Friendships and Adaptation in the Life Course - Psychology ...

Psychological Bunetin Copyright 1997 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 

1997, Vol. 121, No. 3, 355-370 0033-2909/97/$3.00 

Friendships and Adaptation in the Life Course 

Willard W. Hartup 

University of Minnesota, Twin Cities 

Nan Stevens 

University of Nijmegen 

To consider friendships and their significance through the life course requires, first, differentiation 

of deep structure (i.e., reciprocity) from surface structure (i.e., the social exchange) and, second, 

assessment within a multifaceted framework that simultaneously emphasizes having friends, the 

identity of one's friends, and relationship quality. Having friends is correlated with a sense of well- 

being across the life span, but developmental outcome also depends on the identity of one's friends 

as well as the quality of one's relationships with them. Greater attention needs to be given to the 

manner in which friendships differ from one another, continuities and changes across major develop- 

mental transitions, and differentiation of developmental pathways through which friendship experi- 

ence contributes to individual outcome. 

Most individuals build their lives around friends as well as 

families. A friendship consists mainly of being attracted to 

someone who is attracted in return, with parity governing the 

social exchanges between the individuals involved. Friendships 

carry expectations that "best" friends will spend more time 

with one another than other persons, offering one another emo- 

tional support, including loyalty, trust, intimacy, and fun. Not 

everyone has friendships, but these relationships are sought after 

and valued from early childhood through old age. Friendships 

are ranked among the things that matter most to children, adoles- 

cents, and adults (Klinger, 1977). 

Although friendships have been scrutinized by social scien- 

tists for a century or more (Monroe, 1898 ), their developmental 

significance is difficult to specify beyond adolescence. First, 

studies with adults are not as numerous as studies with children 

and adolescents; relevant longitudinal studies are especially rare 

(Blieszner & Adams, 1992). Second, studies with adults are 

likely targeted on special groups (e.g., retirees and widows), 

thus rendering normative comparisons difficult. Third, adult 

friendships are studied with a relatively narrow range of methods 

(interviews and questionnaires); child and adolescent friend- 

ships have been studied with more diverse methodologies, in- 

cluding experimental and observational techniques. Fourth, sub- 

ject matter varies with age: Studies with adults deal with inter- 

personal attraction, similarities between friends, and social 

support (Blieszner & Adams, 1992); studies with children and 

adolescents deal with origins and behavioral manifestations, 

cognitive expectations, and developmental outcomes (Hartup, 

1996). 

Willard W. Hartup, Institute of Child Development, University of 

Minnesota, Twin Cities; Nan Stevens, Department of Psychogerontology, 

University of Nijmegen, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. 

Some sections of this article are based on presentations by WiUard 

W. Hartup and Nan Stevens at dedication ceremonies for the Rutten 

Institute for Psychological Research, University of Nijmegen, Nijmegen, 

The Netherlands, on October 20, 1995. 

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Willard 

W. Hartup, Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota, 51 

East River Road, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455. Electronic mail may 

be sent via Internet to hartup@vx.cis.umn.edu. 

355 

Our major objective is to assess the developmental signifi- 

cance of having friends, who one's friends are, and quality of 

friendship relations in a life-span perspective. Accordingly, we 

discuss first what it means to take a life-course perspective on 

friendship relations. We suggest that life-course views in this 

area must involve two levels of analysis--what might be called 

deep structure and surface structure. Second, we argue that 

friendship and life-course adaptation cannot be understood un- 

less a clear distinction is made among having friends, the iden- 

tity of one's friends, and friendship quality. We examine these 

three friendship dimensions in turn, extending the treatment 

given to them from two earlier essays. In the first essay in this 

series (Hartup, 1995), the general case for multidimensional 

assessment was argued; in the second (Hartup, 1996), this 

three-dimensional framework was used to examine the signifi- 

cance of friendships in child and adolescent development. Now, 

in this article, we extend the analysis by differentiating deep 

and surface structures in friendship experience and by applying 

the three-dimensional framework across the life course. 

Friendship Relations in the Life Course: The Distinction 

Between Deep and Surface Structures 

To consider friendship in a life-span perspective involves two 

main assumptions. First, one assumes that friendships bear on 

developmental outcome, beginning in early childhood and ex- 

tending through old age. Some adaptational concomitants are 

concurrent, so one finds that friends support one another in 

coordinated play and problem solving during the early years and 

that toddlers who are sought out as friends are more generally 

competent than those who are not (Howes, 1983). Other conti- 

nuities extend across time and situation, so adults who have 

friends are known to meet various developmental challenges, 

such as widowhood, with better outcomes than individuals who 

do not have friends (Connidis & Davies, 1990; Dykstra, 1995a). 

Some of these contributions may be cumulative in the sense that 

the contributions of one friendship augment the contributions 

of others. One does not necessarily assume that friendships have 

the same significance throughout life but that these relationships 

are developmental resources at all ages. 

Second, one assumes that developmental changes in individu-

356 HARTUP AND STEVENS 

als trigger changes in relationships and that these changes extend 

through the life course. For example, (a) among very young 

children, new coordinations and combinations in memory 

emerge at about 2 years of age, appearing to serve as a basis for 

an increase of coordination and collaboration in the interaction 

between toddlers and their friends (Brownell, 1986); (b) 

changes associated with puberty trigger increases in intimacy 

between opposite-gender friends but not same-gender friends 

(Sharabany, Gershoni, & Hofman, 1981 ); and (c) when strength 

and mobility decline in old age, one' s friends must initiate social 

contact and activities, thereby changing relationship reciproci- 

ties (O'Connor, 1993; Rawlins, 1992). 

To consider friendships across the life course requires the 

differentiation of deep structure, which characterizes these rela- 

tionships, from surface structure. We use deep structure to refer 

to the social meaning (essence) of relationships and surface 

structure to refer to the social exchanges that characterize them 

at any given moment or in any given situation--a convention 

that is similar to the one used in linguistics (Chomsky, 1965). 

The friendship deep structure can be identified by researchers 

asking participants to describe a friend or friends--especially 

an ideal or hypothetical friend--and then content analyzing the 

results. Accordingly, among young children, friendship expecta- 

tions have been found to center mainly on common activities 

and concrete reciprocities ("We play." "And I give them food, 

so they give me food back"; Goodnow & Burns, 1985, p. 120). 

School-aged children describe friends as understanding, loyal, 

and trustworthy; children expect to spend time with their friends, 

share interests, and engage in self-disclosure with them ("A 

good friend is someone who likes you and spends time with 

you and forgives you and doesn't actually bash you up"; p. 

120). Children do not use words like intimate to describe their 

friends, but such constructs begin to differentiate these relation- 

ships shortly before adolescence (Bigelow, 1977; Selman, 

1980). Older individuals describe an ideal friend mainly as 

being supportive (dependable, understanding, and accepting), a 

confidant, and trustworthy. Most important, high school seniors, 

newlyweds, middle-aged parents, and soon-to-be retirees differ 

relatively little from one another in their emphasis on these 

reciprocities when they describe an ideal friend. Similarity be- 

tween friends (sharing interests, experiences, and activities as 

well as communicative compatibility) is regarded, however, as 

an important friendship attribute among adolescents but de- 

creases subsequently (L. Weiss & Lowenthal, 1975). 

Close examination of these results reveals differences as well 

as similarities in the manner in which friends are described by 

younger and older individuals. Differences occur mainly in the 

number of psychological constructs used, complexity and orga- 

nization of information and ideas, and flexibility with which 

this information is used to describe a friend, These age differ- 

ences are similar to those recorded in person perceptions (Lives- 

ley & Bromley, 1973), which probably reflect general cognitive 

development. Similarities across age occur in the extent to which 

reciprocity and mutuality emerge in the meaning structure. Reci- 

procity does not have narrow connotations in these descriptions; 

most individuals do not describe friendships as exchange rela- 

tionships in which inputs and resource exchanges must be equiv- 

alent or one individual's behavior must exactly match another's. 

Nevertheless, children and adults of all ages consider these rela- 

tionships to be marked by reciprocation, that is, mutuality-- 

the giving and taking, and returning in kind or degree. On this 

basis, then, we argue that the friendship deep structure in West- 

ern cultures is best described as "symmetrical reciprocity" (see 

Hinde, 1979; and Youniss, 1980). 

Because reciprocity constitutes the friendship deep structure 

across the life course, certain outcomes or consequences should 

be evident at all ages. Social reciprocities should be significant 

sources of security (Bowlby, t969), self-worth (Sullivan, 

1953), and well-being (R. S. Weiss, 1973). These conditions, 

in turn, should support successful coping, especially with devel- 

opmental transitions such as school entrance, puberty, workforce 

entrance, marriage, child bearing, spouse' s death, and retirement 

(Magnusson, Stattin, & Allen, 1985). On the basis that friend- 

ship reciprocities support coping in this fashion, one expects 

these relationships to promote good outcomes regardless of age. 

Surface structures--the actual exchanges that occur between 

friends--differ from situation to situation and from early child- 

hood to old age. Social reciprocities between two toddlers, for 

example, are manifested mainly in time spent together and con- 

nected interactions (Howes, 1989). Reciprocities between kin- 

dergarten friends are more elaborate socially but remain basi- 

cally concrete, consisting of play and sharing (Howes, 1983). 

Reciprocities among adolescent friends consist of common ac- 

tivities (especially socializing), augmented by self-disclosure 

and expectations of loyalty and trust (Berndt, 1989). Reciproci- 

ties among adult friends are centered on work activities, and 

many friendships become "fused" or "blended" with work 

(Hess, 1972; Winstead, Derlega, & Montgomery, 1995). Other 

fusions occur with marriage; husbands and wives frequently 

share friends with whom issues in marriage and family relations 

are stressed (Hess, 1972; Rawlins, 1992). Reciprocities among 

older persons are more separated from family and work but 

concern support issues and companionship. Surface structures 

at this time include friends exchanging letters and gifts, talking 

on the telephone, doing favors for one another, and expressing 

affection and mutual respect (Rawlins, 1992; Shea, Thomp- 

son, & Blieszner, 1988). What friends talk about and what they 

do with one another thus change with age and circumstance. 

We believe that these changes in surface structure mainly 

reflect changes in the developmental tasks (Havighurst, 1953) 

confronting the individuals involved. So, among young children, 

friendship reciprocities support the acquisition of new social 

skills, especially expertise in cooperation and other socially co- 

ordinated skills (e.g., conflict resolution). Among older children 

and adolescents, the emphasis shifts to intimacy and other ex- 

changes that support a sense of self-identity, sensitivity with 

respect to the needs of others, and maintenance of mutually 

oriented relationships with "agemates"--including members 

of both the same and opposite genders (Sullivan, 1953). Among 

young adults, friendshiPS center on a new collection of develop- 

mental tasks--work and family issues (Hess, 1972). Finally, 

when older individuals confront major life transitions that re- 

quire reorganization of one's lifestyle and expectations, friend- 

ship content changes once again. Clearly, the socializing func- 

tions of these relationships are closely tied to the developmental 

challenges that the individuals involved face, whatever their age. 

Some researchers suggested that friendship surface structures 

are mainly socializing in childhood and adolescence because 

they support innovation in both social understanding and social 

skill, but they are mainly sustained in old age, through which

normative traditionalism is supported (Hess, 1972). Research 

shows, however, that these differences may be overstated: So- 

cialization, for example, remains an important friendship func- 

tion throughout the life course. Older individuals assist one 

another in the reorganization of lifestyles and identities, such 

as when retirees seek the company of those already retired 

(Adams, 1987), recent widows are aided by long-term widows 

in reorganizing their lives as single women (Bankoff, 1983; 

Stevens, 1995), and new residents in housing for older persons 

are assisted in their adaptation to the new setting by long-term 

residents (Armstrong & Goldsteen, 1990; Hochschild, 1973). 

Similarly, sustaining functions may occur among friends across 

a wide age range, not merely among older adults and their 

friends. Certainly, among older adults, "values, which in con- 

temporary terms are dated, can be freely expressed with people 

whose life span has given them comparable experiences and 

outlook" (Jerrome, 1981, p. 190), but friendships also support 

normative commitments among children and adolescents (Kan- 

del, 1978b). 

