1-049 - Friendships and Emotional Adjustment

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

A long history of research has established that having friends, and having high-quality friendships, is important for psychological well-being. However, important gaps remain in our understanding of these associations. In order to move this line of inquiry forward, research is needed to identify characteristics of youths’ friendships that are understudied and to explore the ways in which the characteristics of youths’ friendships can mitigate or exacerbate the effects of other risk factors on emotional adjustment.

The current set of papers address these gaps. The first paper extends our conceptualization and assessment of friendship quality by incorporating aspects of friendship quality that have not been previously studied. Of particular interest, feeling that one can be authentic with friends was found to be a unique quality of friendships and was positively associated with perceptions of self-worth. The second and third papers consider the interplay between friendship characteristics and other stressors in predicting youths’ emotional adjustment. In the second paper, experiencing daily hassles with peers and family was associated with depressive symptoms more strongly for youth who co-ruminate with friends than for youth who refrain from co-rumination. Results of the third paper indicated that the combination of having supportive friendships and having increased RSA (respiratory sinus arrhythmia) scores in response to a social stressor (which is indicative of positive emotion regulation) protected youth from suicidal ideation. To close the session, a senior scholar in the field of friendship research will discuss the findings and propose future directions.

Sub Unit

• Social Relationships

Chair

• Amanda Rose, Univ of Missouri-Columbia

Discussant

• Catherine L Bagwell, Univ of Richmond

Individual Presentations

• My Friend Values Me and Knows Me, New Dimensions of Friendship Quality - Presenting Author: Melisa Castellanos, Concordia University; William M Bukowski, Concordia University

• The Relation Between Co-Rumination and Depressive Symptoms is Exacerbated by Interpersonal (But Not Non-Interpersonal) Hassles - Presenting Author: Amanda Rose, Univ of Missouri-Columbia; Gary C Glick, University of Missouri-Columbia; Rebecca A Schwartz-Mette, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville; Rhiannon L. Smith, University of Connecticut

• Suicide Ideation Among High-Risk Adolescent Females: The Interplay Between Parasympathetic Regulation and Friendship Support - Presenting Author: Matteo Giletta, Tilburg University; Paul David Hastings, U California, Davis; Karen Rudolph, Univ of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Daniel John Bauer, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Matthew K. Nock, Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; Mitchell J Prinstein, Univ of North Carolina - Chapel Hill