Socioemotional adjustment

Empirical research has repeatedly found links between friendships and healthy adjustment. It is true both that friendships promote adjustment and that well-adjusted individuals are more likely to develop friendships. Indeed, friendships have an important effect on individuals’ socioemotional adjustment throughout the life span.

Perhaps foremost, friends serve as a critical source of social support. In childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, social support from friends has significant positive effects on well-being, such as increasing one’s life satisfaction and happiness, augmenting a person’s ability to successfully cope with life stress, and even decreasing an individual’s vulnerability to illness. Well-being is enhanced both by having friendships and by being accepted (as opposed to rejected) by one’s peers. Regardless of social status (i.e., being popular or unpopular), it seems particularly important for healthy adjustment that a person has at least one friendship. Individuals without any friends, particularly individuals who are rejected or bullied by their peers, are at significant risk for a variety of socioemotional difficulties, such as loneliness, depression, and anxiety. Friends can protect each other and provide support for each other against victimization from other peers.

Along these lines, friendship in childhood and adolescence plays a central role in developing an individual’s sense of self-worth. Because friends share personal thoughts and feelings with each other, friendships are an opportunity to receive and provide validation of one’s self-worth. Children and teenagers who have friendships have a better sense of self-worth, or better self-esteem, than youths who do not have friendships.

Friendship also plays a pivotal role in the socialization of children and teenagers. Although parents clearly are important figures in socialization as well, children and adolescents learn important and valuable information about appropriate behaviours and social norms from peers. Children, and particularly adolescents, have their own cultural norms, most notably with regard to fashion and entertainment. Children and adolescents observe the dress and behaviours of their friends and either strive to be similar or are pressured to conform. In addition to such lifestyle choices, children and adolescents’ opinions and attitudes are frequently shaped by those held by their friends. Friendships offer an outlet for discussion and observation of beliefs and attitudes about such topics as the importance of school, plans for the future, values, activity preferences, and risk-taking behaviour. Children can thus learn from their friends what types of beliefs and behaviours are acceptable within a given social context.

Similarly, friendships are children’s first experience of egalitarian relationships. In family relationships, parents ultimately have more authority. With friends, however, decision making and power are expected to be more evenly distributed. In effect, these egalitarian relationships provide the necessary opportunities for learning the give-and-take required for effective social interactions. Such experiences teach children how to have mutually rewarding experiences, how to share, and how to resolve conflicts. As emotional intimacy and self-disclosure between friends become more important in adolescence, youths learn about obtaining support from friends, and they also learn how to provide comfort and otherwise serve as a source of support for friends.

Although friendships are typically thought to have a positive influence on socioemotional adjustment, it is not just having or not having friends that plays a part in individuals’ well-being. The specific effects of friendship on adjustment vary as a function of who the friend is. Thus, having a friend who is deviant or antisocial is likely to foster deviant or antisocial behaviour. For instance, one important determinant of adolescents’ use of alcohol and drugs is substance use by their close friends. Adolescents who have close friends who use alcohol or drugs are more likely to use such substances themselves. In part, this occurs because friendships involve mutual socialization, meaning that friends become more similar to one another over time, perhaps by actively seeking to emulate qualities in their friends or by trying to strengthen friendships by emphasizing similarities. It is equally true that individuals select friends who are similar to themselves. In other words, individuals who use drugs are likely to seek out other peers who use drugs.

It is important to point out that just as friendships appear to promote better adjustment, it is also true that well-adjusted individuals are more likely to develop friendships. For instance, children and adolescents who have a secure attachment to their parents are more likely to form friendships and to have more-supportive friendships. Similarly, those who are accepted by their peers are more likely to develop friendships.

Gender differences

Research suggests that there are gender differences in the nature of friendships. Males and females generally stress different factors as being important in friendship. Males often emphasize the importance of doing things together, such as engaging in joint activities and pursuing shared interests. Women often emphasize the importance of shared intimacy and emotional connectedness in friendships. Such differences begin to appear in children’s friendships and may increase with age.

Why do such differences exist? One explanation is that social norms define different expectations for friendships according to gender. Females may be socialized to share feelings and to be more emotionally intimate in friendships; thus, they may value and establish these characteristics in friendships. Males may be socialized to be less emotionally expressive; thus, they may value the companionship of friendships more than the intimacy of friendships. Alternatively, other perspectives on gender and friendship contend that gender differences in friendship characteristics are overstated. For example, it has been suggested that males may develop intimacy and connectedness through alternative means, such as shared activities or experiences. From this perspective, gender differences may really be less meaningful than individual differences in factors such as emotional expressiveness and communication skills.