'You Say You Just Want to be Friends…But': Hidden Agendas and Second-Guessing the Stated Intentions of Cross-Sex Friends

• In Event: 'I never considered not sleeping with you a sacrifice': Physical attraction as a force for stability and change in cross-sex friendships

Abstract

Three hundred college students from a medium-sized urban university in the west completed a survey comprised of open-ended and close-ended items. This exploratory investigation was designed to determine the extent to which cross-sex friends contend with “hidden” sexual and romantic agendas initiated by their friendship partner. A hidden agenda exist when a member of the friendship, who claims to be content with being “just friends,” secretly desires for the friendship to be redefined as a romantic and/or sexual relationship. These hidden agendas, we speculate, are products of the well-documented emotional bond and sexual challenges which result from the prevailing heterosexist ideology that permeates American society and contextualizes and sexualizes cross-sex friendships. A second purpose of the investigation was to determine to what extent, if any, suspicious cross-sex friends engage in a cognitive process called “second-guessing,” in which they reinterpret, or second-guess, the stated intentions of the friend with the suspected hidden agenda. The study also examined use of specific communication strategies used to test the accuracy of the reinterpreted messages. The study forwards six research questions and will employ ANOVAS and MANOVAS in the statistical analysis of data.

Author

• Mike Monsour, University of Colorado, Denver