Friendship in children

It is well documented that friends influence adaptive behaviors (Brechwald & Prinstein, 2011). However, it remains unclear how influence manifests itself. The current study investigated the role of likeability and popularity in determining the relative influence that a child exercises on his or her friend’s prosocial behavior and academic achievement in a sample of elementary schooled children (N=679). The results suggest that more liked friends have more influence over their less liked friends’ prosocial behavior and academic achievement. Both more- and less-popular friends influenced each other’s academic achievement. Residualized analyses, however, which take into account the shared overlap between likeability and popularity, suggest that the more-liked friend continued to influence the prosocial behavior and academic achievement of the less-liked friend, whereas more-popular children had no influence over their less-popular counterparts.

This study examines whether aggression and prosocial behavior shape changes in
perceptions of friendship quality within stable reciprocal best friend dyads. A
longitudinal Actor-Partner Interdependence Model was used to investigate whether
individual characteristics predict changes 6 to 12 weeks later in perceptions of
relationship support and negativity. The sample included 76 same-sex dyads drawn from
classrooms in grades 4 (M = 9.48 years) through 6 (M= 11.43 years) in two public
schools in the United States.

Previous studies of desired friendship have assessed desired friends with
unilateral nominations (when one child chooses another child as a friend, but that friend
nomination is not reciprocated). This calls into question the validity of findings
suggesting that children want to be friends with others who differ from themselves, but
befriend similar others by default (Sijtsema, Lindenberg, & Veenstra, 2010). The current
study concerns desired friendships among 195 girls and 147 boys in Grades 4 through 6.
Two hypotheses were tested. The first hypothesis was that children will not choose the
same unilateral and desired friends. The second hypothesis was that children will be more
similar to their reciprocal friends than to their unilateral and desired friends.
Questionnaires measured desired friendship, friendship, and child characteristics. Both
hypotheses were supported. However, there were group-level differences. The
importance of using desired friend nominations to measure desired friends is discussed.