Sociomoral reasoning in children and adolescents from two collectivistic cultures

This study compared the sociomoral reasoning of 7-, 9-, 12-, and 15-year-old children and adolescents of two collectivistic cultures in the 1990s: Spain (horizontal collectivism; N = 208) and Russia (vertical collectivism; N = 247). Participants reasoned about choices and moral justifications of a protagonist in a sociomoral dilemma where participants can focus on different moral and non-moral concerns (e.g., going with their best friend, going with a new classmate or trying to do something with both). Results support previous research in western societies: participants tend to choose the option “visiting the best friend”, and self-interest tends to decrease with age whereas altruism tends to increase. Moreover, Spanish participants tended to consider all parties involved in the dilemma (i.e., old friend and new classmate), whereas Russian participants did not. These results are discussed in light of their differences as horizontal and vertical collectivistic societies. Overall, the results open an avenue for new studies when comparing the effects of culture on children's and adolescents' development.     

Emotion understanding,pictorial representations of friendship and reciprocity in school-aged children

This study examined the relationship between emotional understanding, friendship representation and reciprocity in school-aged children. Two hundred and fifty-one Caucasian 6-year-old children (111 males and 140 females) took part in the study. The Test of Emotion Comprehension (TEC) and the Pictorial Assessment of Interpersonal Relationships (PAIR) were used. Children having a reciprocal friendship and children having a unilateral friendship with a child named as their “best friend” were compared on the emotional understanding task and on their pictorial representations of friendship. Multilevel analyses indicated that friendship status effects were not influenced by classroom-level differences. Results showed that children with reciprocal friendships drew themselves as more similar to and more cohesive with their best friends, and they showed better understanding of emotions, than children having a unilateral friendship. Finally, the implications of these findings for theoretical and empirical research development on friendship are discussed.     

The unexpectedly positive consequences of confronting sexism

Majority-group members expect to dislike those who confront them for prejudiced behavior. Yet if majority-group members are susceptible to the same social constraints as minority-group members, then their public responses to confrontation should be similarly inhibited. A tempered response to confrontation could smooth a potentially problematic social interaction, thereby producing an outcome that is better than expected. Female confederates confronted men during an interpersonal interaction and then had a second conversation. When interpersonally confronted, men reported equally positive evaluations of a sexist and gender-neutral confronter and confrontational interaction. Additionally, after the sexist confrontation, men's compensatory efforts increased mutual liking and this mutual liking then reduced men's use of sexist language. Thus, social forces also constrain those who are confronted as prejudiced, thereby positively influencing intergroup relations.     

Homophily in stable and unstable adolescent friendships: Similarity breeds constancy

This study examines homophily among adolescent friends. Participants were drawn from a community-based sample of Swedish youth who ranged from 11 to 18 years old. A total of 436 girls and 338 boys identified their closest friends and described their own delinquent activities, intoxication frequency, achievement motivation, and self-worth. Correlations and difference scores describe similarity between reciprocally nominated friends on each dimension. Adolescents who remained friends from one year to the next tended to be more similar than those who did not, during the friendship and, to a lesser extent, before the friendship. Comparisons with random pairs of same-age peers revealed that age-group homophily accounts for most of the similarity between unstable friends but only a fraction of the similarity between stable friends.     

Teaching practices and elementary classroom peer ecologies

Teachers and students in 39 1st, 3rd and 5th grade classrooms participated in a study of teaching practices and classroom peer networks. Teachers reported on their attitudes towards aggression and withdrawal, provided rationales for their seating arrangements, and were observed on patterns of emotional and instructional support and classroom organization. Students were surveyed or interviewed for peer nominations of friendship, popularity, being cool, and aggressive and prosocial behavior, and from these nominations classroom-level indices were derived concerning the richness of positive and negative social ties among children, the egalitarian or hierarchical nature of social status hierarchies, and classroom norms for aggressive and prosocial behavior. Preliminary results suggest that teachers' attitudes towards social behavior are associated with the degree of liking and disliking their students express; teachers' grouping patterns are associated with numerous features of classroom social networks; and teachers' observed emotional support was associated with higher rates of friendship reciprocation.     