To summarize, the friendships of toddlers and the friendships 

of older adults are both similar and different. On the one hand, 

social interaction between both younger and older friends is 

marked by symmetrical reciprocity (deep structure). On the 

other hand, the social exchanges that occur between friends 

(surface structure) reflect salient developmental tasks. The 

friendship deep structure is thus developmentally stable, 

whereas friendship surface structure is not. To consider friend- 

ships in life course terms, then, requires that attention be given 

to both continuities and discontinuities in their manifestations 

and developmental implications. Two hypotheses, can be ad- 

vanced. (1) Good friends support well-being from early child- 

hood onward through the reciprocities that occur between the 

friends; consequences may extend from immediate to future 

adaptations. (2) Friends support one another in coping with the 

developmental (time-limited) challenges that confront them, the 

consequences of which may also extend from present to future 

adaptations. We examine empirical evidence relating to these 

hypotheses in subsequent sections. 

Three Friendship Dimensions 

Researchers and clinicians commonly differentiate among 

individuals--both children and adults--according to whether 

or not they have friends. Clinicians, for example, want to know 

whether a troubled child or adult client has friends, a circle of 

friends, or a best friend--but usually little else in this domain. 

Researchers enter "has friends" into their regression equations 

but seldom more. Whether or not one has friends receives this 

emphasis for two reasons: First, making and keeping friends 

requires good social skills, so having friends is an indication 

of (a proxy for) good social adjustment. Second, acquiring 

friends and maintaining these relationships require a person to 

be other oriented as well as self-oriented, espouse egalitarian 

attitudes, and manage conflicts with one's companions in con- 

structive ways. On the basis of these arguments, having friends 

increases one's social skills and well-being, which, in turn, 

increase one's likelihood of making and keeping friends. 

Friendship experience, however, cannot be reduced only to 

having friends. Friendships vary greatly from individual to 'indi- 

FRIENDSHIPS IN THE LIFE COURSE 357 

vidual as well as from companion to companion (Hartup, 

1996). First, enormous variation occurs in who one's friends 

are. Some companions are cooperative, outgoing, and socially 

skilled; others are not. Sometimes companions are antisocial; 

at other times, they are not. Such differences are obvious, but 

their significance is often overlooked. New evidence suggests, 

though, that the identity of one's friends (i.e., their personal and 

social characteristics) accounts for more outcome variance than 

whether one has a friend; antisocial children and adolescents 

are examples (Dishion, Andrews, & Crosby, 1995). 

Second, friendships differ from one another qualitatively 

(Hartup, 1996), that is, in their content or normative functions 

(e.g., what the two individuals do together), their construc- 

tiveness (e.g., whether one normally resolves conflicts with 

one's friends using negotiation or the "power-assertion" influ- 

ence strategy), their closeness (e.g., if one's companions spend 

time together, they engage in many different activities as opposed 

to a few and their exchanges involve self-disclosure), their sym- 

metry (e.g., whether friends influence one another equally or 

"social power" is distributed unequally), and their affective 

character (e.g., whether friendships are supportive and secure 

or nonsupportive and conflict ridden). Qualitative features are 

well recognized in research on mother-infant and marital rela- 

tionships (Bowlby, 1969; Gottman, 1979) but not in relation to 

friendships and their developmental implications. 

Friendships may thus be assets or liabilities, depending on 

who one's friends are and the quality of one's relationships with 

them. Overly romanticized views of these relationships distort 

what they may contribute to development across the life course. 

Indeed, the identity of one's friends and the quality of one's 

relationships with them may be related to developmental out- 

come more closely than having friends. 

Occurrence 

Having Friends 

Consider the occurrence of having friends and what research- 

ers know about it. First, toddlers sometimes interact with one 

another preferentially and the word friend enters their vocabu- 

lary during the third or fourth year (Howes, 1983). Various 

data sets suggest that about 75% of nursery school children are 

involved in reciprocated friendships, as measured by observed 

time spent in one another's company, nursery school teachers' 

reports, and maternal interviews (Hinde, Titmus, Easton, & 

Tamplin, 1985; Howes, 1983). This figure rises slightly through 

adolescence when 80% to 90% of teenagers report having mu- 

tual friends, usually including one or two best friends and several 

"close" friends or "good" friends (Van der Linden & Dijkman, 

1989). Frequencies remain high (90%) among adults in midlife 

and then decline, but older adults more commonly have friends 

than not (Wright, 1989; Schutze & Lang, 1993). Small numbers 

of individuals have no friends as adults (6-7%)--a number 

that increases to 12% for women and 22% for men over Age 

65 in the United States (Fischer & Phillips, 1982) and 19% 

for older persons in the Netherlands (Pearl Dykstra, personal 

communication, December 7, 1995). 

Second, friendship networks are small among preschool chil- 

dren, averaging about 1.7 friends for boys and 0.9 for girls, 

whereas school-aged children average 3.0-5.0 best friends, de-


pending on whether one counts unreciprocated as well as recip- 

rocated choices (Hallinan, 1980). This figure remains relatively 

constant during adolescence and early adulthood (Cairns, 

Lueng, Buchanan, & Cairns, 1995), although to make compari- 

sons across studies is difficult because of methodological varia- 

tions. Network size is greatest among newlyweds, who report 

an average of 7.6 friends; then declines to 4.7 again by middle 

age; and rises slightly (to 6.0) among persons about to retire 

(Lowenthal, Thurnher, & Chiriboga, 1975). Network size de- 

clines among older adults between Ages 55 and 90 (Dickens & 

Perlman, 1981; Dykstra, 1995b) due to mostly the loss of "ca- 

sual" friends. Close friends, however, are retained into old, old 

age, and older persons have about the same number of close 

friends as middle-aged adults (Field, 1995; Lang & Carstensen, 

1994). Girls' networks are ordinarily smaller and more exclu- 

sive than boys' during early and middle childhood (Eder & 

Hallinan, 1978), but this situation reverses during adolescence 

(Cairns et al., 1995 ). Gender differences in network size among 

adults are not consistent across the relevant studies. 

Third, time spent with friends varies over the life course, 

although estimates are extremely difficult to compare from in- 

vestigation to investigation; metrics and methods vary greatly. 

On the one hand, time spent with friends is greatest in middle 

childhood and adolescence, amounting to 29% of time awake 

among teenagers. On the other hand, middle-aged adults spend 

only 7% of their time interacting with friends, and those over 

Age 65 spend 9% of their time this way (Larson & Bradney, 

1988; Larson, Zuzanek, & Mannell, 1985 ). Older women spend 

more time interacting with friends (and relatives) than men, and 

widowed men and women spend more time with friends than 

married individuals (Altergott, 1988). 

Fourth, children who have friends at one age are likely to 

have them at other ages (Elicker, Englund, & Sroufe, 1992), 

thus illustrating a continuity in social relations also suggested by 

retrospective interviews with older persons. Based on interviews 

with older participants, Matthews (1986) identified three "per- 

sonological" types as differentiated by friendship styles--inde- 

pendents enjoy friendly, satisfying social relationships through- 

out their lives but never have close or intimate friendS; discern- 

ing individuals report having a small number of very close 

friends throughout childhood, adolescence, and adulthood; and 

acquisitive individuals always have a relatively large number of 

friends and expect friends always to be available. Continuity is 

also suggested by the fact that close friends of many older 

persons are the same individuals who were their friends earlier 

in life (Field, 1995). Long-term friendships rest on shared his- 

tories, accumulated experiences, and simultaneously moving 

through major developmental transitions (Hess, 1972; Rawlins, 

1992). Long-term continuities result from selection too: Old 

friends are consciously maintained in preference to the making 

of new ones into very old age (Lang & Carstensen, 1994). 

Behavior With Friends and Nonfriends 

Behaviors that differentiate friends from nonfriends have been 

examined in more than 80 studies with children and adolescents; 

the results generally verify the friendship deep and surface struc- 

tures described earlier. Reciprocity anchors these relationships 

generally through the first 2 decades; surface content changes 

with age. Several narrative reviews of these studies have been 

published (Hartup, 1989, 1996) as well as a meta-analysis (A. 

F. Newcomb & Bagwell, 1995 ). In these studies, researchers did 

not demonstrate the developmental significance of friendships 

directly but specified some of the social processes through 

which friendship experience and adaptation are linked. 

We summarize one representative investigation in this article 

• along with the meta-analytic results as a basis for the remainder 

of the review. In an empirical study, Hartup, Daiute, Zajac, 

and Sholl (1995) examined conversations between friends and 

nonfriends (10-year-olds) in an innercity magnet school while 

the children wrote stories collaboratively on a computer, Stories 

were about the tropical rain forest--a'subject matter that the 

children had studied during a 6-week science project. Children 

were assigned to three groups: (a) those who wrote stories 

individually on 4 different days; (b) those who wrote individu- 

ally on Day 1, then the next 2 with a friend, and the final day 

alone; and (c) those who collaborated with a nonfriend rather 

than a friend. Results indicate that friends did not talk more 

during collaboration than nonfriends but, nevertheless, (a) en- 

gaged in more mutually oriented and fewer individualistic utter- 

ances; (b) agreed with one another more often (but did not 

disagree more readily); (c) repeated their own and friend's 

assertions more often; (d) posed alternatives and provided elab- 

orations more frequently; (e) spent twice as much time as non- 

friends talking about writing content, the vocabulary used, and 

writing mechanics; and (f) spent less time engaged in "off- 

task" talk. Principal component analyses confirm that friends' 

talk was assertively collaborative--a finding that is reminiscent 

of the dialogues between experts and novices reported in other 

social problem-solving studies (Rogoff, 1990). The stories also 

show that, overall, the ones written collaboratively by friends 

were better than those written by nonfriends--a difference that 

seems to rest on the better use of standard English by friends 

rather than the narrative elements included in the stories. 

The meta-analysis (A. E Newcomb & Bagwell, 1995) sum- 

marizes friend versus nonfriend differences among children and 

adolescents in terms of four broad band categories: positive 

engagement (i.e., more talk, smiling, and laughter generally 

occur among friends than nonfriends), conflict management 

(i.e., friends use disengagement and negotiation vs. power asser- 

tion proportionally more frequently than nonfriends), task activ- 

ity (i.e. task orientation as opposed to off-task orientation is 

greater among friends than nonfriends), and relationship proper- 

ties (i.e., equality in the exchange as well as mutuality and 

affirmation are greater among friends than nonfriends). The 

data within and across studies show that, behaviorally speaking, 

the relationship affordances of "being friends" differ from the 

affordances of "being acquaintances." Friends are socially ac- 

tive with one another, and their interaction is marked by mutual- 

ity, effective conflict management, and task orientation, thereby 

reflecting the deep structure revealed in the descriptions of 

friends (L. Weiss & Lowenthal, 1975). 

Certain changes in the interaction between friends can be 

observed with the onset of adolescence, although these ex- 

changes remain anchored in reciprocation. First, although nega- 

tive gossip occurs more commonly in talk between friends than 

between nonfriends throughout childhood and adolescence, pos- 

itive gossip differentiates friends and acquaintances only in ado- 

lescence. Second, self-disclosure newly differentiates among 

friends and acquaintances in adolescence and so does mindread-

ing, that is, attributions that people make to others' actions, 

motives, or personalities (Gottman & Mettetal, 1986). Conflicts 

with friends do not occur as frequently as commonly supposed 

(Laursen & Collins, 1994) and are reported about as frequently 

by adolescents as children. When choosing between competition 

or sharing with their friends, though, adolescents compete less 

and share more than children (Berndt, Hawkins, & Hoyle, 

1986). 

Differences in the exchanges that occur between adult friends 

and nonfriends have been studied mainly because these establish 

the greater closeness of friends as compared with acquaintances. 

On that basis, more numerous exchanges occur between friends 

than acquaintances (Berg, 1984); self-disclosure occurs more 

frequently and is deeper (Altman & Taylor, 1973; Berg, 1984); 

friends are more directive and authoritative with one another 

than nonfriends. More diverse resources are exchanged by 

friends than nonfriends (Berg, 1983), although the specific re- 

sources exchanged differ: Affection, services, and status are 

exchanged more frequently by friends than nonfriends but not 

goods, money, and information (Tornblom & Fredholm, 1984). 

Friends are more likely to give benefits to one another on the 

basis of need or desire than nonfriends, whereas the latter are 

more likely to give benefits depending on whether they have 

received them previously themselves (Mills & Clark, 1982). 

Finally, friends think of themselves as a unit more frequently 

than acquaintances, their exchanges are more satisfying intrinsi- 

cally, and relationships are more lasting than between mere 

acquaintances (see also Berg & Clark, 1989). Results indicate 

that the reciprocities undergirding friendships among younger 

children and adolescents are amplified among adults by a com- 

plex set of attributions that concern closeness and the nature of 

relationships. The developmental origins of these attributions 

and their elaborations have not been studied. 

