example, a promising new development is the use of peer interaction as a therapeutic tool for troubled adolescents.

Interpreting Research on Gender Differences in Friendship: A Case for Moderation and a Plea for Caution

Research on gender and friendship has yielded a modal pattern of differences between women and men that is impressively robust. However, these differences are reported in ways that are sometimes misleading and often exaggerated, and that generally leave the impression of greater within-gender uniformity than is actually the case. In sum, the importance of gender differences in friendship is overemphasized. The present paper addresses some possible meanings of `importance' as applied to social research. It is intended to be a reminder of some widely acknowledged but easily overlooked points of interpretation concerning the kinds of data with which relationship researchers usually deal. Specific issues are the tendency to reify statistical significance, to overlook within-group variability, and to disregard the implications of gender as a subject variable. Moderation in interpreting and reporting differences and healthy skepticism are offered as simple hedges against exaggerating the importance of gender differences in friendship.