Same-sex Friends Research Articles

The mating sociometer: A regulatory mechanism for mating aspirations.

Two studies (Ns = 80 and 108) tested hypotheses derived from Kirkpatrick and Ellis's (2001) extension and application of sociometer theory to mating aspirations. Experiences of social rejection-acceptance by attractive opposite-sex confederates were experimentally manipulated, and the impact of these manipulations on self-esteem, mating aspirations, and friendship aspirations was assessed. Results indicated that social rejection-acceptance by members of the opposite sex altered mating aspirations; that the causal link between social rejection-acceptance and mating aspirations was mediated by changes in state self-esteem; and that the impact of social rejection-acceptance by members of opposite sex was specific to mating aspirations and did not generalize to levels of aspiration in approaching potential same-sex friendships. This research supports a conceptualization of a domain-specific mating sociometer, which functions to calibrate mating aspirations in response to experiences of romantic rejection and acceptance.

A Comparative Study of University Students' Expectations for Same-Sex Friends, Opposite-Sex Friends, and Lovers

A Comparative Study of University Students' Expectations for Same-Sex Friends, Opposite-Sex Friends, and Lovers

Self-Disclosure through Weblogs and Perceptions of Online and “Real-life” Friendships among Female Bloggers

The current study examined female bloggers' perceptions of online and "real-life" same-sex friendships and examined relationships between self-disclosure through blogs and perceptions of the two types of friendships. Three hundred seven female bloggers (M age = 34.56 years) completed an online survey regarding friendship satisfaction and perceptions of intimacy-promoting interaction patterns in friendships. One hundred respondents' weblogs were analyzed for self-disclosure. Self-reported self-disclosure was positively correlated with number of online friendships and satisfaction with online friendships. Although participants reported having close online friends, they perceived real-life friendships as more likely than online friendships to possess intimacy-promoting interaction patterns. These perceptions did not differ as a function of self-disclosure through blogging, although bloggers who were categorized as higher in disclosure were more satisfied with online friendships than were bloggers who were categorized as lower in disclosure. These results suggest a relationship between self-disclosure through blogging and online relationship satisfaction among women in middle adulthood but that these women perceive real-life friendships as more likely to offer interaction patterns that foster intimacy.

Measuring Online Communication Attitude: Instrument Development and Validation

This paper reports a series of studies that develop an empirically-derived instrument for assessing online communication attitude, a multidimensional set of individual cognitive-affective constructs that influence media choice. The first study inductively develops an initial item pool and tests dimensional structure via exploratory factor analysis. The second study further refines this structure and also tests the association between online communication attitude and media use in same-sex friendships. Finally, the third study deductively tests global model fit via confirmatory factor analysis, and establishes concurrent validity with theoretically related communication constructs. Beyond identifying motives underlying media choice, the instrument developed here possesses heuristic potential for clarifying media choice theory and elaborating the association between communication competence and media choice.

Changes in Friendship Commitment: Comparing Geographically Close and Long-Distance Young-Adult Friendships

The existence of long-distance (LD) friendships throws into question assumptions that scholars of interpersonal communication often make about commitment to relationships, the development of relationships, and friendships. An analysis of turning points comparing commitment changes in young-adult geographically close and LD same-sex friendships revealed high and fluctuating levels of commitment over the history of the friendships for both types. Over 80% of those having LD friends reported their levels of commitment were currently increasing, rather than decreasing. Women were more likely than men to report nonlinear trajectories for their friendships, more downturns in commitment to their friendships, and more turning points related to changes in commitment to their friendships.

Application of a self-evaluation maintenance model to psychological health in interpersonal contexts

This study examines the possibility of applying Tesser's (1988) Self-Evaluation Maintenance Model, which focuses on self-esteem, to individual psychological health in interpersonal contexts. The participants consist of 243 college students divided into same-sex friendship pairs. The main findings show that when comparing oneself with an close friend in a domain one finds important, positive self-perception is more closely related to psychological health than a positive perception of the friend. In domains not important to the self, no relationship between psychological health and self-perception was found, regardless of the degree of intimacy. These results indicate that the degree of intimacy with the compared person and the degree of importance ascribed to the aspect being compared are connected with individual psychological health. These findings are discussed in relationship to application of the Self-Evaluation Maintenance Model to psychological health.