Companionship and talk (referred to earlier as positive en- 

gagement) continue to differentiate friends from nonfriends in 

middle and old age (Blieszner & Adams, 1992). Relationship 

talk is more topical and role related among young adult and 

middle-aged friends than among either adolescents or older 

adults. Sharing, resource exchanges, emotional support, and 

other indications of mutuality are salient in friendship interac- 

tions, especially those among adult friends that occur during 

crises such as divorce (Ginsberg, 1986). Problem solving 

among older persons is notably more symmetrical with friends 

than with relatives (Kaye & Monk, 1991 ). Although conflicts 

occur frequently between adult friends (as among children), 

they are less commonly acknowledged than conflicts in marital 

relationships. Conflicts among adult friends are concentrated in 

two areas (Argyle & Furnham, 1983): emotional disagreements 

(beliefs, values, and social partners) and criticisms (over life- 

style, habits, and personal issues). Among older persons, con- 

flicts mainly concern normative expectations that apply to older 

persons and resource inequities affecting older persons (C. B. 

Fisher, Reid, & Melendez, 1989). 

To summarize, social interactions between friends, as com- 

pared with nonfriends, are more engaged, mutually oriented, and 

symmetrical across the life course. Social exchanges between 

friends, that is, their content, change over time but certain struc- 

tural dimensions--especially their mutuality and symmetrical 

reciprocity--characterize friendships at all ages. Observational 

studies have seldom been conducted with adults, except in a 


few instances with college roommates (Ginsberg & Gottman, 

1986) and older residents of an apartment complex (Hochschild, 

1973). Consequently, age differences in behavior with friends 

cannot always be specified from direct observation. Observa- 

tional studies are badly needed, however, because of experimen- 

tal evidence showing that exchange equivalences and reciprocal 

self-disclosure are not always concomitants of social attraction 

(Clark & Mills, 1979; Ginsberg & Gottman, 1986). 

Developmental Significance 

Security and self-validation in social relations have long been 

regarded as necessary to the growth of social competence 

(Sroufe & Fleeson, 1986). To show that friends interact commu- 

nally with one another, however, does not demonstrate their 

developmental significance. Rather, two other kinds of studies 

are needed to do this: (a) comparisons between individuals who 

have friends with those who do not, especially with respect to 

self-esteem and social competence, and (b) demonstrations that 

having friends supports better coping with challenges or stress 

than not having friends and promotes good outcome over time. 

Having friends versus not having friends. Cross-sectional 

(concurrent) comparisons show that, first, children who have 

friends are more socially competent than those who do not; they 

are more sociable, cooperative, altruistic, self-confident, and less 

lonely (A. E Newcomb & BagweU, 1995). Second, children, 

adolescents, and adults seeking clinical referrals or other forms 

of assistance with psychosocial problems are more likely to be 

friendless than better adjusted individuals (Rutter & Garmezy, 

1983). Third, individuals with friends enjoy greater psychologi- 

cal well-being throughout adulthood and old age than individu- 

als who do not have friends (Brown, 1981; Gupta & Korte, 

1994; Larson, 1978). 

Certain studies suggest, however, that the existence of sup- 

portive relationships may have less to do with well-being, espe- 

cially in old age, than the absence of problematic ones. Indeed, 

the number of problematic relationships one has and the fre- 

quency with which one interacts with problematic persons are 

more closely related (negatively) to well-being than the number 

of supportive persons available and opportunities to interact 

with them (Pagel, Erdly, & Becker, 1987; Rook, 1984; Stephens, 

Kinney, Ritchie, & Norris, 1987). Still other studies suggest 

that friendship support may be more necessary for some individ- 

uals than others. Lang and Carstensen (1994) found, for exam- 

ple, that among older individuals who no longer have living 

relatives, number of close friends predicts feelings of social 

embeddedness, whereas this is not the case among individuals 

with families. Friends also provide emotional advantages for 

"spouseless" individuals, that is, persons who were never or 

were formerly married (Dykstra, 1995a; Gupta & Korte, 1994). 

Among older persons, widows and widowers spend more time 

with friends than married people (Gallagher & Gerstel, 1993; 

Wister, 1990) or those divorced (R. S. Weiss, 1975), with 

friends serving both confiding and companionship functions 

(Connidis & Davies, 1990). Comparisons between married and 

spouseless individuals are especially important because the re- 

sults support two widely discussed but infrequently verified 

hypotheses: ( 1 ) Friendships may substitute for other (missing) 

relationships in social development and adaptation and (2) 

friendships are protective factors or "buffers" that mitigate


the effects of stress and privation in everyday life, especially 

relationship strains and losses. 

In general, then, having friends is correlated with psychologi- 

cal well-being from childhood through old age, consistent with 

the hypothesis that the friendship deep structure (reciprocity) 

and certain benefits associated with it do not change through 

the life course. These results are nevertheless difficult to inter- 

pret. First, having friends in these studies is usually confounded 

with friendship quality; that is, having friends usually means 

having good friends. The significance of this confound is clearly 

demonstrated by the discovery that not having problematic 

friendships is more closely related to well-being among older 

persons than having supportive ones (Rook, 1984). Second, 

most empirical studies (especially with adolescents and adults) 

examine support networks that include friends but also include 

other persons, thus making it difficult to specify the exact devel- 

opmental contributions made by the dyadic relationship. Third, 

causal direction is impossible to establish: Friendship experi- 

ence may contribute to self-esteem or well-being; but, at the 

same time, confident and secure individuals may make friends 

more readily than less confident ones--both in childhood and 

adulthood (see Elicker et al., 1992). Fourth, the correlation 

between having friends and well-being is moderated by other 

conditions, including the availability of other supportive rela- 

tionships (e.g., with spouses or relatives), time spent with 

friends, and the kinds of events that require support (Staudinger, 

Marsiske, & Baltes, 1995). Although the correlational evidence 

suggests that friendships constitute social and emotional re- 

sources across the life course, important reservations must be 

attached to this conclusion. 

Outcomes across developmental transitions. Relatively few 

longitudinal studies contain information about having friends 

and developmental outcome. Short-term studies with children 

suggest that benefits accrue across certain developmental transi- 

tions, for example, school entrance. School attitudes are better 

among kindergarten children (5-year-olds) whose prior friends 

attend the same school and who maintain these relationships 

than among children who do not (Ladd, 1990). Having friends 

also predicts increases in self-esteem among preadolescents 

(Bukowski, Hoza, & Newcomb, 1991 ), and psychosocial distur- 

bances are less frequent when school changes occur in the com- 

pany of good friends than when they do not (Berndt & Keefe, 

1992; Simmons, Burgeson, & Reef, 1988). 

Other studies suggest that friendships in childhood may be 

precursors of romantic relationships in adolescence. First, ' 'hav- 

ing friends" and "having a friend to confide in" during middle 

childhood are reported more often by undergraduates also re- 

porting childhood sexual encounters (with other children) than 

undergraduates not reporting early sexual experience (Hau- 

gaard & Tilly, 1988). This concordance between having friends 

and early sexual experience may reflect individual differences in 

self-esteem or social competence rather than a causal connection 

between friendship experience and sexual socialization. Alterna- 

tively, having friends may increase feelings of self-worth (see 

below), thereby setting the stage for early sexual engagement. 

Cross-lagged longitudinal data (Neeman, Hubbard, & Kojetin, 

1991) clarify this situation somewhat: Having same-gender 

friends during middle childhood forecasts having romantic rela- 

tionships during adolescence; subsequently, having same-gender 

friends during adolescence forecasts romantic relationships in 

early adulthood. Because same-gender friendships forecast ro- 

mantic relationships but not vice versa, results are consistent 

with Sullivan's (1953) notion that same-gender friendships dur- 

ing the "juvenile era" support the formation and functioning 

of heterosexual relationships--mainly by the establishment of 

intimacy needs. 

Finally, in one other longitudinal investigation, Bagwell, New- 

comb, and Bukowski (1996) examined having friends during 

preadolescence broadly as a predictor of social adaptation in 

early adulthood ( 12 years after the initial testing). Results show 

that (a) childhood sociometric status (popular vs. rejected) sig- 

nificantly predicted school performance, job success, aspira- 

tions, and sociability in early adulthood, although having friends 

did not; and (b) childhood friendships predicted good attitudes 

toward family members and, most important, general feelings 

of self-worth and depressive symptoms in early adulthood; so- 

ciometric status, however, did not predict these outcomes. Corre- 

lations between having friends in childhood and one's self- 

attitudes in adulthood remained significant, even when the parti- 

cipants' perceptions of their social competence as children were 

factored out. 

These results suggest, first, that sociometric status is a more 

important predictor of social skill than friendship experience 

across the transition between childhood and adulthood. Friend- 

ship experience, however, contributes to developmental outcome 

in two other domains--family relations and self-esteem (as 

well as depression, a disorder frequently accompanied by low 

self-esteem). The results thus augment the cross-sectional stud- 

ies (see above) to suggest that having friends contributes devel- 

opmentally to the individual's sense of well-being. More im- 

portant, the results are consistent with the hypothesis that friend- 

ships enhance coping with the specific developmental challenges 

that confront the individuals involved--identity issues, in this 

case. With these participants--studied between childhood and 

early adulthood--the results support one of the most basic prop- 

ositions in S ullivan's (1953) theory of interpersonal relations, 

namely, that preadolescent friendships "provide opportunities 

for validation of self-worth and a unique context for exploration 

and development of personal strengths" (Bagwell et al., 1996, 

p. 22). Results also show these effects to be relatively long 

lasting. 

Other longitudinal studies are more circumscribed. Short- 

term prospective studies with adults reveal that friendship net- 

works are associated with better postdivorce adaptation among 

adult women than are family networks, presumably because 

friendship collectives are more diversified and less closely knit 

(Wilcox, 1981 ). Retrospective accounts among older persons 

show that individuals who report themselves as having been 

increasingly happy after Age 60 had greater numbers of friends 

earlier than those reporting a decreasing happiness (Lebo, 

1953). Friends are actually more effective in enhancing self- 

esteem among older persons than family members (Felton & 

Berry, 1992). These results continue to suggest that friendships 

promote a sense of well-being when the relationship reciproci- 

ties are centered in developmentally relevant surface structure. 

To summarize, correlational studies show that having friends 

is correlated with good psychosocial functioning and a sense of 

well-being across the life course. These studies are not easy to 

interpret for several reasons: (a) The impact of having friends 

is difficult to disentangle from that of friendship quality, (b)

having a best friend is often difficult to differentiate from being 

part of a friendship network, and (c) directional effects are 

difficult to specify. Short-term longitudinal studies suggest that 

having friends supports good outcomes across developmental 

transitions--both normative (e.g., school entrance) and non- 

normative (illness, divorce, or family member's death). More 

substantial evidence on these effects is needed. Cross-lagged 

longitudinal studies are rare, especially ones that span substan- 

tial lengths of time. Some results suggest, however, that the 

specific contributions made by having friends reflect the devel- 

opmental status of the individuals involved: Childhood friend- 

ships, for example, are now known to contribute to self-esteem 

as well as better family attitudes and romantic relationships 

during adolescence and early adulthood. Whether similar devel- 

opmental sequelae are associated with having friends at other 

times is not likely. 

The Identity of One's Friends 

Several questions need to be asked about the identity of one's 

friends: With whom does one become friends? Can the identity 

of one's friends be forecast from what one knows about oneself? 

What is the adaptational significance of the identity of one's 

friends? These questions are especially important because of 

the growing awareness that the behavioral similarities existing 

between friends (known among sociologists as "homophilies" ) 

have considerable long-term significance for the individuals in- 

volved (Cairns & Cairns, 1994). 

Who Are One's Friends? 

Consider, first, that common ground is necessary for the for- 

mation and maintenance of friendships throughout the life 

course. Consequently, friends ought to be similar to one another 

in age, gender, and ethnicity as well as abilities and behavior. 

Indeed, the weight of the evidence shows friends to be concor- 

dant for age, gender, socioeconomic status, and ethnicity--be- 

ginning in childhood and extending through old age (Adams & 

Blieszner, 1995; Kupersmidt, DeRosier, & Patterson, 1995; Mat- 

thews, 1995). Demographic concordances are especially great 

in midlife because friends frequently are coworkers or family 

related (Nahemow & Lawton, 1975). 

Behavioral concordances are extensive too, but these vary 

from age to age and attribute to attribute--in most cases based 

on normative salience (i.e., the normative salience of the attri- 

bute in the social networks to which the individual belongs or 

the salience of the attribute to determine social reputations). 

Among young children, Challman (1932) found friends to be 

concordant in social cooperation (an attribute with considerable 

normative significance) but not in intelligence (an attribute with 

none). Among boys, friends were more concordant in physical 

activity than nonfriends but not among girls, for whom similarity 

in attractiveness of personality and social network size was 

greater among friends than nonfriends. 