Organizational network perceptions versus reality: A small world after all?

Given the complexity of organizing and keeping track of even a small organizational network, boundedly rational people may have learned to use small world principles in perceiving friendship networks: arrange people in dense clusters, and connect the clusters with short paths. Analysis of 116 perceived friendship networks from four different organizations showed that these perceived networks exhibited greater small world properties than the actual friendship networks. Further, people perceived more friendship clustering than actually existed, and attributed more popularity and brokerage to the perceivedly-popular than to the actually-popular.     

When the expectations from a message will not be realized: Naïve theories can eliminate expectation-congruent judgments via correction

Research typically reveals that individuals like an object more when a persuasive message convinces them that this object is pleasant. In this paper, two experiments were conducted to understand the influence of such message-induced affective-expectations on judgments of experienced affect following direct encounter with an alcohol type of drink. As predicted, before trying the drink, recipients of the positive-expectation message had more positive expectations than recipients of the negative-expectation message. After drinking, participants judged the beverage to elicit affect congruent with message-induced expectations to the extent they did not endorse a naïve theory that their affective expectations congruently influence their experienced affect. In contrast, after drinking, the effect of the message disappeared when participants did endorse this naïve theory. Moderation of these effects, as well as theoretical and practical implications, are addressed.     

Scale‐dependent automatic shifts in brand evaluation standards

Different schema-based expectations for competing brands can produce shifting evaluative standards in consumers' relative ratings of these brands. This shift in standards differentially affects objective (number-based) and subjective (word-based) rating scales. Several studies support the proposition that a brand rated as objectively inferior to another can be subjectively perceived as equivalent to—or even better than—the same brand. Such anomalous response inconsistency originates in consumers' recourse to different expectations for the competing brands and their automatic adjustment of expectations for the inferior brand when responding to subjective measures. The implicit relaxing of evaluative standards for the objectively dominated brand leads to an unconscious upward bias in its subjective ratings. The effect is moderated by consumer expertise and is asymmetric—it is not accompanied by an escalation of evaluative standards for objectively dominating brands.     

Between friends: Making emotions intersubjectively

Analysing qualitative interview material from a project on friendship and spatiality, this article examines the relationship between friendship, emotions and context. In the project's data the workplace emerged as a key site in which people meet new friends and practice friendships. Using the workplace as a case study, the article analyses how context can shape friendships, how emotions are woven throughout the very constitution of friendships, and how friendships can impact upon people's emotional experience of workplaces. Further, I analyse how emotions are actively generated between friends. In this understanding, emotions are not pre-existing states that are located in individuals; rather, emotions are created intersubjectively between friends and in specific contexts.     

British women's experiences of drinking alcohol: Dynamics of emotional proximity and distance

Research on alcohol consumption suggests that friendship and peer relations are highly influential and have a decisive impact on drinking behaviours. Further, that women's friendships appear to be characterised by emotional disclosure and ‘knowing’ one another. In this paper I draw on debates around emotional intimacy, ideas of ‘closeness’ and ‘distance’ to explore how this might work when young women go out and drink alcohol. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 25 British undergraduate female students aged 18–25, this research suggests that one of the compelling appeals of alcohol is that it creates a ‘space of suspension’, whereby feelings of being both close and distant (intimate proximity) coexist, often for strategic reasons associated with security. Two themes emerged from the data: firstly that the young women had a preference for paradoxically maintaining ‘distance’ alongside ‘closeness’ with friends, and secondly, that contingencies of safety and vulnerability promoted the need for co-operation to manage risk in the night-time economy. These themes permeated relationships and became a significant dynamic in group behaviour creating a tension between functionality and friendship. This paper contributes to a growing body of work that suggests intimacy and women's friendships are complex: traditional conceptions about young women seeking intimate and close friendships need revaluating to take into consideration how ‘distance’ within groups is both desirable and negotiated, and may be facilitated through the drinking of alcohol.