The Relationship Between Self-Construals, Perceived Face Threats, and Facework During the Pursuit of Influence Goals

The purpose of our study was to understand how self-construals affect the intensity of perceived face threats and the subsequent deployment of coping strategies within compliance-seeking situations involving three different influence goals (giving advice, asking favors, or enforcing unfulfilled obligations). Five-hundred and seventy-six students from four different ethnic backgrounds (African American, Asian American, Latino, and European American) at six universities in the U.S.A. indicated their levels of independence and interdependence. Then they wrote what they would say to a same-sex friend in a hypothetical advice, favor, or obligation scenario, and whether they would persist in the face of initial resistance from their friend. They also evaluated the degree to which seeking compliance would threaten the target's negative face, the target's positive face, their own negative face, and their own positive face. Written messages were coded for how many reasons participants provided for seeking compliance. As levels of interdependence increased and independence decreased, participants perceived a larger total threat to both the target's face as well as one's own face when pursuing influence goals. Furthermore, people provided more reasons for compliance as well as persisted more after initial refusal as the level of independence increased. Implications for future research on culture, influence goals, and face are discussed.

Patterns of media use and multiplexity: associations with sex, geographic distance and friendship interdependence

This study examines patterns of interpersonal media use in same-sex friendships. Using a refined version of Scott and Timmerman’s media use scale, participants reported the extent to which they used eight different communication media and the level of interdependence in the friendship. The results revealed four distinct factors of media use: asynchronous public communication, asynchronous private communication, social networking communication and synchronous offline communication. Both sex and geographic distance differences emerged on these factors and all factors except asynchronous private communication predicted friendship interdependence. These findings clarify underlying patterns of media use and suggest that both privacy and orality are salient properties delineating media types.

Obesity-related behaviors in adolescent friendship networks

This study examines obesity-related behaviors within adolescent friendship networks, because adolescent peers have been identified as being important determinants of many health behaviors. We applied ERGM selection models for single network observations to determine if close adolescent friends engage in similar behaviors and to explore associations between behavior and popularity. Same-sex friends were found to be similar on measures of organized physical activity in two out of three school-based friendship networks. Female friends were found to engage in similar screen-based behaviors, and male friends tended to be similar in their consumption of high-calorie foods. Popularity (receiving ties) was also associated with some behaviors, although these effects were gender specific and differed across networks.

Assortative Pairing and Life History Strategy

A secondary analysis was performed on preliminary data from an ongoing cross-cultural study on assortative pairing. Independently sampled pairs of opposite- sex romantic partners and of same-sex friends rated themselves and each other on Life History (LH) strategy and mate value. Data were collected in local bars, clubs, coffeehouses, and other public places from three different cultures: Tucson, Arizona; Hermosillo, Sonora; and San Jose, Costa Rica. The present analysis found that slow LH individuals assortatively pair with both sexual and social partners more strongly than fast LH individuals. We interpret this phenomenon as representing (1) an adaptation for preserving coadapted genomes in slow LH strategists to maintain high copying fidelity genetic replication while producing a lower number of offspring in stable, predictable, and controllable environments and (2) a bet-hedging adaptation in fast LH strategists, favoring the genetic diversification of a higher number of offspring in unstable, unpredictable, and uncontrollable environments.

The Boy Who Would Be Queen: Hints and Closets on Children's Television

Although American television programs targeted at children and adolescents posit universal heterosexuality and never openly allude to LGBT persons, a content analysis of 102 episodes of 25 contemporary children's programs revealed many examples of resistance to the heteronormative ideology: intimate same-sex friendships; inclusive statements or stage business; scenes that hint at the existence of same-sex desire; gender-transgressive or otherwise gay-stereotyped characters; and jokes and references that require a knowledge of gay culture. The impact of this resistance on viewers is analyzed through fan fiction and artwork, and potential explanations are examined.

Gender Role Orientation and Relational Closeness: Self-Disclosive Behavior in Same-Sex Male Friendships

Although the nature of intimacy within same-sex male friendships exhibits a marked difference from that of same-sex female friends, the open sharing of the self (known as self-disclosure) does occur regularly among male friends, albeit to a varying degree. The present research looks at the relationship between gender role orientation and self-disclosive behavior, empirically confronting the cultural stereotype that the enactment of self-disclosure is gendered. Most significantly, the present research looks at the effects of various conceptualizations of self-disclosure on multiple measures of closeness within a relationship, with increasing self-disclosure consistently found to be positively correlated with measures of increasing closeness within men's same-sex friendships.

