Search

Adolescents' bystander defending behavior in cyberbullying contributes to reducing the harm done to cyberbullying victims. This study examined the relationships and underlying mechanisms of parental warmth, friendship quality, empathy and bystander defending behavior in cyberbullying among 848 Chinese adolescents (43.986% girls, mean age = 14.960 years old [SD = 1.398]). The results showed that parental warmth, friendship quality and empathy were all positively correlated with bystander defending behavior in cyberbullying among adolescents. Both friendship quality and empathy played a mediating role between parental warmth and bystander defending behavior in cyberbullying, indicating that parental warmth was associated with increased bystander defending behavior through higher levels of friendship quality and empathy, respectively. Friendship quality and empathy also played a chain mediating role between these two, indicating that parental warmth was linked to increased bystander defending behavior by first associating with higher level of friendship quality and subsequently with greater empathy. These results suggest that high degrees of parental warmth, friendship quality and empathy may all increase the likelihood of bystander defending behavior in cyberbullying among adolescents. This study provides practical implications for improving adolescent bystander defending behavior in cyberbullying. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Covid-19 has resulted in changes to college students' daily lives due to recommendations to socially distance. Social distance is likely to affect youths' peer relationships at a time when these relationships remain important for development. Participants and Methods: The current study utilized survey data to examine perceived changes in peer relationships and the association with behavioral health among 275 college students (Mage = 18.69, SD =.72) during the fall/spring of 2020–2021. Results: Quantitative results indicated that participants reported significant perceived decreases in peer support but did not report significantly worse quality of closest friendships. Qualitative responses from an open-ended survey question supported these quantitative results suggesting that although many participants perceived decreases in quality of relationships, there was also the perception that friendships became closer. Participants who perceived decreased peer relationship support and quality were more likely to report depressive symptoms and loneliness when compared to participants who perceived no changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For children, friends play an important role in their socio-emotional development and psychological well-being. Friendships may hold additional value for students who come from minoritized backgrounds. This study aimed to examine representations and themes of friendship in diverse Greek classrooms in which Roma and non-Roma elementary-age students interact daily as an attempt to examine how dyadic relationships may help minoritized students better cope and overcome barriers and adversity. For this qualitative survey, Thematic Analysis was used to analyse the answers of a sample of 57 upper elementary students, 25 Roma, and 32 non-Roma counterparts, that came from similar low socioeconomic status backgrounds, had a permanent residence, systematically attended school, and according to their school grades and teacher, information demonstrated low language achievement. Identified themes revealed that students across groups reported similar information. Children highlighted the perceived similarity between their closest friend and themselves in terms of physical and personality characteristics, emphasised their shared lived experiences expanding through space and time while reflecting the stability and richness, and brought forth aspects of high-quality friendships, such as intimacy and support. The significance and implications for researchers and practitioners of this study are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: High-quality friendships have a positive impact on the mental health of young people with childhood adversity (CA). Social stress buffering, the phenomenon of a social partner attenuating acute stress responses, is a potential yet unexplored mechanism that may underlie this relationship. Objective: This study examined whether perceived friendship quality was related to better mental health and lower neural stress response in young people with CA. Method: A total of N = 102 young people (aged 16–26) with low to moderate CA were included in the study. We first investigated associations between friendship quality, mental health, and CA. In a representative subset (n = 62), we assessed neural stress responses using the Montreal Imaging Stress Task. In our sample, CA was best described along two dimensions resembling threat or deprivation like experiences. Hence, we investigated both cumulative and dimensional effects of CA. Results: We found no support for social thinning after CA, meaning that the severity of CA (cumulative or dimensional) did not differentially impact friendship quality. High-quality friendships, on the other hand, were strongly associated with better mental health. Furthermore, acute stress increased state anxiety and enhanced neural activity in five frontolimbic brain regions, including the left hippocampus. We found weak support that threat experiences interacted with friendship quality to predict left hippocampal reactivity to stress. However, this effect did not survive multiple comparison correction. Conclusion: The absence of social thinning in our sample may suggest that the risk of developing impoverished social networks is low for rather well-functioning young people with low to moderate CA. Regardless, our findings