Social interactions: Friendship & love
All humans are social beings.
–Fish swim in schools. Birds fly in flocks. And humans, too, tend to go with their group.
•All social beings have need for affiliation.
•Need for affiliation: It refers to an interest in establishing and maintaining relationships with other people.
–striving for friendship
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Individuals who have higher affiliation needs are particularly sensitive to relationships with others.
•These individuals desire to be with their friends more of the time, and alone less often, compared with people who are lower in the need for affiliation.
Research shows that gender is an important determinant of how much time is spent with friends.
•Female students spend more time with their friends and less time alone than male students do (Cantwell & Andrews, 2002; Johnson, 2004).
Friendship develops from childhood (infancy), through adolescence, to adulthood.
•E.g., As preschoolers, you may have spent hours together building whole cities with wooden blocks or in the sand.
•As youth you may have discussed sports or favourite television programs.
•As students you may have talked about problems you face at home and school and give each other advice and encouragement
The bond that you and this person (e.g., playmate) have established over the years is one kind of friendship.
•Friendship is a give-and-take relationship based on mutual trust, acceptance, and common interest or values.
Some reasons for making friends
•People look up to friends for honest reactions (e.g., assistance), for a sense of belonging, for encouragement during bad times, and for understanding, when they make mistakes.
•Personal space: The buffer zone we like to maintain around our bodies.
–Our personal spaces may reflect our personalities.
Two types of friendship:
A.Casual friendships: Casual friendships may be for convenience. Casual friendships offer the chance to have fun, to try new things, and to learn to get along with a variety of people.
–These friendships may remain casual or may develop into long-term friendships over time.
B. Close friendships: Research shows that people generally form close relationships with individuals who share similar goals, values or interests.
•Other research suggests that people get along better with individuals whose personalities complement their own.
•Four Characteristics of close friendships:
•Loyalty: A good friend sticks by you in both the good times and bad. He or she likes you for who you are.
•Honesty: You can trust a good friend to be truthful with you, even when the truth is painful. You know that your friend is not trying to hurt your feelings.
•Empathy: A good friend is caring and sensitive to your feelings.
•Reliability: A close friend can always be counted on. You know your friend will try hard not to let you down.
•Problems in friendships:
•Envy and jealousy: Feelings of envy and jealousy can arise in any relationship. A person may be envious of a friend’s accomplishments, appearance, possessions, popularity, or something else.
•Transferring anger: Occasionally, a friend may act cruelly towards you even though you have done nothing wrong against him or her. The reason for your friend’s behaviour may have nothing to do with you. Your friend may be facing problems at home, school, or elsewhere.
Love
Earlier researchers had thought love was too mysterious for scientific study; but current researchers have begun to classify love into various components.
•As a starting point, researchers have distinguished between passionate and companionate love (Rapson & Hatfield, 2005).
Social interactions: Friendship & love
A.Passionate love: It involves continuously thinking about the loved one and is accompanied by warm seksual feelings and powerful emotional reactions.
B.Companionate love: It involves having trusting and tender feelings for someone whose life is closely bound up with one’s own.