Friendship Trust Research Articles

PERSONAL VALUES AND INTRAGROUP RELATIONSHIP: THE CASE OF THE POLICE TACTICAL GROUPS IN BRASÍLIA

ABSTRACT Objectives: This article aims to describe how the personal values of members of specialized workgroups impact their intra-group relationships based on professional and personal trust. Originality/value: The contributions of this study are threefold: 1. the consolidation that the analysis of trust in work groups has different results in the instrumental (professional or reputation trust) and the experimental (personal or friendship trust) relationship when verifying difference in the predominance of personal values for each type relationship; 2. the use of the functionalist theory of human values and to the use of social network analysis techniques and in conjunction with classical quantitative techniques such as ANOVA and multiple regression; 3. the verification of personal values that contributes to the organization and how trust relationships are structured in the group. Design/methodology/approach: The present study is characterized as descriptive field research with a quantitative approach. A survey was conducted with 171 participants from the two tactical groups of the Brasília police, using the Basic Values Questionnaire (BVQ) questionnaire of functionalist values and a questionnaire with eight questions about the instrumental and expressive relationship. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to evidence the validity of the instrument, analysis of social networks (ASN) for trust relationships and ANOVA, and multiple regression for relationships between values and relationships. Findings: The tactical groups presented characteristics of more pragmatic personal values and with less appreciation of individualism, denoting characteristics of appreciation of execution and intragroup collectivism. The normative and supra-personal values were negatively related, respectively, to friendship and professional relationships, while the achievement value was positively related to both trust relationships.

Online/offline self-disclosure to offline friends and relational outcomes in a diary study: The moderating role of self-esteem and relational closeness.

Previous work suggests that the experiences of online and offline self-disclosure are heterogeneous among individuals. Yet little work has been done to identify the moderating role of individual characteristics and pre-existing relationship characteristics on the diverse relational outcomes. The present study using a 7-day diary design examined whether individuals' self-esteem level and relational closeness would moderate the relationships between online and offline self-disclosure to offline friends and two relational outcomes, that is, relationship satisfaction and trust in friendships. The analyses on 686 diary responses from 98 participants revealed that offline self-disclosure generally predicted greater relationship satisfaction and trust in friendships, whereas the role of online self-disclosure was not statistically significant. More importantly, self-esteem moderated the pattern associated with offline self-disclosure but not that with online self-disclosure. Specifically, offline self-disclosure predicted greater benefits to people with lower self-esteem relative to people with higher self-esteem. Moreover, pre-existing relational closeness moderated the relationship between offline self-disclosure and trust in friendships such that casual friendships benefited more from offline self-disclosure than close friendships did. The present study highlights the importance of personal characteristics and relationship characteristics in understanding the heterogeneous relational influence of different communication modes.

Friendship as method: reflections on a new approach to understanding student experiences in higher education

ABSTRACTThis article reflects on a novel method to elicit understanding of students’ journeys. At a time when universities need to know much more about their students, sector understanding runs the risk of being limited and rather shallow. Knowledge tends to rely on broad-brush descriptions of student life derived from surveys, questionnaires and student voice committees whilst conventional qualitative research methods into student experiences have has limitations. ‘Harder listening’ to student voices offers the opportunity to understand everyday student life better. Taking inspiration from StoryCorps in the USA and BBC Radio 4’s The Listening Project, student friendship pairs undertake recorded, private, guided conversations without a researcher present. Conventional ‘friendship’ research fails to use ‘friendship trust’ between participantsto unlock experiences. Ten pairs of students based at a large university in the North of England participated. Analysis of the conversations suggests that happiness, confidence and a sense of belonging at university are significantly affected by the role and presence of friends and family. Through their engagement with and reflection on this method, students reveal familiarity with being ‘under-heard’ and over-surveyed and welcome this approach as a sign of a caring and ‘listening university’.

Friendship trust and psychological well-being from late adolescence to early adulthood: A structural equation modelling approach.

This study explored the sex-specific associations between friendship trust and the psychological well-being of young Swedes from late adolescence to early adulthood. A random sample of native Swedes born in 1990 was surveyed at age 19 years and again at age 23 years regarding their own well-being and their relationships with a maximum of five self-named peers. The response rate was 31.3%, resulting in 782 cases to be analysed. We used sex-stratified structural equation models to explore the associations between trust and well-being. Psychological well-being was constructed as the latent variable in the measurement part. The structural part accounted for the autocorrelation of trust with respect to well-being over time and incorporated the cross-lagged effects between late adolescence and early adulthood. It was found that trust increased while well-being decreased for young men and remained stable for young women from 19 to 23 years of age. The young women reported lower well-being at both time points, whereas no sex difference was found for trust. Based on model fit comparisons, a simple model without forward or reward causation was accepted for young men, whereas reversed causation from well-being to trust was suggested for young women. Subsequent analysis based on these assumptions confirmed the reversed effect for young women. The findings suggest that young people do not benefit from trustful social relations to the same extent as adult populations. Young women who express impaired well-being run a greater risk of being members of networks characterized by low friendship trust over time.

Children's trust: Theory, assessment, development, and research directions

Trust is a significant variable in children's personality, social, and intellectual development. Although trust research has primarily explored adult behavior, there is a growing body of research on children, with a particular emphasis on trust development within friendship relationships. This paper reviews the extant literature on children's trust. After summarizing historical theoretical perspectives, noting particularly Rotter's influence on the field, we offer a theoretical model of trust that synthesizes previous models. We describe various methods for assessing trust and argue for a multimethod approach consistent with our synthetic model. We review three research areas: antecedents to trust, the developmental course of trust in friendships, and correlates of trust. Implications for future research are indicated, and the absence of studies of practical applications is noted. Several programmatic applications for enhancing children's trust are presented.