Associations among self-verification, self-enhancement, relationship maintenance, and satisfaction in cross-sex friendships.

• In Event: From Facebook to the Book of Love: Maintaining close relationships across channels, distance, type, and gender composition

Abstract

A great deal of research now suggests that self verification (feeling known by a relationship partner) and self enhancement (feeling valued by a relationship partner) play important roles in the quality of relationships (e.g., Neff & Karney, 2005; Swann, De La Ronde, & Hixon, 1994; Weger, 2005). Most of the research in this area is limited to romantic couples. A conspicuous omission in much of this research has been the failure to identify predictors of people’s perceptions of enhancement and verification. The purpose of this paper is to examine the associations among relationship maintenance behaviors, perceptions of self verification and enhancement, and relationship satisfaction. 194 pairs of cross-sex friends completed surveys that measured the variables of interest in this study. Results of a path analysis indicate that maintenance behaviors related to support giving were the best predictors of males’ and female’s self-enhancement. Maintenance behaviors only weakly predicted perceptions of self-verification for males and females. Furthermore, self-enhancement was associated with friendship satisfaction for males and females but self-verification predicted friendship satisfaction only for the female participants.

Authors

• Harry Weger, University of Central Florida

• Melissa Emmett, University of Central Florida