Most concordance studies with school-aged children are 

about personal construct use (Erwin, 1985), self-reported simi- 

larities (Hymel & Woody, 1991), or similarities within social 

networks (Cairns & Cairns, 1994). Some data (Haselager, 

Hartup, Van Lieshout, & Riksen-Walraven, 1996) suggest, how- 

ever, that behavioral concordances within the friendship dyad 


are considerably stronger in childhood than previously thought. 

Peer ratings were obtained from a large number of 11-year-olds, 

centering on prosocial behavior, antisocial behavior, shyness- 

dependency, depressive symptoms, and sociometric status. First, 

friends were more similar to one another than nonfriends within 

each construct cluster (i.e., both mean difference scores were 

significantly smaller, and correlations within dyads were sig- 

nificantly greater). Second, friends were more similar to one 

another than nonfriends in rating their classmates as well as in 

classmates' ratings of them. Third, correlations between friends 

were greater for antisocial behavior (i.e., fighting, disruption, 

and bullying) than prosocial behavior (i.e., cooperation and 

offering help to others) or social withdrawal (i.e., shyness, de- 

pendency, and being "victimized" ). These correlational differ- 

ences may reflect differences among the three attributes in nor- 

mative salience: Fighting, for example, is more salient among 

children in terms of their reputations and their membership in 

the social networks that exist within classrooms than is either 

cooperation or shyness (Coie, Dodge, & Kupersmidt, 1990). 

Fourth, certain gender differences were evident: (a) Friends were 

more similar to one another in both prosocial and antisocial 

behavior among girls than boys, and (b) Friends were more 

similar in shyness among boys than girls. These gender differ- 

ences are consistent with the normative salience hypothesis too 

because uncooperativeness and aggression are more socially 

problematic for girls than boys (Huston, 1983). One would 

expect the reverse with shyness, however, because this attribute 

presents more serious social difficulties for boys than girls 

(Caspi, Elder, &Bem, 1988). 

Behavioral concordances among adolescents also vary from 

attribute to attribute. Adolescents are most similar to their 

friends in school-related attitudes, aspirations, and achievement 

(Epstein, 1983; Kandel, 1978b) along with normative behaviors 

that define their lifestyles, for example, smoking, drinking, drug 

use, dating, and sexual activity (Billy, Rodgers, & Udry, 1984; 

Kandel, 1978b; Tolson & Urberg, 1993). In general, personality 

assessments are not very similar among adolescent friends, al- 

though similarities in normatively significant behaviors are sub- 

stantial, for example, aggression and delinquency (Kandel, 

1978a, 1978b; Dishion et al., 1995). 

Although similarities in attitudes and values are known to be 

the basis of attraction among adults (Berscheid & Walster, 1968; 

T. M. Newcomb, 1961 ), attempts to verify behavioral and attitu- 

dinal similarities among adult friends have yielded weak out- 

comes and inconsistent results (Brown, 1981; Nahemow & 

Lawton, 1975). In describing "real" friends, adults emphasize 

similarities, such as shared experiences and activities, ease of 

communication, similar general behaviors and interests--more 

so in fact than reciprocities (L. Weiss & Lowenthal, 1975). It 

is also the case, however, that common ground and shared inter- 

ests are not mentioned as frequently as a basis for friendships 

by adults than children (Lowenthal et al., 1975; Werner & Par- 

melee, 1979). Whether adult friendships depend more on work 

and family communaiities than earlier friendships--thereby re- 

ducing behavioral and attitudinal concordances between friends 

in adulthood--is unknown. The bulk of the evidence on behav- 

ioral similarity among adult friends emanates from studies of 

college roommates rather than older adult friends, perhaps to 

explain why actual behavioral similarities are not consistently 

reported.


Similarities Between Friends: Sources 

The developmental significance of similarities between 

friends cannot be specified without the acknowledgment that 

friendship similarities (at least among children and adolescents) 

stem from three sources: (a) sociodemographic conditions that 

bring similar individuals into contact with one another, (b) so- 

cial selection through which individuals select friends who are 

similar to themselves and simultaneously avoid relationships 

with individuals who are different, and (c) mutual socialization 

through which individuals become similar to their friends by 

interacting with them. 

Sociodemographic conditions. Sociodemographic forces de- 

termine the neighborhood in which people live, the schools in 

which people are enrolled as children and adolescents, the insti- 

tutions people work for, and the neighborhoods people live in 

when they retire and become widowed. Concordances among 

persons and their friends in socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and 

chronological age thus derive to some extent from social forces 

that bring similar individuals into contact with one another in 

neighborhoods and institutions. Culture restricts social choices 

to similar individuals in two ways: First, it creates individuals 

who have similar beliefs and attitudes, including the belief that 

interpersonal similarity optimizes gratification as well as the 

belief that dissimilarity optimizes tension and discomfort (Ro- 

senbaum, 1986); second, it creates neighborhoods and commu- 

nity arrangements that maximize opportunities for similar indi- 

viduals to socialize with one another and minimize contacts 

between dissimilar individuals. Residential choices are the in- 

strumentalities through which culture brings about these concor- 

dances; the institutions with which individuals affiliate (work 

organizations, schools, and churches) extend them. 

Selection. Similarities between friends also derive from se- 

lection choice, that is, the tendency among individuals to choose 

associates who resemble themselves. Among children attending 

schools that are of mixed ages, races, and socioeconomic sta- 

tuses, for example, friends are more similar to one another than 

nonfriends (Goldman, 1981; McCandless & Hoyt, 1961 ). Simi- 

larly, older residents of nursing homes are more likely to make 

friends with similar than dissimilar individuals (Chown, 1981; 

Matthews, 1995). 

The similarity-attraction dynamic begins in childhood. For 

example, among the 8-year-old children in one experiment who 

began a series of sessions as strangers, differential attraction 

was evident in some groups (40%) after the first meeting. Within 

these groups, the social and cognitive dimensions of play were 

more similar when the children were attracted to one another 

than when they were not (Rubin, Lynch, Coplan, Rose- 

Krasnor, & Booth, 1994). Other studies show that children be- 

come friends in direct relation to the number of attributes (both 

demographic and behavioral) they share (Kupersmidt et al., 

1995). 

Reinforcement theorists argued that these homophilies stem 

from two sources: the rewards that emanate from recognition 

by individuals of common statuses and values (Lazarsfeld & 

Merton, 1954) and the aversiveness that stems from recognition 

of status dissimilarities (Rosenbaum, 1986). Rewards are both 

intrinsic and extrinsic: For example, most young girls find their 

interests in dramatic play to be more supported by interaction 

with other girls than with boys (Sears, Alpert, & Rau, 1964), 

whereas girls receive more approval from both adults and age- 

mates for associating with other girls than boys (Fagot, 1978; 

Thorne, 1986). Selection similarities based on avoidance also 

derive from both intrinsic and extrinsic sources: Young girls, 

for example, find the rough and tumble play of boys to be 

aversive and a reason for their perference for the company of 

other young girls (Maccoby, 1990), whereas cross-gender so- 

cializing among nursery school children is criticized by other 

children of both genders (Fagot, 1978). These dynamics un- 

doubtedly contribute to the similarities that exist between 

friends throughout the life course (Hess, 1972). 

Based on the available evidence, we cannot assume that simi- 

larities between friends derive from carefully weighed decisions 

made by individuals, cumulating gradually over weeks and 

months, to associate with others who are similar and avoid those 

who are dissimilar to themselves. Rather, network and friendship 

concordances resemble "shopping expeditions" (Dishion, Pat- 

terson, & Griesler, 1994) in which certain selections "feel 

right" and others do not (i.e., some activities and conversations 

suggest common ground, whereas others do not). Antisocial 

children, for example, are more likely to make friends with other 

antisocial children than better socialized children, both because 

other children do not select them and because, between them- 

selves, their antisocial behaviors establish common ground. In- 

deed, the communalities that exist between antisocial adoles- 

cents and their friends suggest a kind of merger between them 

that results in the emergence of a "dyadic antisocial trait." 

Similar mergers occur among children for friendliness and coop- 

eration as well as shyness and depressive symptoms (Haselager 

et al., 1996). 

Selection choices are also embedded in complex assortative 

processes, about which relatively little is known. Assortments 

occur within social networks, which in turn emerge from larger 

social units, such as classrooms, office blocks, and retirement 

residences. Greater similarity between friends than nonfriends 

thus emerges within two interlocking selection systems: (a) 

dyadic interaction and (b) assortative dialectics, which differen- 

tiate social networks from their larger aggregates. Little recogni- 

tion is given to, unfortunately, that friendship selection usually 

occurs within higher order structures in which group decision 

making and pressures also occur. Consequently, theoretical mod- 

els are lacking to account for the manner in which network 

dynamics moderate friendship selection (Berndt, 1996). Given 

this state of affairs, researchers should not treat similarity be- 

tween best friends and within friendship networks as reflections 

of the same construct. 

Mutual socialization. Similarities between friends derive 

from socialization as well as selection. Kandel (1978a) studied 

changes over the course of 1 year in substance use, educational 

aspirations, and delinquency of adolescents, discovering that 

similarity stems from both sources in approximately equal 

amounts. In other studies, selection seems to contribute more 

variance than socialization to cigarette and alcohol use (L. A. 

Fisher & Baumann, 1988). The sturdiest conclusion that can 

be drawn from these studies is that the relative contribution 

of selection and socialization to friendship similarity must be 

estimated separately for each attribute and, most likely, each 

population assessed. 

Circumstantial evidence that demonstrates mutual socializa- 

tion effects is plentiful: Children, for example, who ascribe to

conventional norms move further over time in the direction of 

normative behavior after they associate with friends (Ball, 1981; 

Epstein, 1983; Kandel & Andrews, 1987). Antisocial activities 

increase over time among antisocial individuals and their friends, 

even though most people perceive friends as exerting pressure 

toward desirable rather than undesirable conduct (Brown, Cla- 

sen, & Eicher, 1986). Similarly, socializing with friends smooths 

adaptation to new institutional settings among both adolescents 

and older persons (Armstrong & Goldsteen, 1990; Simmons et 

al., 1988; Stacey-Konnert & Pynoss, 1992). 

Debate continues whether friends truly socialize one another 

or rather serve as "socialization supplements." Beth Hess 

(1972) argued that friends assist with learning, behavioral im- 

plementation, or both but cannot teach one another because 

the difference between them in expertise is not great enough. 

Although much evidence demonstrates that the co-construction 

of knowledge is more successful than is a solitary effort in many 

different situations (Rogoff, 1990), contemporary research does 

not tell definitively whether two similar individuals can teach 

one another effectively in all situations. 

One guesses that, from early childhood through old age, indi- 

viduals model normative behavior for their friends and simulta- 

neously receive reinforcement from them. Once again, the exact 

mechanisms through which mutual socialization occurs between 

friends are not well documented. Friends engage in large 

amounts of talk, and conversations with friends during problem 

solving are laced with both suggestions and criticisms (Nel- 

son & Aboud, 1985). Conflicts frequently occur and may be 

closely related to the socialization that occurs between friends. 

In one investigation with school-aged children (Azmitia & 

Montgomery, 1993), difficult deductive reasoning tasks were 

more frequently solved by friends working together than non- 

friends. Although social interaction differed between friends and 

nonfriends in numerous ways, task success was significantly 

related to only one measure--transactive conflicts. Socializa- 

tion between friends thus may rest mainly on the free airing of 

disagreements in a cooperative, task-oriented context rather than 

on modeling or reinforcement. Other results suggest that friends 

also use coercion with one another, but it is different from 

the criticisms and persuasions that mark interactions between 

nonfriends; reasoning and explanations are more common (Dis- 

hion et al., 1995; Nelson & Aboud, 1985). 

Developmental Implications 

Given the demographic and social similarities that exist be- 

tween friends and that these similarities extend from childhood 

through old age, what is their significance? First, friends who 

are well socialized and normatively conventional serve mutually 

as "protective" factors in development. For example, friends 

who are cooperative and nonadversarial become more so over 

time. Second, friends who are antisocial and socially unskilled 

seem to be "risk" factors. The developmental significance of 

certain other similarities, however, is not known. Consider, for 

example, that no one knows whether shy friends socialize them- 

selves toward increased gregariousness or increased shyness. 

Whatever the situation, though, the social exchanges that occur 

between two shy friends may improve rather than worsen indi- 

vidual adaptation by alleviating the debilitating loneliness that 


accompanies shyness among both children and adults (Asher, 

Parkhurst, Hymel, & Williams, 1990). 

