Effects of friendship on

psychological functioning
and behavior overtime
 Emotional and Social health – can be enhanced or
deconstructed by friendships with peers, especially
during elementary years.
 Friendships during elementary school can have
positive or negative outcomes in factors such as:
1. Psychological
2. Behavioral
 Needless to say these friendships may affect aspects
even throughout one’s adulthood.
Possible Long term benefits of having
friends
 Longitudinal Research is the way to go!
 One study on children from kindergarten to 2nd grade focused
on:
1. The quality of friendship
2. Development of Aggression
 As a result, they discovered that children with good
friendships or ‘high quality’ friendships were becoming less
aggressive overtime.
 Another research- 5th graders to young adults
 Those who didn’t have reciprocated best friendships like their
peers were considered comparatively less competent and
more aggressive than the children with good relationships
with their peers and their classmates.
 At 23, their 5th grade reciprocated best friendships allowed
them to do well in college with better self esteem and their
social life
 Therefore, having a reciprocated best friendship in
preadolescence relates not only to progressive collective
outcomes in middle childhood but also of self-perceived
capabilities and modification in their adulthood.
But what if friendships are not all good?
 Issues regarding misuse of drugs, aggressive behavior and
alcohol intake
 Aggression and Disruptiveness- Delinquency and anti social
tendencies can tend to increase when friendships from
elementary to adolescent years exhibit these traits as well.
 But due to correlational factors its difficult to determine the
aspects of individual selection or socialization.
 In Individual Selection- Drawn towards peers that are similar
to themselves (more impulsive choosers because they intend
on creating their own group)
 Through behaviors and interactions, antisocial youths may
emphasize aggression and nonconformity in one another by
making these behaviors seem acceptable. For e.g. abusing
animals and pulling extreme pranks on teachers/members of
society by ruining their homes.
 These are portrayed mostly by those individuals who are
easily manipulated by the higher ranked person in the group
or even by the highly ranked individual themself. “I dare you
to wreck their car” etc.
 But this association between friends’ antisocial behavior may
change with age.
 One longitudinal study found that socialization and selection
was an integral part in mid-adolescence, but from the ages of
16-20, antisocial behavior was reinforced only through
socialization by friends. But after the age of 20, individuals at
his age become more resistant to peer influence, there was
little evidence of either process occurring
 Alcohol and substance abuse
 Similarly, if their friends did it then they also took part in it,
but it cannot be determined if the two factors are correlated,
especially those individuals vulnerable to peer pressure.
 And again these factors may vary regarding the hierarchy in
the social group.
 Genetically similar- Similar traits or risk taking habits may
also determine their usage of alcohol and drugs in a
relationship (But this isn’t the case most of the time)
 Nature of the child-parent relationship (Detachment vs.
Authoritative parenting)