1-131 - A Closer Look at the Significance of Friendship in the Lives of Adolescents

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

In the past fifty years, it has become clear that friends “matter” in the lives of adolescents (Rubin, Bukowski, & Parker, 2006). Most research has tended to focus exclusively on three broad indices of friendship: mutual friendship involvement, stability, and friendship quality. However, growing evidence suggests friends’ characteristics and the similarity between friends in such characteristics can also uniquely impact adolescents’ adjustment (e.g., Spencer et al., 2013). In addition, there is some indication that temporal approaches to friendship, which acknowledge that friendship is not a static construct and that the degree of time spent with friends often differs across adolescents, oftentimes yield more detailed information about why and how friends influence adolescent psychosocial well-being.

This symposium extends the research on friendship by providing new and more nuanced insight into the complex associations between friendship and intra- as well as interpersonal adjustment during adolescence. The first paper explores how time spent with friends alters the association between loneliness and depression for adolescents with autism spectrum disorder. The second considers whether friends’ self-continuity impacts adolescents’ self-continuity and its subsequent impact on the association between peer victimization and depression. The third paper examines perceived balances between young adolescents and their friends in popularity and attractiveness and how imbalances can explain variability in loneliness and friendship quality. The last paper evaluates the applicability of cognitive-diathesis stress models to friendship dissolution. These papers use different approaches to measuring the characteristics and qualities of adolescents’ friendship experiences and expand our understanding of the significance of friendships.

Sub Unit

• Social Relationships

Chairs

• Julie C Bowker, University at Buffalo, SUNY

• Jonathan Bruce Santo, University of Nebraska, Omaha

Individual Presentations

• Loneliness and Friendships Predicting Depressive Symptoms in Adolescents with ASD - Presenting Author: Ryan E Adams, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center; Somer L. Bishop, Weill Cornell Medical College; Katherine Gotham, Vanderbilt University; Catherine Lord, Cornell College

• Self-continuity is Correlated Among Friends and Moderates the Association Between Peer Victimization and Depressed Affect - Presenting Author: Jonathan Bruce Santo, University of Nebraska, Omaha; William M Bukowski, Concordia University

• How Perceived Inequalities in Popularity or Physical Attractiveness Between Partners Contribute to Negative Friendship Experiences - Presenting Author: Jeffrey G Parker, University of Alabama; Kristina L McDonald, University of Alabama

• An Application of the Cognitive-Diathesis Stress Model to Friendship Dissolution - Presenting Author: Julie C Bowker, University at Buffalo, SUNY