So friendships can be mixed blessings: On the one hand, 

friends may support good developmental outcome through the 

intimacy, companionship, social support, and increased well- 

being that they provide one another. On the other hand, friends 

may be risk factors, depending on who one's friends are. Poorly 

socialized and antisocial friends place one at greater risk for 

social maladaptation than do well-socialized friends. Prac- 

titioners may not be able to insist that their clients change friends 

(for ethical reasons or otherwise), but developmental prognosis 

nevertheless demands that they know who a client's friends are, 

not just whether the individual does or does not have friends. 

Assessment Issues 

Friendship Quality 

Qualitative assessment is more advanced to study friendships 

among children and adolescents than those among adults. Two 

main strategies are used: (a) dimensional assessment through 

which one determines whether particular features characterize 

the social interaction between friends and with what frequency 

or regularity (e.g., companionship, intimacy, conflict, or power 

symmetries) and (b) typological or categorical assessment 

through which one identifies patterns or organizations in the 

social interactions between friends that contribute to social de- 

velopment and adaptation (Furman, 1996). 

Dimensional assessment. Most dimensional assessments are 

based on what Robert S. Weiss (1986) called "provisions" or 

features of relationships, for example, their closeness, intimacy, 

supportiveness, or content. Studies with children and adolescents 

indicate that considerable mileage can be gained simply by the 

measurement of relationships in terms of their intimacy or sup- 

portiveness (Berndt, 1996; Furman, 1996). Work with adoles- 

cents suggests the theoretical relevance of connectedness, a 

composite comprising closeness, interdependence, and emo- 

tional tone (Collins & Repinski, 1991 ). Among adults, friend- 

ship quality is described mainly in terms of closeness or solidar- 

ity, defined operationally as the frequency and diversity of inter- 

action as well as affective sharing (Berscheid, Snyder, & Omoto, 

1989; Repinski, 1993). 

Dimensional structures that encompass both positive and neg- 

ative friendship attributes have also been examined. Windle 

(1994), for example, confirmed a factor structure among older 

adolescents that includes reciprocity of relations, self-disclo- 

sure, overt hostility, and covert hostility. Other instruments de- 

signed to measure friendship quality include slightly different 

dimensions (Bukowski, Hoza, & Boivin, 1994; Furman & Buhr- 

mester, 1985; Parker & Asher, 1993; Young, 1986), most tapping 

five or six domains (e.g., companionship, intimacy, commit- 

ment, affective tone, instrumental help, and conflict). Factor 

analysis does not always confirm that these measurements are 

as multidimensional as their originators wanted them to be, 

although many reveal a well-differentiated structure (Ladd, Ko- 

chenderfer, & Coleman, 1996; Windle, 1994). 

Closeness and supportiveness are emphasized in dimensional 

assessment because these attributes reflect the friendship deep 

structure-reciprocity. This convention makes sense, although 

one or two reservations must be voiced: First, closeness and


intimacy are commonly defined in a feminized manner that 

emphasizes exclusivity, self-disclosure, social understanding, 

and care (communal aspects). Concomitantly, adolescent girls 

rate their friendships more highly than do boys in self-disclosure 

as well as less highly in overt hostility (Windle, 1994). Greater 

weight ought to be given to sociable communication, social 

involvement with multiple companions, objective praise and 

criticism, and effective conflict management, so the agentic di- 

mensions of closeness are measured as well as communal ones. 

The objective, in this instance, is not to minimize gender differ- 

ences in friendship closeness but only to ensure that agentic 

elements are recognized as strongly to measure this attribute as 

communal ones are. 

Second, closeness (reciprocity) must be measured in ways 

that are developmentally appropriate. Closeness needs to be 

examined among children as well as adults. Considerable psy- 

chometric work must be conducted before other attributes, such 

as communality-agency, affective tone, symmetry, and conflict 

management, can be measured effectively from early childhood 

through old age. One must recognize, too, that different friend- 

ship qualities may be related to social adaptation among younger 

as compared with older individuals, reflecting developmental 

changes that occur in the friendship surface structure (see 

Friendship Relations in the Life Course). Among the urgent 

needs of researchers are comparative developmental studies that 

establish the qualitative dimensions most closely related to good 

developmental outcome across time. 

Typological assessment. Many years ago, John Bowlby 

(1969) argued that infant-caregiver relationships are based on 

"felt security" and that the significance of these relationships 

can be detected in the infant's behavior on two occasions-- 

when separated from the caregiver and when reunited with him 

or her. Mary Ainsworth (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 

1978) subsequently demonstrated that variations in the organi- 

zation of separation- and reunion-induced behavior (secure, re- 

sistant, and anxious attachments) forecast adaptational out- 

comes in child and adolescent development. Several efforts dem- 

onstrate the "secure base phenomenon" among friends. Nursery 

school children show fewer signs of distress, more positive af- 

fect, greater mobility, and more frequent talking when left in a 

strange situation with a friend than with a nonfriend (Ipsa, 1981; 

Schwartz, 1972). Among older adults, absence of friendship 

support is closely tied to feelings of loneliness (Dykstra, 

1995a). Whether friendship styles can be identified that are 

similar to the attachment types identified in mother-infant rela- 

tionships has not been established. Although an attachment ty- 

pology (secure, anxious, and ambivalent) has been identified 

among adult romantic relationships (Hazan & Shaver, 1987), 

results have been controversial (Berscheid, 1994). Considering 

that the friendship deep structure consists of symmetrical reci- 

procities rather than security (see Friendship Relations in the 

Life Course), we believe that the developmental significance of 

these relationships is more likely to rest on variations in intimacy 

and its concomitants than variations in security. 

Two typological models--both grounded in the friendship 

deep structure--have been described in the literature, although 

neither is well validated. First, Rawlins (1992) argued that con- _ 

versations between friends can be classified on the basis of four 

dialectical axes: dependence versus independence (connected- 

ness vs. individuation), instrumental versus affective engage- 

ment, criticism versus acceptance, and expressiveness versus 

protectiveness. Configurations or patterns delineated by these 

four dimensions are believed to differentiate one friendship pair 

from another and to be potentially useful to study relationship 

stages, cultural differences, continuities, and changes across the 

life course. Assessment researchers who based their work on 

this system use qualitative rather than quantitative methods, and 

applications have been made mostly to conversational vignettes. 

Second, Shulman (1993) constructed a typological model 

based on the balance between closeness and intimacy--on the 

one hand--and individuality--on the other. The measurement 

model originated in family systems theory, and three types of 

friendships are identified: interdependent ones in which cooper- 

ation and autonomy are balanced, disengaged ones in which 

friends are disconnected in spite of their efforts to main- 

tain proximity with one another, and consensus-sensitive or 

-enmeshed relationships in which agreement and cohesion are 

maximized. Empirical data that support this factor structure 

derive from adolescents' interactions with their friends in a co- 

operative task. 

Developmental Significance 

Cross-sectional studies. Among children and adolescents, 

supportiveness between friends (high vs. low) is positively cor- 

related with school involvement and achievement (Berndt & 

Hawkins, 1991; Cauce, 1986) and negatively correlated with 

school-based problems (Kurdek & Sinclair, 1988). Closeness is 

positively correlated with popularity and good social reputations 

( Cauce, 1986), with self-esteem (Mannarino, 1978; McGuire & 

Weisz, 1982), and with psychosocial adjustment (Buhrmester, 

1990). Supportiveness is negatively correlated with identity 

problems (Papini, Farmer, Clark, Micke, & Barnett, 1990) as 

well as delinquency and depression (Windle, 1994). Among 

middle-aged adults, closeness and communality at work (rather 

than equity) are correlated with job satisfaction, social satisfac- 

tion, and attitudes toward supervisors (Winstead et al., 1995). 

Among older adults, well-being and friendship satisfaction are 

associated with closeness (Lowenthal & Haven, 1968; Ro- 

berto & Scott, 1986), although the friendship quality measures 

in these studies sometimes consist of having close friends rather 

than friendship closeness. Results are thus consistent: Support- 

iveness between friends (the deep structure) and well-being 

are correlated from childhood through old age, supporting our 

hypothesis that friendship prototypes (i.e., those most clearly 

reflecting reciprocity) have similar affective concomitants 

across the life course. 

Correlations are negative between other friendship attributes 

and adaptive outcome. Among adolescents, for example, both 

overt and covert hostility in relation to one's friends are posi- 

tively correlated with alcohol use, delinquency, and depressive 

symptoms. Self-disclosure between friends is also positively 

correlated with alcohol use (Windle, 1994), perhaps because 

friendship and alcohol both disinhibit reticence. Also among 

adolescents, conflict and contention with friends are negatively 

correlated with attitudes toward school (Berndt, 1989). 

Once again, these correlational results are impossible to inter- 

pret. Psychological well-being may foster closeness between 

friends, especially when both individuals have high self-esteem, 

but the reverse may also be true. Similarly, problem behaviors

among adolescents (e.g., alcohol use) may foster self-disclosure 

between friends as well as tension and disagreement, but the 

reverse may also occur. 

Longitudinal studies. Longitudinal studies that deal with 

friendship quality are centered mostly on school attitudes, 

involvement, and achievement among children and adolescents. 

One cross-lagged investigation (Berndt, 1989) across the transi- 

tion from elementary to junior high school shows that variations 

in developmental outcome can be predicted with comprehensive 

friendship assessments that include friendship quality. Size of 

the friendship network, friendship stability, and self-reported 

friendship quality were simultaneously studied; outcome mea- 

sures included school attitudes and achievement. First, network 

size was negatively related to friendship supportiveness and inti- 

macy (friendship quality). Second, neither number of friends 

nor friendship stability contributed to changes in school adjust- 

ment--across either the school transition or the first year in the 

new school. (School adjustment was relatively stable across the 

transition and was related to friendship stability cross-section- 

ally but not with earlier adjustment factored out.) Third, the 

supportiveness of the child's friends, assessed shortly after en- 

trance to the new school, predicted increasing popularity and 

increasingly positive attitudes toward classmates over the next 

year. Clearly, having friends, the stability of these relationships, 

and their supportiveness (i.e., quality) have different develop- 

mental implications. Consistent results have been reported for 

younger children (Ladd, 1990) as well as adolescents (Berndt & 

Keefe, 1992) over a period of 9 to 12 months. 

Other researchers have examined the relation between social 

support (including friends) and problem behavior. In general, 

increases in social support experienced in childhood and adoles- 

cence are accompanied by increasingly better social adaptation 

(Dubow, Tisak, Causey, Hryshko, & Reid, 1991). Complex 

interactions exist, however, to the effect that friendship quality 

and the identity of a child's friends interact with stress occur- 

rence to determine outcome. For example, regression models 

(Windle, 1992) show that, among adolescent boys experiencing 

high stress, friend support encourages both alcohol use and 

depression; among boys experiencing moderate or low stress, 

nonsupportive friends encourage both alcohol use and depres- 

sion. Among girls, the results are more straightforward: Sup- 

portiveness among one's friends is positively correlated with 

alcohol use but negatively correlated with depression (with ini- 

tial adjustment factored out). One does not know whether the 

stressed-out boys in this investigation also had stressed-out 

friends--a reasonable supposition, given the behavioral similar- 

ities known to exist between friends (Dishion et al., 1995). 

Nevertheless, the admonition that friendships are mixed bless- 

ings should be recalled: Childhood friends with behavioral dif- 

ficulties may provide one another with emotional support, but 

the interactions that occur between them may not simultaneously 

predict good outcome. Moreover, supportive friendships may 

have deleterious effects when the support emanates from a be- 

haviorally disturbed friend but good effects when emanating 

from a better adjusted friend. Only when the identity of an 

adolescent's friend is specified along with relationship quality 

(i.e., supportiveness) will these results be interpretabl e. 

Although causal influence seems to extend from friendship 

quality to individual adaptation, this does not rule out the possi- 

bility that attributes of individuals also affect friendship quality. 


Windle (1994), for example, discovered that, among adolescent 

friends, behavior problems evinced by individuals predicted 

friendship characteristics across time rather than the reverse. 

Both delinquency and depression, for example, predicted overt 

and covert hostility with friends but not vice versa. Perhaps one 

selecting antisocial friends and socializing with them brings 

about dissension between these same individuals, which, in turn, 

affects developmental outcome individually. Results are some- 

what difficult to interpret because friendship attributes and so- 

cial behaviors were both assessed by means of self-reports (thus 

subject to contamination) from single individuals rather than 

both members of each friendship dyad (thus biased). More 

detailed study of the natural history of adolescent friendships 

is needed to disentangle these effects (see Windle, 1994). 