Friendships are flexible, not fragile: Turning points in geographically-close and long-distance friendships

Prior research has characterized friendships, particularly long-distance friendships, as fragile. A turning point analysis compared changes in friendship levels for 100 college students in geographically-close (GC) and long-distance (LD) same-sex friendships. Results indicated that friendship level and commitment level are strongly and positively associated. Moreover, friendship level and proximity are interdependent with several categories of turning points. Finally, a linear sequence of shifts in friendship level is associated with both GC and LD friends, but a nonlinear sequence that includes a shift back to the casual friendship level with recovery is more typical for LD friends. Findings highlight transformation within friendships and suggest that it may be more accurate to conceptualize friendships as flexible rather than fragile.

Sex and Gender Similarities and Differences in Communication Values in Same-Sex and Cross-Sex Friendships

This study extends research on sex differences and similarities in communication values by examining (a) the influence of sex of friend on ratings of functional communication skills in same-sex and cross-sex friendships, (b) the moderating role of friend's sex in sex differences in evaluations, and (c) the mediating role of psychological gender in sex differences in communication values. Participants (144 men and 148 women) rated the importance of communication skills for either same-sex or cross-sex friends. Results indicate that, although men's and women's ratings of communication skills are similar, participant sex, gender, and sex of friend do exert some influence.

"There lived in the Land of Oz two queerly made men": Queer Utopianism and Antisocial Eroticism in L. Frank Baum's Oz Series

The film version of L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz serves as a pop-culture icon of twentieth- century Western gay culture.1 With Judy Garland as the star, its exaggerated characters of good and evil, and its Technicolor wonderland of vibrant colors and outlandish costumes, the film displays a sensibility that countless viewers adore. Today gay bars in New Orleans, Seattle, and Sweden bear the name Oz, and the iconic polychromatic flag of the gay community pays homage to the film's theme song, Over the Rainbow. References to the film appear in numerous other artifacts of gay culture, such as in Mart Crowley's The Boys in the Band when one character derides another's ostensible heterosexuality by declaring he's about as straight as the Yellow Brick Road (27). Daniel Harris documents the canonic nature of references to Oz in the oft- repeated catchphrase, Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas any- more (19),2 which, for certain T-shirt incarnations, has been campily refor- mulated as Aunt Em: Hate you! Hate Kansas! Taking the dog. Dorothy (Gilman 127). Although numerous other cinematic classics - from Mildred Pierce to Mommie Dearest - display a sensibility that elevates them to the status of cultural touchstones in the gay community, The Wizard of Oz towers above the rest in terms of its iconic role in cinema's relationship to culture.3 As Harry M. Benshoff and Sean Griffin observe, almost every viewer (queer or not) probably enjoys the film not for its sepia-toned representation of banal 'normality' but for its breathtaking creation of a Technicolor Oz, a land where difference and deviation from the are the norm (Queer Images 68). In this essay, however, I would like to trace the roots of Oz's queerness to its beginning as a series of children's fairy tales.4 Queerness bears a double meaning in studies of children's literature, in that these fictions often depict a world where oddness - which can be understood as asexual queerness - is embraced as a chief narrative value. In other usages queerness carries a sexual denotation referring to sexual identities resistant to ideological normativity, and it is this confluence of asexual oddness with sexual nonnormativity that I seek to uncover in the ensuing study. As Kenneth Kidd observes, [M] any classics of Anglo-American children's literature are fundamentally homosocial, or concerned with same-sex friendships and family bonds. In retrospect, some of these classics seem decidedly queer (14). In such a light, the Oz books merit a retrospective analysis to plumb their depths. Certainly, they display an antinormative sensibility in their celebration of the unique, the eccentric, and the downright peculiar, but antinormativity as oddness at times intriguingly merges with hints of sexual queerness, resulting in texts that subvert constructions of gender and sexuality from their supposedly normative foundations. After exploring the thematic queerness of the Oz series in its queerfriendly messages of embracing oddness and in its construction as an antinormative utopia, I turn to the ways in which Baum's Oz books fundamentally reimagine procreation, heterosexuality, and erotic drives. If we see Oz as a utopia, as a haven from the drudgeries of heteronormative inculcation, it becomes apparent that this fairy kingdom threatens the very possibility of heterosexuality by revising the meanings of romance and erotic attachment. The Oz texts are thus particularly pertinent to contemporary theory, especially in regard to current debates addressing the tensions between utopianism and antisociality in the construction of culture and identity5 As an erotically antisocial utopia, Oz challenges the libidinal economy of heteronormative reproduction and highlights alternatives to expected forms of social organization. The Queer Utopia of Oz In terms of Baum's portrayal of Oz as a utopia, numerous characters, places, and even objects in the books are passingly described as queer. …

What men want: The role of reflective opposite-sex normative preferences in alcohol use among college women.

