Is it just important to be friends? Friendship as a protective and risk factor for well-being and the type of behavior developed during adolescence
Chair(s): Ana Bravo (University of Cordoba, Spain)
This symposium brings together four papers examining the effect of friendship dynamic in individual and social characteristics among adolescents. Research has consistently shown that being friends implies a certain degree of responsibility for each other's well-being and adolescents develop their social, emotional, and cognitive skills in interaction with their friends. But friends social support and influences also promote negative behaviors and create a toxic context in which negative consequences, such as victimization, are exacerbated. The research presented here has examined experiences of young people from three countries (Spain, the Netherlands and Finnish). Different longitudinal methodological approaches, such as social network analysis, latent profile analysis and diary analysis, have been used to cover many relevant research questions on adolescents’ friendship dynamic. The first paper (Bravo, Espelage, Ortega-Ruiz & Romera) is a social network study with Spanish adolescents identifying the co-evolution and mutual influence between the friendship network and help-seeking network in bullying situations. The second paper (Beckers, Burk, Larsen, & Cillessen) explores through a one-year if friend-reported loss of control eating influence longitudinally in adolescents’ own loss of control eating among Dutch students. The third paper (Bernasco, Malamut, Yanagida, & Branje) explores if there are patterns of problem talks among Dutch adolescent friends and if these patterns are cross- and longitudinally associated with friendship quality and internalizing problems. The last study (Malamut & Laninga-Wijnen) is a daily diary study with Finnish adolescents, which examines if co-ruminating with friends exacerbates victims’ daily mood problems, both from a within- and between-person perspective. Taken together, these papers deepen the description and identification of the relevant role of friendship and its characteristics in the cognitions, relationships, behaviors, and well-being of adolescents. The practical implications of the results of the included studies will be discussed during this symposium.
Presentations of the Symposium
Can you help me friend? Measuring interactions between help-seeking and friendship networks from a developmental perspective
Ana Bravo1, Dorothy L. Espelage2, Rosario Ortega-Ruiz1, Eva M, Romera1
1Universidad de Córdoba, 2University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Bullying is an aggressive social dynamic in which the defenders of the victims play a crucial role in determining whether the bullying continues. Thus, identifying the characteristics of classmates from whom adolescents would ask for help could prevent and reduce aggressive situations. Helping is a dyadic relationship, involving at least two actors (a helper and a target). From this dyadic perspective, other social group dynamics may play a key role to identify ‘to whom would victimized adolescents seek help from?’ Friendship becomes a more intimate relationship based on trust, private exchange, and mutuality during adolescence. Being friends means shielding each other from being victimized by other peers. However, there may be differences in adolescents' preferences to ask for help from their friends due to the changes that occur during adolescence in their definition of what it is to be friends. The present study has a twofold objective: 1) to describe and to examine the interaction between help-seeking and friendship networks; and 2) to compare if these interactions differ among students in last two levels in primary school and all secondary school levels. A total of 3,023 adolescents (49% girls, Mage = 12.24 years, SD = 1.55). Data were peer-reported, and Bayesian random-coefficient multilevel stochastic actor-oriented models were conducted to simultaneously estimate the coevolution of the bullying help network (who would you ask for help if you were bullied by a classmate?) with the friendship network (who is your friend?). Preliminary analyses suggest that there is a reciprocal tendency among adolescents to choose each other as potential helpers. Adolescents would also be more willing to ask a friend for help. Moreover, adolescents choose the friends of their friends as their potential helpers. Comparative analyses between both age groups and final results for this paper will be presented during the conference.
Friends’ Influence on Adolescents’ Loss of Control Eating: The Moderating Role of Self-Esteem, Fear of Negative Evaluation, and Body Dissatisfaction
Desi Beckers, William J. Burk, Junilla K. Larsen, Antonius H. N. Cillessen
Radboud University
Friends’ influence may significantly contribute to the development of disordered eating in adolescence. However, little is known about the influence of friends on loss of control eating. This study investigated whether friend-reported loss of control eating was associated with changes in adolescents’ own loss of control eating one year later and tested whether adolescents with lower self-esteem, higher fear of negative evaluation, and higher body dissatisfaction were more susceptible to friends’ influence. Sex differences in these associations were also examined. Participants were 612 adolescents (50.0 % female; MT1 = 13.50 years, SDT1 = 1.01) recruited from a school in the Netherlands with predominantly native Dutch students and participated in an ongoing longitudinal research project between 2019-2021. Results indicated that adolescents and their friends reported similar levels of loss of control eating but provided no support for friends’ influence on loss of control eating, nor for differential susceptibility. The modest similarity between adolescents’ and their friends’ loss of control eating and the lack of friends’ influence on loss of control eating may be due to homophilic selection effects or the restrictions involving the COVID-19 pandemic, so replication of the results is warranted
Dwelling on negative affect with friends: The role of co-rumination in the effect of daily peer victimization on adolescents’ mood
Sarah Malamut, Lydia Laninga-Wijnen
Univeristy of Turku
School bullying remains a significant health concern worldwide, with devastating consequences for adolescent psychological adjustment - not only in the long term (e.g., years or even decades after exposure) but also on a daily basis by affecting adolescents mood. Although social support from peers is often thought of as a protective factor that can mitigate the link between stressful experiences (such as peer victimization) and mood problems, some work has demonstrated that supportive friendships may actually exacerbate the negative consequences of victimization (Schacter et al., 2021). This surprising finding may be because some social support from peers potentially consist of potentially problematic dynamics, such as co-rumination - extreme fixation on the stressor and the negative feelings caused by the problem (Rose, 2002). This pre-registered daily diary study examines whether co-ruminating with friends exacerbates victims’ daily mood problems, both from a within- and between-person perspective. For about 10 consecutive school days, n = 1,669 Finnish 7th to 9th grade adolescents (Mage = 14.45; 55.5% girl) filled in daily questionnaires about their victimization experiences being defended, and their mood. On n = 1,329 out of 12,366 assessments (10.7%), students indicated that schoolmates victimized them that day, and on about 30% of these days they talked to their friends about their victimization. Preliminary analyses suggest that adolescents experienced stronger feelings of humiliation and greater sad mood on days when they were victimized and co-ruminated with friends, as compared to days on which they were victimized, did talk to friends about it, but did not co-ruminate with these friends. During the conference, final results for this paper will be presented.
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