Relatively little is known about friendship quality as a pre- 

dictor of adult adjustment, even though other aspects of peer 

competence in adolescence (not childhood) generally predict 

sociability, good marital adjustment, and mental health status in 

adulthood (Bagwell et al., 1996; Skolnick, 1986). Attitudes and 

commitments of older persons' friends to one another become 

increasingly positive as these relationships become closer. Spe- 

cifically, a direct relation has been discovered between closeness 

changes and the exchange of resources among older participants 

(Shea et al., 1988). Friendship quality seems not to have been 

used, though, to forecast developmental outcome across transi- 

tions to retirement, widowhood, or residential living, even 

though older individuals (e.g., widows) are known to use friends 

to support new activities on these occasions (Bankoff, 1983; 

Stevens, 1989). Sometimes, developmental transitions them- 

selves precipitate changes in friendship quality, as when a per- 

son's declining health and moving to a nursing home change 

the friendship network from close to casual friends (Adams, 

1987). 

To summarize, although relatively little is known about friend- 

ship quality and its developmental implications, the weight of 

the evidence suggests that good outcomes are most likely when 

one has friends, one's friends are well socialized, and when 

one's relationships with these individuals are supportive and 

intimate. But the amount of variance accounted for by each of 

these relationship parameters may not be equal. Some dimen- 

sions, for example, having friends, may account for relatively 

little outcome variance, whereas others, for example, the identity 

of one's friends, may account for a great deal. More needs to 

be known, too, about the manner in which relationship attributes 

reflect the social histories of the individuals involved. 

Regression models may differ too across different develop- 

mental transitions. Supportive friends may be the most important 

assets that a child can have when facing a school transition, but 

merely having friends may be most important when one is mak- 

ing the transition to retirement. The identity of one's friends 

may be extremely important to determine whether an adolescent 

will move into an adult criminal career but relatively unimport- 

ant to determine good outcome across the transition to widow- 

hood. Comprehensive studies are badly needed, therefore, in 

which friendship is studied in tandem with other predictors (e.g., 

temperament and personality) rather than studied separately. 

Multivariate effects must be tracked through time. Children, 

adolescents, and adults need to participate more extensively in 

longitudinal studies on friendship and its many vicissitudes. 

Birth-to-death studies are not necessarily needed, but short-


term longitudinal studies across major developmental transitions 

(e.g., adolescence, midlife, and retirement) would be extremely 

valuable. 

Conclusion 

The weight of the evidence suggests that friendships are de- 

velopmentally significant throughout the life course. First, 

friends are cognitive and affective resources from childhood 

through old age, fostering self-esteem and a sense of well-being. 

Second, friends socialize one another, especially with respect to 

age-related tasks that must be mastered for individuals to achieve 

good outcomes. Third, supportive and intimate relationships be- 

tween socially skilled individuals seem to be developmental 

advantages, whereas conflict-ridden relationships between trou- 

bled individuals seem to be disadvantages. 

The database on friendship and adaptation abounds with dis- 

continuities. Adults, for example, spend less time with their 

friends than children do and spend their time differently. Sup- 

portiveness between friends is correlated with good outcome, 

but this result depends on who one's friends are and what these 

relationships are like. Consistency emerges, however, when one 

examines friendships within a multidimensional framework. 

First, one must distinguish between deep and surface struc- 

tures when thinking about these relationships. Based on empiri- 

cal evidence, reciprocity is the deep structure, and certain out- 

comes (e.g., the individual's sense of well-being) derive from 

these reciprocities throughout the life course. Surface structures 

vary based on how old the individuals are: Four-year-olds, for 

example, engage in rough-and-tumble play; 14-year-olds social- 

ize in shopping malls and over the telephone; 34-year-olds relate 

to one another by discussing jobs, parenting, and golf scores; 

74-year-olds reminisce and discuss their health and what the 

world is coming to. Surface structure changes, however, are 

precisely why these relationships are adaptational advantages. 

Friendship reciprocities are cast and recast so that they can 

support the individuals involved in developmentally relevant 

ways. 

Second, one must recognize that, although having friends 

may be a developmental advantage, all friendships are not alike. 

People differ in the company they keep, that is, in who their 

friends are. Both children and adults also differ in that some 

friendships are close, stable, and symmetrical, while others are 

not. Only when three dimensions--having friends, identity of 

one's friends, and quality of the friendship--are taken into ac- 

count does the literature yield a coherent account of friendship 

and adaptation in the life course. 

Significant gaps exist in the database. Some issues are unre- 

solved because too little is known about how friendships differ 

from one another. Some conclusions are shaky because cross- 

sectional data have not been supplemented with longitudinal 

studies. Other conclusions are tenuous because the database 

comes from children and adolescents but too little is known 

about the relevant issue among adults. Still other studies are 

inconclusive because too little is known about the complex man- 

ner in which relationships and their development interact with 

the development of the individual. 

Among the many issues that need attention are these three. 

First, more attention must be given to the manner in which 

friendships differ from one another. New assessments of close- 

ness, supportiveness, and hostility in these relationships, espe- 

cially among children and adolescents, are good beginnings. 

Many other qualitative dimensions, however, need examination. 

Friends vary based on how many and which attributes they 

share: Are friends who are similar in many ways different from 

those who are similar in only one or two ways? What are the 

long-term implications of a person sharing one attribute with a 

friend versus sharing many attributes? One can guess that, when 

many attributes are shared, interpersonal attraction can be great 

(Kupersmidt et al., 1995), but does this mean that these friends 

have certain developmental advantages? Are certain similarities 

more significant than others? Do homophilies with depression 

place individuals at the same degree of risk as would those with 

antisocial behavior? Finally, when one considers that friendships 

differ from one another in myriad ways, which qualitative attri- 

butes carry the greatest developmental significance and when? 

Second, what normative continuities and discontinuities can 

be traced across the life course? What brings about normative 

change in friendship interactions? Existing normative studies 

center too much on having friends and the most superficial facts 

about them. Normative trends over the life course can be de- 

duced only from diverse studies that vary greatly in methodology 

and quality. For example, observational studies tell many things 

about the behavioral manifestations of children's friendships, 

but virtually nothing is known about these manifestations among 

middle-aged or older friends. Cross-sectional normative studies 

including children and adults would improve this state of affairs; 

but longitudinal studies are also needed. Whatever can be 

learned about the distinctiveness of friendship interaction among 

adults and the changes that occur across major life transitions 

in adulthood (e.g., widowhood) would be extremely valuable. 

Third, friendships and their developmental significance need 

to be better understood. Developmental psychologists are study- 

ing behavioral outcomes in relation to temperament and early 

experience, social skills and sociometric status, family relation- 

ships, and the social context (most especially situations that 

involve stress and other challenges). Multiple pathways that 

involve combinations of these conditions are being discovered 

that lead to good outcomes, meanwhile other pathways are being 

discovered that lead to poorer ones (Hartup & Van Lieshout, 

1995). Friendship experiences may contribute a significant vari- 

ance within some pathways but not others--a contingency that 

has somehow been ignored. 

Overall, our assessment shows documentation on friendships 

and their developmental significance to be sufficiently strong 

for the argument that friendships should not be ignored in devel- 

opmental analysis--neither in childhood nor throughout the life 

course. Causal models are weak, however, and need to be im- 

proved. Consideration of both deep and surface structures as 

well as multidimensional assessment in which having friends, 

the identity of one's friends, and quality of the friendship are 

essential to this improvement. 

References 

Adams, R. G. (1987). Patterns of network change: A longitudinal study 

of friendships of elderly women. Gerontologist, 27, 222-227. 

Adams, R. G., & Blieszner, R. (1995). Midlife friendship patterns. In 

N. Vanzetti & S. Duck (Eds.), A lifetime of relationships (pp. 336- 

363). San Francisco: Brooks/Cole.

Ainsworth, M.D.S., Blehar, M.C., Waters, E., & Wall, S. (1978). 

Patterns of attachment: A psychological study of the Strange Situa- 

tion. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. 

Altergott, K. (1988). Social action and interaction in later life: Aging 

in the United States. In K. Altergott (Ed.), Daily life in later life: 

Comparative perspectives (pp. 117-146). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. 

Altman, I., & Taylor, D. A. (1973). Socialpenetration: The development 

of interpersonal relationships. New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston. 

Argyle, M., & Furnham, A. (1983). Sources of satisfaction and conflict 

in long-term relationships. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 45, 

481-493. 

Armstrong, M. J., & Goldsteen, K. S. (1990). Friendship support pat- 

terns of older American women. Journal of Aging Studies, 4, 391- 

404. 

Asher, S. R., Parkhurst, J. T., Hymel, S., & Williams, G. A. (1990). Peer 

rejection and loneliness in childhood. In S. R. Asher & J.D. Coie 

(Eds.), Peer rejection in childhood (pp. 253-273). New York: Cam- 

bridge University Press. 

Azmitia, M., & Montgomery, R. (1993). Friendship, transactive dia- 

logues, and the development of scientific reasoning. Social Develop- 

ment, 2, 202-221. 

Bagwell, C.L., Newcomb, A. E, & Bukowski, W.M. (1996). Pre- 

adolescent friendship and peer rejection as predictors of adult adjust- 

ment. Unpublished manuscript, University of Richmond, Department 

of Psychology, Richmond, VA. 

Ball, S.J. (1981). Beachside comprehensive. Cambridge, England: 

Cambridge University Press. 

Bankoff, E. (1983). Social support and adaptation to widowhood. Jour- 

nal of Marriage and the Family, 45, 827-839. 

Berg, J. H. ( 1983, August). Attraction in relationships: As it begins so 

it goes. Paper presented at the 91 st Annual Convention of the American 

Psychological Association, Anaheim, CA. 

Berg, J. H. (1984). The development of friendship between roommates. 

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46, 346-356. 

Berg, J.H., & Clark, M.S. (1989). Differences in social exchange 

between intimate and other relationships: Gradually evolving or 

quickly apparent? In V. J. Derlega & B. A. Winstead (Eds.), Friend- 

ship and social interaction (pp. 101-128). New York: Springer 

Verlag. 

Berndt, T. J. (1989). Obtaining support from friends during childhood 

and adolescence. In D. Belle (Ed.), Children's social networks and 

social supports (pp. 308-331 ). New York: Wiley. 

Berndt, T. J. (1996). Exploring the effects of friendship quality on social 

development. In W. M. Bukowski, A. E Newcomb, & W. W. Hartup 

(Eds.), The company they keep: Friendships in childhood and adoles- 

cence (pp. 346-365). New York: Cambridge University Press. 

Berndt, T. J., & Hawkins, J. A. (1991). Effects of friendship on adoles- 

cents' adjustment to junior high school. Unpublished manuscript, 

Purdue University, Department of Psychological Sciences, West Lafay- 

ette, IN. 

Berndt, T. J., Hawkins, J. A., & Hoyle, S. G. (1986). Changes in friend- 

ship during a school year: Effects on children's and adolescents' 

impressions of friendship and sharing with friends. Child Develop- 

ment, 57, 1284-1297. 

Berndt, T.J., & Keefe, K. (1992). Friends' influence on adolescents' 

perceptions of themselves in school. In D. H. Schunk & J. L. Meece 

(Eds.), Students'perceptions in the classroom (pp. 51-73). Hillsdale, 

NJ: Erlbaum. 

Berscheid, E. (1994). Interpersonal relationships. Annual Review of 

Psychology, 45, 79-130. 

Berscheid, E., Snyder, M., & Omoto, A. M. (1989). The Relationship 

Closeness Inventory: Assessing the closeness of interpersonal relation- 

ships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57, 792-807. 

Berscheid, E., & Walster, E. (1968). Interpersonal attraction (2nd ed.). 

Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. 


Bigelow, B. J. (1977). Children's friendship expectations: A cognitive 

developmental study. Child Development, 48, 246-253. 

Billy, J. O. G., Rodgers, J. L., & Udry, J. R. (1984). Adolescent sexual 

behavior and friendship choice. Social Forces, 62, 653-678. 

Blieszner, R., & Adams, R. G. (1992). Adult friendship. Newbury Park, 

CA: Sage. 

Bowlby, J. (1969). Attachment and loss. Vol. 1: Attachment. New York: 

Basic Books. 

Brown, B. B. (1981). A life-span approach to friendship: Age-related 

dimensions of an ageless relationship. In H. Lopata & D. Maines 

(Eds.), Research in the interweave of social roles (Vol. 2, pp. 23- 

50). Greenwich, CT:. JAI Press. 