align with prior research, consistently showing a strong association between high-quality friendships and better mental health in young people with CA. Future research is needed to examine whether friendships aid neural stress responses in young people with childhood threat experiences. Young people with childhood adversity underwent acute stress induction, eliciting frontolimbic reactivity. High-quality friendships were strongly associated with better mental health. Weak support for friendship stress buffering did not survive multiple comparison correction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding and regulating emotions influence children's friendships. Children with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Specific Learning Disorder (SLD) have difficulties in understanding emotions and in controlling themselves. Τhe present study examines how children's friendships and their quality may be affected by emotion understanding and regulation skills. Participants were 64 children with ADHD, 64 children with SLD, and 64 typically developing (TD) children (Mage = 9.77 years, SD = 1.22) who answered questionnaires about their friendships, and their emotion understanding and regulation. Results showed that ADHD children had less friends, lower friendship qualities, worse understanding of emotions and control of their impulsivity, and used less cognitive reappraisals to regulate emotions, followed by SLD children and finally by TD children. Children with SLD reported using more expressive suppressions for regulating emotions. For all children, emotion understanding and regulation predicted higher friendship quality. The results support the significance of understanding and regulating emotions upon the quality of children's best friendships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many things play a role in the tendency to engage in cyberbullying. This study aimed to identify the determinant factors of the tendency to engage in cyberbullying by adolescents in Java. A sample of 1038 teenagers aged between 12 and 18 who used internet-connected electronic information and technology equipment. The measuring instruments used in this study included a cyberbullying tendency scale, an empathy scale, a self-esteem scale, a friendship quality scale, and an emotion regulation scale. Path analysis was used to process the data. The data showed that self-esteem served as a predictor of cyberbullying tendency whose relationship was negative only when it was mediated by emotion regulation. Friendship quality was a predictor of cyberbullying tendency both in a direct fashion and mediated by empathy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study examined links between best friendship quality, social problem solving in response to a transgression and conscious control of behavior (i.e., executive function or EF). Eighty-one 7- to 10-year-olds answered questions about their best friendship quality and responses to friendship transgressions (i.e., interpretations, goals, and strategies they would endorse). They also completed a battery of EF tasks measuring working memory, inhibition, and shifting. Results revealed few relations between social problem solving and best friendship quality. Social problem solving related to EF abilities, with inhibition relating to fewer revenge goals and cognitive flexibility relating to more neutral interpretations. Better working memory related to worse best friendship quality. Finally, verbal IQ was a strong predictor of several positive social problem-solving interpretations, goals, and strategies. Results suggest cognitive abilities in EF and language may be important to consider during middle childhood in this period of advancing social problem solving and friendships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a lifelong developmental disability characterized by deficits in social communication and social interaction across multiple contexts. Existing literature on social relationships and well-being among adolescents with ASD in Asian countries is scant. Aims: This study compared the perceptions of adolescents with ASD with those of their neurotypical peers toward their friendship quality, activity participation, and emotional well-being, and examined the relationships between friendship quality, activity participation, and emotional well-being. Methods: The study participants—101 adolescents with ASD and 101 neurotypical peers, aged 10–19 years—completed the following self-administered questionnaires: the Friendship Quality Questionnaire, the Child and Adolescent Scale of Participation, the Beck Anxiety Inventory, and the short-form UCLA loneliness scale. Results: Adolescents with ASD reported lower friendship quality, lower school participation, and higher levels of anxiety and loneliness compared to their neurotypical peers. Loneliness correlated negatively with friendship quality and school participation and positively with anxiety. Adolescents with ASD experienced increased levels of anxiety when low friendship quality was accompanied by greater loneliness. Conclusions and significance: These findings reveal that friendship quality, school participation, and loneliness have a considerable effect on the emotional well-being of adolescents with ASD, thus indicating the need for therapeutic interventions that address interpersonal relationships and emotional well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined the self-regulatory process of moral disengagement in adolescent social bullying. Moral disengagement was assessed at the individual level, as well as within reciprocated very best friendships. At the dyadic level, this study investigated the role of friendship quality inmoderating the influence of a very best friend's moral disengagement on adolescents' social bullying. The sample consisted of 710 mainly White students (306 males, 12-17 years). Results showed adolescents' proneness tomoral disengagement was associated with increased social bullying. Further, a very best friend'smoral disengagement was associated with higher social bullying for those who perceived positive qualities in their friendship. The findings highlight the importance of close friends in fostering adolescents' social bullying. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Individuals have been found to "project" their own substance use onto perceptions of their friends' substance use. This study explores whether companionship and conflict relate to incorrect perceptions of a friend's heavy alcohol and marijuana use after controlling for the behavior of the respondent and friend. Mixed models demonstrate that having higher levels of companionship, but not conflict, with a friend result in significantly higher perceptual levels of the friend's heavy alcohol and marijuana use. While beneficial for the friendship, higher levels of companionship may result in a person overestimating the heavy alcohol and marijuana use of a friend. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study addresses the social participation of integrated students with special educational needs (SEN) in upper primary regular classes in Greece alongside their perceptions of best friend quality. Social participation was defined as consisting of four key dimensions: students’ acceptance by classmates, friendships, social self-perceptions, and social interactions. Participants were 457 students with a mean age of 11.04 (SD = .83), of which 45 were diagnosed as having moderate learning difficulties. Fieldwork involved implementing a sociometric technique, conducting systematic observations and administering two psychometric instruments: the Self-Description Questionnaire (SDQ) and the Friendship Qualities Scale (FQS). In line with previous studies, students with SEN received fewer nominations of peer acceptance, had fewer friends and fewer social interactions with classmates than their typically developing peers. The social self-perception and the perceptions of friendship quality of both groups of students did not differ. Contrary to expectations, the social self-concept of students with SEN was not related to their acceptance by peers but it was positively related to the &#x2018.companionship’ dimension of friendship quality. These results highlight the need to direct the researchers’ attention from measuring the social participation of students with SEN within their class network towards examining the quality and durability of their friendships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Co-rumination is associated with positive friendship quality (thought to buffer against anxiety and depression) but paradoxically higher levels of anxiety and depression. With the increasing use of technology for communication among adults, there is little known about co-rumination effects across different modalities of communication. In the current study, we examined co-rumination through four methods (i.e. in person, phone calls, text messaging, and social media) in two separate samples-college students and participants from the community. Classic co-rumination effects were found for in-person communications, and we found that co-rumination by telephone as well as by texting, for a college student sample only, mirrors some of these findings for in-person co-rumination. In studies of co-rumination, evaluation of multiple modes of communication is warranted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of psychoactive drugs appears to have a clear influence on both friendship formation and friendship quality. Differences in the frequency of substance use are particularly likely to influence each friend’s perceptions of their relationship with the other. However, the impact of divergent substance use patterns within a friendship dyad on overall friendship quality remains an underexplored area. Self-reported alcohol use and perceptions of friendship quality data were collected from 2,154 students (mean age = 19.3) in 1,077 friendship dyads. Analyses of variance were conducted to determine (a) if friends who have similar alcohol use patterns perceive greater friendship quality than friends with dissimilar use patterns, and (b) how dissimilarities in drinking behaviors between friends affect individuals’ perceptions of friendship quality. Individuals in dyads comprised of friends with similar drinking patterns were found to experience higher quality relationships than those in friendships with dissimilar drinking patterns. Partners who drank less frequently in dissimilar friendships did not perceive the friendship to be of significantly lower quality than did their more frequently drinking peers. Interestingly, high-rate heavy episodic drinkers reported a significantly higher overall friendship quality when their peer was a low-rate heavy episodic drinker as opposed to a non-heavy episodic drinker. Since high-rate drinkers perceived higher friendship quality to low-frequency drinkers than non-heavy episodic drinkers, they likely place more value in the opinions of low-rate drinkers. Abstinence-based alcohol intervention programs may utilize this information in efforts to decrease early dropout rates. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study examined the longitudinal relationship between friendship quality (positive and negative) and school achievement among 228 school-age children (51% girls,M= 8.09,SD= 0.41). A three-wave cross-lagged analysis was used to determine the direction of influence between these domains across school years. Findings revealed that: (a) school achievement in second grade decreased negative friendship quality in third grade; (b) school achievement in second grade predicted positive friendship quality in third grade; (c) positive friendship quality in third grade predicted school achievement in fourth grade. The protective role of school achievement against peer relationship impairment and the reciprocal relationship between positive friendship quality and school achievement were underlined. Implications for educational practices for Italian primary schools are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and Objective: Whilst shy, socially anxious or socially withdrawn children in nonclinical community samples report lower friendship quality (FQ) than nonanxious children, no study has examined the FQ of clinically anxious children. The aim of the study was to examine the FQ of children with anxiety disorders; and whether it differs for clinical children with or without a diagnosis of social phobia (SP). Design: The study design was cross-sectional self-report. Methods: Clinical children - 39 anxiety-disordered children with SP and 28 anxiety-disordered children without SP (No-SP) - presented for psychological treatment, and 29 nonclinical children were recruited from the community. Same-sex close friends were invited to participate using an unrestricted nomination procedure. All children were aged between 7 and 13 years. Both target child and friend completed the Friendship Quality Questionnaire and the Spence Children's Anxiety Scale. Results: Using multilevel modeling within the framework of the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model, SP dyads were found to report lower overall FQ than No-SP dyads. SP dyads did not report lower overall FQ than nonclinical dyads. Conclusion: Children with SP in their diagnostic profile may be unique in their friendship experiences relative to children with other anxiety disorders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research examined links among academic ability, social-perspective coordination, and friendship quality, within the context of gifted adolescents’ friendships. The sample consisted of 120 early adolescents (59 girls, 61 boys), 81 of whom were identified as gifted. Academic ability, sex, and grade significantly predicted social-perspective coordination (an indicator of psychosocial maturity) in multiple regression analyses. Social-perspective coordination, perceptions (self-concept) of ability to make and keep friends, academic ability, sex, and grade predicted perceptions of the overall quality of friendships. Being a female, seventh grader, or adolescent not identified as gifted, significantly predicted higher friendship quality. Social-perspective coordination and self-concept based on having a close friend predicted higher levels of friendship quality for the gifted participants. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This exploratory study aimed to measure antisocial tendencies and friendship quality of adolescents in residential substance abuse treatment and to compare the findings to the general population for this age group. Fifty-four adolescents completed Bukowski, Hoza, and Boivin's (1994) Friendship Quality Scale and their counselor completed the antisocial measures of Merrell and Caldarella's (2002) Home and Community Social Behavior Scales. As anticipated, the sample exhibited significantly more antisocial behavior; however, they also reported similar levels of positive and negative friendship quality compared with other adolescent populations. Implications for substance abuse treatment are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study evaluated a short friendship questionnaire providing a balanced assessment of positive (e.g., support) and negative (e.g., jealousy) friendship features. In addition, associations with indices of adaptive functioning versus psychopathology were tested. The friendship questionnaire was presented to 548 typically developing children and young adolescents (Mage = 11;01 years). Results confirmed validity and independence of the two friendship features, and showed that negative friendship features were uniquely associated with symptoms of psychopathology, whereas both positive and negative features were, in opposite directions, uniquely associated with aspects of socioemotional functioning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While it is commonly understood that the substance use of peers influences an individual's substance use, much less is understood about the interplay between substance use and friendship quality. Using a sample of 2,148 emerging adults nested within 1,074 dyadic friendships, this study separately investigates how concordance and discordance in binge drinking and marijuana use between friends is related to each friend's perceptions of friendship quality. Because "friendship quality" is a complex construct, we employ a measure containing five sub-elements - companionship, a lack of conflict, willingness to help a friend, relationship security, and closeness. Results for both binge drinking and marijuana use reveal that individuals in friendship pairs who are concordant in their substance use perceive significantly higher perceptions of friendship quality than individuals in dyads who are dissimilar in substance use. Specifically, concordant binge drinkers estimate significantly higher levels of companionship, relationship security, and willingness to help their friend than concordant non-users, discordant users, and discordant non-users. However, the highest amount of conflict in friendships is found when both friends engage in binge drinking and marijuana use. Several interpretations of these findings are discussed. Overall, concordance between friends' binge drinking and marijuana use appears to help some elements of friendship quality and harm others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]