Misperceptions of peer drinking norms have been found to be strongly associated with individual drinking behavior, especially for proximal reference groups such as same-sex friends. Less studied are the effects of perceived preferences from the opposite sex on alcohol use; that is, the behaviors an individual believes the opposite sex prefers from them. Research suggests that these perceived "reflective" normative preferences may be particularly salient among college women, who may drink in pursuit of intimate relationships and positive attention from male peers. Heterosexual undergraduate students from two universities participated in this project. Females answered questions regarding the amount of alcohol they believe a typical male would like his female friends, dates, or romantic partners to drink. Males answered the same questions, stating their actual preferences. Results showed that females overestimate the amount of alcohol males want their female friends, dating partners, and sexual partners to drink, and that this misperception was associated with their drinking behavior, even after controlling for perceived same-sex norms. These results suggest that reflective normative feedback may offer a powerful new tool for female-targeted interventions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved).

WRITING THE MODERN HISTORIES OF HOMOSEXUAL ENGLAND

ABSTRACTThe most useful sexual histories are those that provide depth of context without either assuming sexual identity or anticipating its complete absence; those that do not force taxonomies; histories that resist any simple teleological account of a shift from ‘homosexuality’ as sexual excess to the homosexual as a species. This review examines attempts to write such histories – what has recently been termed the ‘new British queer history’. I will focus on some strands of male and female same-sex desires and their expression in England in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: male and female same-sex friendships, effeminacy in men and masculinity in women; and representations of lesbianism. This review discusses these histories of desires that resist present-day sexual assumptions.

The Negotiation of Compulsory Romance in Young Women Friends' Stories about Romantic Heterosexual Experiences

For young women in western cultures, satisfying the dictates of traditional romantic norms while sustaining intimacy with same-sex friends and a sovereign sense of self can be daunting. The present study explored how 23 pairs of young adult, white female friends (ages 19— 25) attending a public university in Northern California positioned themselves vis-à-vis norms of compulsory romance as they told spontaneous stories about their own and others' experiences. While their story discourse generally oscillated between complicity and resistance to the compulsory romantic interpretative repertoires of `sentimentality', `unrequited pursuit' and `emotional caretaking', such complicity and resistance was often mitigated, qualified or displaced. The findings suggest that for these young women, complicit and resistant positions to repertoires of compulsory romance are synergistic. Implications are discussed for a view of identity development as growth in ideological dexterity and rhetorical fluency.

Identity Development and Exploration Among Sexual Minority Adolescents: Examination of a Multidimensional Model

Based on a multidimensional model of sexual identity development, the current study examined self-labeling, romantic, and sexual experiences among middle and late adolescent sexual minorities. Eighty-two youths between the ages of 14 and 21 were recruited from gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) community centers and associated Internet groups. Differences between males and females and between middle and late adolescents were first examined. Males reported markedly different patterns of self-labeling and romantic experiences, relative to females, but few age differences emerged. Additionally, patterns of association between self-labeling and sexual or romantic experiences provided support for the multidimensional model of identity development and exploration. Finally, significant associations emerged between relationship experiences and relational competency, such that adolescents who described themselves as isolated from intimate interpersonal relationships reported less relational esteem and more relational depression than those who reported predominantly engaging in same-sex romantic relationships. In addition, alternative styles of engaging in interpersonal relationships (e.g., same-sex intimate friendships, heterosexual dating) also were also associated with increased relational competency.

Romantic love modulates women's identification of men's body odors

Romantic love is one of our most potent and powerful emotions, but very little is known with respect to the hormonal and psychological mechanisms in play. Romantic love is thought to help intimate partners stay committed to each other and two mechanisms have been proposed to mediate this commitment: increased attention towards one's partner or deflected attention away from other potential partners. Both mechanisms find support in the literature. We explored the potential influence of each of these mechanisms by assessing women's ability to identify (ID) body odors originating from their boyfriend, a same-sex friend, and an opposite-sex friend and the relationship between this ability and the degree of romantic love expressed towards their boyfriend. We hypothesized that an increase in attention towards one's partner would render a positive correlation between ID of a boyfriend's body odor and degree of romantic love; conversely, we hypothesized that attention deflected away from other potential partners would render a negative correlation between ID of an opposite-sex friend's body odor and degree of romantic love for the boyfriend. Our results supported the deflection theory as we found a negative correlation between the degree of romantic love for the subjects' boyfriends and their ability to ID the body odor of an opposite-sex friend but not of their boyfriend or same-sex friend. Our results indicate that romantic love deflects attention away from potential new partners rather than towards the present partner. These changes are likely mediated by circulating neuropeptides and a testable model is suggested.