Brown, B.B., Clasen, D.R., & Eicher, S.A. (1986). Perceptions of 

peer pressure, peer conformity dispositions, and self-reported behav- 

ior among adolescents. Developmental Psychology, 22, 521-530. 

Brownell, C. A. (1986). Convergent developments: Cognitive-develop- 

mental correlates of growth in infant/toddler peer skills. Child Devel- 

opment, 57, 275-286. 

Buhrmester, D. (1990). Intimacy of friendship, interpersonal compe- 

tence, and adjustment during preadolescence and adolescence. Child 

Development, 61, 1101 - 1111. 

Bukowski, W. M., Hoza, B., & Boivin, M. (1994). Measuring friendship 

quality during pre- and early adolescence: The development and psy- 

chometric properties of the Friendship Qualities Scale. Journal of 

Social and Personal Relationships, 11, 471-484. 

Bukowski, W. M., Hoza, B., & Newcomb, A.F. (1991). Friendship, 

popularity, and the "self" during early adolescence. Unpublished 

manuscript, Concordia University, Department of Psychology, Mon- 

treal, Quebec, Canada. 

Cairns, R. B., & Cairns, B. D. (1994). Lifelines and risks. New York: 

Cambridge University Press. 

Cairns, R. B., Leung, M., Buchanan, L., & Cairns, B. D. (1995). Friend- 

ships and social networks in childhood and adolescence: Fluidity, 

reliability, and interrelations. Child Development, 66, 1330-1345. 

Caspi, A., Eider, G. H., &Bem, D. J. (1988). Moving away from the 

world: Life-course patterns of shy children. Developmental Psychol- 

ogy, 24, 824-831. 

Cauce, A. M. (1986). Social networks and social competence: Exploring 

the effects of early adolescent friendships. American Journal of Com- 

munity Psychology, 14, 607-628. 

Challman, R.C. (1932). Factors influencing friendships among pre- 

school children. Child Development, 3, 146-158. 

Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspects of a theory of syntax. Cambridge, MA: 

MIT Press. 

Chown, S. M. (1981). Friendship in old age. In S. Duck & R. Gilmour 

(Eds.), Personal relationships. Vol. 2: Developing personal relation- 

ships (pp. 231-246). London: Academic Press. 

Clark, M. S., & Mills, J. (1979). Interpersonal attraction in exchange 

and communal relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psy- 

chology, 37, 12-24. 

Coie, J.D., Dodge, K.A., & Kupersmidt, J.B. (1990). Peer group 

behavior and social status. In S. R. Asher & J. D. Coie (Eds.), Peer 

rejection in childhood (pp. 17-59). New York: Cambridge University 

Press. 

Collins, W. A., & Repinski, D. (1991, April). Development of relation- 

ships during the transition to adolescence: Processes of adaptation 

to individual change. Paper presented at the biennial meetings of the 

Society for Research in Child Development, Seattle, WA. 

Connidis, I. A., & Davies, L. (1990). Confidants and companions in 

later life: The place of family and friends. Journal of Gerontology: 

Social Sciences, 45, S141-S149. 

Dickens, W. J., & Perlman, D. (1981). Friendship over the life cycle. 

In S. Duck & R. Gilmour (Eds.), Personal relationships. Vol. 2: 

Developing personal relationships (pp. 91 - 122). London: Academic 

Press. 

Dishion, T. J., Andrews, D. W., & Crosby, L. (1995). Anti-social boys

368 HARTUPANDSTEVENS 

and their friends in early adolescence: Relationship characteristics, 

quality, and interactional process. Child Development, 66, 139-151. 

Dishion, T. J., Patterson, G. R., & Griesler, P. C. (1994). Peer adapta- 

tions in the development of antisocial behavior: A confluence model. 

In L. R. Huesmann (Ed.), Current perspectives on aggressive behav- 

ior (pp. 61-95). New York: Plenum. 

Dubow, E. E, Tisak, J., Causey, D., Hryshko, A., & Reid, G. (1991). 

A two-year longitudinal study of stressful life events, social support, 

and social problem-solving skills: Contributions to children's behav- 

ioral and academic adjustment. Child Development, 62, 583-599. 

Dykstra, P. (1995a). Loneliness among the never and formerly married: 

The importance of supportive friendships and a desire for indepen- 

dence. Journals of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences and Social 

Sciences, 50B, $321-$329. 

Dykstra, P. (1995b). Network composition. In C. P. M. Knipscheer, J. 

de Jong Gierveld, T.G. van Tilburg, & P. Dykstra (Eds.), Living 

arrangements and social networks of older adults (pp. 97-114). 

Amsterdam: Free University Press. 

Eder, D., & Hallinan, M. T. (1978). Sex differences in children's friend- 

ships. American Sociological Review, 43, 237-250. 

Elicker, J., Englund., M., & Sroufe, L. A. (1992). Predicting peer com- 

petence and peer relationships in childhood from early parent-child 

relationships. In R. D. Parke & G. W. Ladd (Eds.), Family-peer rela- 

tionships: Modes of linkage (pp. 77-106). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. 

Epstein, J. L. (1983). Examining theories of adolescent friendship. In 

J.L. Epstein & N.L. Karweit (Eds.), Friends in school (pp. 39- 

61 ). San Diego, CA: Academic Press. 

Erwin, P. G. (1985). Similarity of attitudes and constructs in children's 

friendships. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 40, 470-485. 

Fagot, B. I. (1978). Reinforcing contingencies for sex role behax~iors: 

Effect of experience with children. Child Development, 49, 30-36. 

Felton, B. J., & Berry, C. A. (1992). Do the sources of urban elderly's 

social support determine its psychological consequences? Psychology 

and Aging, 7, 89-97. 

Field, D. (1995, August). Continuity and change in friendships in ad- 

vanced old age: Findings from the Berkeley Older Generation Study. 

Paper presented at the 7th European Conference on Developmental 

Psychology, Krakow, Poland. 

Fischer, C. S., & Phillips, S. L. (1982). Who is alone? Social characteris- 

tics of people with small networks. In L. A. Peplau & D. Perlman 

(Eds.), Loneliness: A sourcebook of current theory, research, and 

therapy (pp. 21-39). New York: Wiley Interscience. 

Fisher, C. B., Reid, J. D., & Melendez, M. (1989). Conflict in families 

and friendships of later life. Family Relations, 38, 83-89. 

Fisher, L. A., & Baumann, K. E. (1988). Influence and selection in the 

friend-adolescent relationship: Findings from studies of adolescent 

smoking and drinking. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 18, 

289-314. 

Furman, W. (1996). The measurement of friendship perceptions: Con- 

ceptual and methodological issues. In W. M. Bukowski, A. E New- 

comb, & W. W. Hartup (Eds.), The company they keep: Friendships 

in childhood and adolescence (pp. 68-70). New York: Cambridge 

University Press. 

Furman, W., & Buhrmester, D. (1985). Children's perceptions of the 

personal relationships in their social networks. Developmental Psy- 

chology, 21, 1016-1022. 

Gallagher, S. K., & Gerstel, N. (1993). Kinkeeping and friend keeping 

among older women: The effect of marriage. Gerontologist, 33, 675- 

681. 

Ginsberg, D. (1986). Friendship and postdivorce adjustment. In J. M. 

Gottman & J. G. Parker (Eds.), Conversations of friends (pp. 346- 

376). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. 

Ginsberg, D., & Gottman, J. M. (1986). Conversations of college room- 

mates: Similarities and differences in male and female friendships. In 

J. M, Gottman & J. G. Parker (Eds.), Conversations of friends (pp. 

241-291 ). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. 

Goldman, J. A. (1981). The social interaction of preschool children in 

same-age versus mixed-age groupings. Child Development, 52, 644- 

650. 

Goodnow, J.J., & Burns, A. (1985). Home and school: A child's eye 

view. Sydney, Australia: Allen & Unwin. 

Gottman, J.M. (1979). Marital relationships. New York: Academic 

Press. 

Gottman, J. M., & Mettetal, G. (1986). Speculations about social and 

affective development: Friendship and acquaintanceship through ado- 

lescence. In J. M. Gottman & J. G. Parker (Eds.), Conversations of 

friends (pp. 192-237). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University 

Press. 

Gupta, V., & Korte, C. (1994). The effects of a confidant and a peer 

group on the well-being of single elders. International Journal of 

Aging and Human Development, 39, 293-302. 

Hallinan, M. T. (1980). Patterns of cliquing among youth. In H. C. Foot, 

A. J. Chapman, & J. R. Smith (Eels.), Friendship and peer relations 

in children (pp. 321-342). New York: Wiley. 

Hartup, W. W. (1989). Behavioral manifestations of children's friend- 

ships. In T.J. Berndt & G. W. Ladd (Eds.), Peer relations in child 

development (pp. 46-70). New York: Wiley. 

Hartup, W. W. (1995). The three faces of friendship. Journal of Social 

and Personal Relationships, 12, 569-574. 

Hartup, W. W. (1996). The company they keep: Friendships and their 

developmental significance. Child Development, 67, 1-13. 

Hartup, W. W., Daiute, C., Zajac, R., & Sholl, W. (1995). Collaboration 

in creative writing by friends and nonfriends. Unpublished manuscript, 

University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, Institute of Child Development, 

Minneapolis, MN. 

Hartup, W. W., & Van Lieshout, C. E M. (1995). Personality develop- 

ment in social context. Annual Review of Psychology, 46, 655-687. 

Haselager, G. J. T., Hartup, W. W., Van Lieshout, C. E M., & Riksen- 

Walraven, M. (1996). Behavioral similarities between friends and 

nonfriends in middle childhood. Unpublished manuscript, University 

of Nijmegen, Department of Developmental Psychology, Nijmegen, 

The Netherlands. 

Haugaard, J. J., & Tilly, C. (1988) Characteristics predicting children's 

responses to sexual encounters with other children. Child Abuse and 

Neglect, 12, 209-218. 

Havighurst, R. (1953). Human development and education. New York: 

Longmans, Green. 

Hazan, C., & Shaver, P. (1987). Romantic love conceptualized as an 

attachment process. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 

52, 511-524. 

Hess, B. (1972). Friendship. In M. W. Riley, M. Johnson, & A. Foner 

(Eds.), Aging and society (Vol. 3, pp. 357-393). New York: Russell 

Sage. 

Hinde, R. A. (1979). Towards understanding relationships. New York: 

Academic Press. 

Hinde, R. A., Titmus, G., Easton, D,, & Tamplin, A. (1985). Incidence 

of "friendship" and behavior with strong associates versus non- 

associates in preschoolers. Child Development, 56, 234-245. 

Hochschild, A. (1973). The unexpected community. Englewood Cliffs, 

NJ: Prentice-Hail. 

Howes, C. ( 1983 ). Patterns of friendship. Child Development, 54, 1041 - 

1053. 

Howes, C. (1989). Peer interaction of young children. Monographs of 

the Society for Research in Child Development, 53(Serial No. 217). 

Hymel, S., & Woody, E. (1991, April). Friends versus nonfriends: 

Perceptions of similarity across self, teacher, and peers. Paper pre- 

sented at the biennial meetings of the Society for Research in Child 

Development, Seattle, WA. 

Huston, A. C. (1983). Sex-typing. In P. H. Mussen (Series Ed.) & E. M. 

Hetherington (Vol. Ed.), Handbook of child psychology. Vol. 4: So- 

cialization, personality, and social development (pp. 387-467). New 

York: Wiley.

Ipsa, J. (1981). Peer support among Soviet day care toddlers. Interna- 

tional Journal of Behavioral Development, 4, 255-269. 

Jerrome, D. (1981). The significance of friendship for women in later 

life. Ageing and Society, 1, 175-196. 

Kandel, D. B. (1978a). Homophily, selection, and socialization in ado- 

lescent friendships. American Journal of Sociology, 84, 427-436, 

Kandel, D. B. (1978b). Similarity in real-life adolescent pairs. Journal 

of Personality and Social Psychology, 36, 306- 312. 

Kandel, D. B., & Andrews, K. (1987). Processes of adolescent socializa- 

tion by parents and peers. International Journal of the Addictions, 

22, 319-342. 

Kaye, L. W., & Monk, A. ( 1991 ). Social relations in enriched housing 

for the aged: A case study. Journal of Housing for the Elderly, 9, 

111-126. 

Klinger, E. (1977). Meaning and void: Inner experience and the incen- 

tives in people's lives. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 

Kupersmidt, J. B., DeRosier, M. E., & Patterson, C. P. (1995). Similarity 

as the basis for children's friendships: The roles of sociometric status, 

aggressive and withdrawn behavior, academic achievement and demo- 

graphic characteristics. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 

12, 439-452. 

