Interpersonal Communication- A Mindful Approach to Relationships, 2020a

maintenance strategies on Facebook among friends. Previous research by McEwan
found that there were three different relational maintenance strategies used by
members of Facebook: 74
1. Social Contact – personalizing messages to specific friends via Facebook.
2. Relational Assurances – demonstrating one’s commitment to continuing a
relationship on Facebook.
3. Response Seeking – sending messages to a large number of people via
Facebook in the hopes of getting input from an array of people.
Research
In this study, the researchers found that social contact, relational assurances, and response seeking were all
positively related to liking, relational closeness, relationship satisfaction, and relationship commitment.
McEwan, B., Sumner, E., Eden, J., & Fletcher, J. (2018). The effects of Facebook relational maintenance
on friendship quality: An investigation of the Facebook Relational Maintenance Measure. Communication
Research Reports, 35(1), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1080/08824096.2017.1361393
Key Takeaways
• Although there was a historical perception that same-sex friendships were distinctly
different, research has shown that there is more overlap between female-female
and male-male friendships than there are actual differences.
• J. Donald O’Meara proposed five distinct challenges that opposite-sex relationships
have: emotional bond (males and females are raised to see the opposite sex as
potential romantic partners and not friends), sexuality (inherent in any oppositesex
friendship between heterosexual couples is sexual attraction), inequality and
power (a fact of inequality and power-imbalance, created by our society, will
always exist between people in opposite-sex); public relationships (oppositesex
friendships are often misunderstood and devalued in our society in favor of
romantic relationships); and opportunity structure (our society often makes it
difficult for opposite-sex friendships to develop).
• Cross-group friendships are an important part of our society. The two factors
that have been shown to be the most important when developing opposite-sex
friendships are time and self-disclosure. First, cross-group friendships take more
time to develop as individuals navigate cultural differences in addition to navigating
the terms of the friendship itself. Second, effective cross-group friendships are
often dependent on the adequacy of self-disclosure. Individuals in cross-group
friendships need to discuss not only the surface level issues in our lives, but
they need to have deeper, more meaningful disclosures about who they are as
individuals.
Exercises
• In your view, what is a postmodern friendship, and why is it an important
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