Kurdek, L. A., & Sinclair, R. J. (1988). Adjustment of young adolescents 

in two-parent nuclear, stepfather, and mother-custody families. Journal 

of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 56, 91-96. 

Ladd, G. W. (1990). Having friends, keeping friends, making friends, 

and being liked by peers in the classroom: Predictors of children's 

early school adjustment? Child Development, 61, 1081-1100. 

Ladd, G. W., Kochenderfer, B. J., & Coleman, C. C. (1996). Friendship 

quality as a predictor of young children's early school adjustment. 

Child Development, 67, 1103-1118. 

Lang, F. R., & Carstensen, L. L. (1994). Close emotional relationships 

in late life: Further support for proactive aging in the social domain. 

Psychology and Aging, 9, 315-324. 

Larson, R. (1978). Thirty years of research on the subjective well-being 

of older Americans. Journal of Gerontology, 33, 109-125. 

Larson, R., & Bradney, N. (1988). Precious moments with family mem- 

bers and friends. In R. M. Milardo (Ed.), Families and social networks 

(pp. 107-126). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. 

Larson, R., Zuzanek, J., & Mannell, R. (1985). Being alone versus 

being with people: Disengagement in the daily experience of older 

adults. Journal of Gerontology, 40, 375-381. 

Laursen, B., & Collins, W.A. (1994). Interpersonal conflict during 

adolescence. Psychological Bulletin, 115, 197-209. 

Lazarsfeld, P. F., & Merton, R. K. (1954). Friendship as a social process: 

A substantive and methodological analysis. In M. Berger, T. Abel, & 

C. H. Page (Eels.), Freedom and control in modern society (pp. 18- 

66). Princeton, NJ: Van Nostrand. 

Lebo, D. (1953). Some factors said to make for happiness in old age. 

Journal of Clinical Psychology, 9, 384-390. 

Livesley, W. J., & Bromley, B. D. (1973). Person perception in child- 

hood and adolescence. London: Wiley. 

Lowenthal, M. F., & Haven, C. (1968). Interaction as adaptation: Inti- 

macy as a critical variable. American Sociological Review, 33, 20- 

30. 

Lowenthal, M. E, Thurnher, M., & Chiriboga, D. (Eds.). (1975). Four 

stages of life: A comparative study of women and men facing transi- 

tions. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. 

Maccoby, E. E. (1990). Gender and relationships: A developmental ac- 

count. American Psychologist, 45, 513-520. 

Magnusson, D., Stattin, H., & Allen, V. L. (1985). Biological maturation 

and social development: A longitudinal study of some adjustment 

processes from mid-adolescence to adulthood. Journal of Youth and 

Adolescence, 14, 267-283. 

Mannarino, A. P. (1978). Friendship patterns and self-concept develop- 

ment in preadolescent males. Journal of Genetic Psychology, 133, 

105-110. 


Matthews, S. H. (1986). Friendships through the life course. Beverly 

Hills, CA: Sage. 

Matthews, S. H. (1995). Friendships in old age. In N. Vanzetti & S. 

Duck (Eds.), A lifetime of relationships (pp. 406-430). San Fran- 

cisco: Brooks/Cole. 

McCandless, B. R., & Hoyt, J. M. ( 1961 ). Sex, ethnicity and play prefer- 

ences of preschool children. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychol- 

ogy, 62, 683-685. 

McGuire, K. D., & Weisz, J. R. (1982). Social cognition and behavior 

correlates of preadolescent chumship. Child Development, 53, 1478- 

1484. 

Mills, J., & Clark, M. S. (1982). Exchange and communal relationships. 

Review of Personality and Social Psychology, 36, 72-81. 

Monroe, W. S. (1898). Social consciousness in children. Psychological 

Review, 5, 68-70. 

Nahemow, L., & Lawton, M. P. (1975). Similarity and propinquity in 

friendship formation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 

32, 205-213. 

Neeman, J. D., Hubbard, J., & Kojetin, B. A. (1991, April). Continuity 

in quality of friendships and romantic relationships from childhood 

to adolescence. Poster session presented at the biennial meetings of 

the Society for Research in Child Development, Seattle, WA. 

Nelson, J., & Aboud, F.E. (1985). The resolution of social conflict 

between friends. Child Development, 56, 1009-1017. 

Newcomb, A. F., & Bagwell, C. (1995). Children's friendship relations: 

A meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin, 117, 306-347. 

Newcomb, T. M. (1961). The acquaintance process. New York: Holt, 

Rinehart & Winston. 

O'Connor, P. (1993). Same-gender and cross-gender friendships among 

the frail elderly. Gerontologist, 33, 24-30. 

Pagel, M. D., Erdly, W. W., & Becker, J. (1987). Social networks: We 

get by with (and in spite of) a little help from our friends. Journal 

of Personality and Social Psychology, 53, 793-804. 

Papini, D. R., Farmer, E F., Clark, S. M., Micke, J. C., & Barnett, J. K. 

(1990). Early adolescent age and gender differences in patterns of 

emotional self-disclosure to parents and friends. Adolescence, 25, 

959-976. 

Parker, J. G., & Asher, S. R. (1993). Friendship and friendship quality 

in middle childhood: Links with peer group acceptance and feelings 

of loneliness and social dissatisfaction. Developmental Psychology, 

29, 611-621. 

Rawlins, W.K. (1992). Friendship matters. New York: Aldine de 

Gruyter. 

Repinski, D.J. (1993). Adolescents" close relationships with parents 

and friends. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Minne- 

sota, Twin Cities, Institute of Child Development, Minneapolis. 

Roberto, K.A., & Scott, J.P. (1986). Friendships of older men and 

women: Exchange patterns and satisfaction. Psychology and Aging, 

1, 103-109. 

Rogoff, B. (1990). Apprenticeship in thinking. New York: Oxford Uni- 

versity Press. 

Rook, K. S. (1984). The negative side of social interaction: Impact on 

psychological well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychol- 

ogy, 46, 1097-1108. 

Rosenbaum, M. E. (1986). The repulsion hypothesis: On the nondevel- 

opment of relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychol- 

ogy, 51, 1156-1166. 

Rubin, K. H., Lynch, D., Coplan, R., Rose-Krasnor, L., & Booth, C. L. 

(1994). "Birds of a feather . . . ": Behavioral concordances and 

preferential personal attraction in children. Child Development, 65, 

1778-1785. 

Rutter, M., & Garmezy, N. (1983). Developmental psychopathology. In 

P. H. Mussen (Series Ed.) & E. M. Hetherington (Vol. Ed.), Handbook 

of child psychology. Vol. 4: Socialization, personality, and social de- 

velopment (pp. 775-911 ). New York: Wiley.


Schutze, Y., & Lang, E R. (1993). Freundschaft, alter und geschlecht 

[Friendship, age and gender]. Zeitschriftfur Soziologie, 22, 209-220, 

Schwartz, J. C. (1972). Effects of peer familiarity on the behavior of 

preschoolers in a novel situation. Journal of Personality and Social 


Sears, R. R., Alpert, R., & Ran, L. (1964). Identification and child- 

rearing. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 

Selman, R. L. (1980). The growth of interpersonal understanding. New 

York: Academic Press. 

Sharabany, R., Gershoni, R., & Hofman, J. E. (1981). Girlfriend, boy- 

friend: Age and sex differences in intimate friendship. Developmental 


Shea, L., Thompson, L., & Blieszner, R. (1988). Resources in older 

adults' old and new friendships. Journal of Social and Personal Rela- 

tionships, 5, 83-96. 

Shulman, S. (1993). Close friendships in early and middle adolescence: 

Typology and friendship reasoning. In B. Laursen (Ed.), Close friend- 

ships in adolescence (pp. 55-72). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. 

Simmons, R.G., Burgeson, R., & Reef, M.J. (1988). Cumulative 

change at entry to adolescence. In M. Gunnar & W. A. Collins (Eds.), 

Minnesota Symposia on Child Psychology (Vol. 21, pp. 123-150). 

Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. 

Skolnick, A. (1986). Early attachment and personal relationships across 

the life course. In D. Magnusson, H. Stattin, & V. L. Allen (Eds.), 

Life span development and behavior (Vol. 7, pp. 173-206). New 

York: Academic Press. 

Sroufe, L. A., & Fleeson, J. (1986). Attachment and the construction 

of relationships. In W. W. Hartup & Z. Rubin (Eds.), Relationships 

and development (pp. 57-71 ). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. 

Stacey-Konnert, C., & Pynoss, J. (1992). Friendship and social networks 

in a continuing care retirement community. Journal of Applied Geron- 

tology, 11, 298-313. 

Staudinger, U. M., Marsiske, M., & Baltes, P. B. (1995). Resilience and 

reserve capacity in later adulthood: Potentials and limits of develop- 

ment across the life span. In D. Cicchetti & D.J. Cohen (Eds.), 

Developmental psychopathology. Vol. 2: Risk, disorder, and adapta- 

tion (pp. 801-847). New York: Wiley. 

Stephens, M. A.P., Kinney, J.M., Ritchie, S.W., & Norris, V.K. 

(1987). Social networks as assets and liabilities in recovery from 

stroke by geriatric patients. Psychology and Aging, 2, 125-129. 

Stevens, N. (1989). Well-being in widowhood: A question of balance. 

Doctoral dissertation, University of Nijmegen, Department of Psycho- 

gerontology, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. 

Stevens, N. (1995). Gender and adaptation to widowhood in later life. 

Ageing and Society, 15, 37-58. 

Sullivan, H.S. (1953). The interpersonal theory of psychiatry. New 

York: Norton. 

Thorne, B. B. (1986). Boys and girls together.., but mostly apart. In 

W. W. Hartup & Z. Rubin (Eds.), Relationships and development (pp. 

167-184). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. 

Tolson, J. M., & Urberg, K. A. (1993). Similarity between adolescent 

best friends. Journal of Adolescent Research, 8, 274-288. 

Tomblom, K. Y., & Fredholm, E. M. (1984). Attribution of friendship: 

The influence of the nature and comparability of resources given and 

received. Social Psychology Quarterly, 47, 50-61. 

Van der Linden, E J., & Dijkman, T. A. (1989). Jong zijn en volwassen 

worden in Nederland [Being young and becoming an adult in The 

Netherlands]. Nijmegen, The Netherlands: Hoogveld. 

Weiss, L., & Lowenthal, M.E (1975). Life-course perspectives on 

friendship. In M. E Lowenthal, M. Thurnher, & D. Chiriboga (Eds.), 

Four stages of life: A comparative study of women and men facing 

transitions (pp. 48-61). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. 

Weiss, R. S. (1973). Loneliness. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 

Weiss, R. S. (1975). Marital separation. New York: Basic Books. 

Weiss, R. S. (1986). Continuities and transformations in social relation- 

ships from childhood to adulthood. In W.W. Hartup & Z. Rubin 

(Eds.), Relationships and development (pp. 95-110). Hillsdale, NJ: 

Erlbaum. 

Werner, C., & Parmelee, P. (1979). Similarity of activity preferences 

among friends: Those who play together stay together. Social Psychol- 

ogy Quarterly, 42, 62-66. 

Wilcox, B. L. ( 1981 ). Social support in adjusting to marital disruption: 

A network analysis. In B.H. Gottlieb (Ed.), Social networks and 

social support (pp. 97-115). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. 

Windle, M. (1992). A longitudinal study of stress buffering for adoles- 

cent problem behaviors. Developmental Psychology, 28, 522-530. 

Windle, M. (1994). A study of friendship characteristics and problem 

behaviors among middle adolescents. Child Development, 65, 1764- 

1777. 

Winstead, B. A., Derlega, V. J., & Montgomery, M. J. (1995). The qual- 

ity of friendships at work and job satisfaction. Journal of Social and 

Personal Relationships, 12, 199-215. 

Wister, A. (1990). Living arrangements and informal social support 

among the elderly. Journal of Housing for the Elderly, 6, 33-43. 

Wright, P.H. (1989). Gender differences in adults' same- and cross- 

gender friendships. In R.G. Adams & R. Blieszner (Eds.), Older 

adult friendship (pp. 197-221 ). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. 

Young, J.E. (1986). A cognitive-behavioral approach to friendship 

disorders. In V. J. Derlega & B. A. Winstead (Eds.), Friendship and 

social interaction (pp. 246-276). New York: Springer Verlag. 

Youniss, J. (1980). Parents and peers in social development: A Sulli- 

van-Piaget perspective. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. 

Received January 25, 1996 

Revision received July 25, 1996 

Accepted July 29, 1996 •

Friendships and Adaptation in the Life Course - Psychology ...

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?