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On the Relation of Personal Experience to Early Adolescents’ Reasoning About Best Friendship Deterioration
Author(s) -
Azmitia Margarita,
Lippman David N.,
Ittel Angela
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
social development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.078
H-Index - 91
eISSN - 1467-9507
pISSN - 0961-205X
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9507.00095
Subject(s) - friendship , psychology , seriousness , vignette , developmental psychology , social psychology , shame , association (psychology) , inclusion (mineral) , law , psychotherapist , political science
The primary goal of this study was to investigate the association between early adolescents’ generalized beliefs about the causes of best friendship deterioration and dissolution and conflict experiences in their own best friendships. An additional goal was to assess whether early adolescents’ self‐esteem moderated this association. Participants listed their beliefs about the causes of best friendship deterioration and dissolution, indicated whether conflicts described in a series of vignettes had occurred in one of their best friendships, and described two conflicts they had experienced in their best friendships. They also judged the seriousness of the vignette and personally experienced conflicts. As predicted, early adolescents included conflict issues they had experienced personally more frequently in their causal inventories than conflict issues that they had not experienced personally. However, contrary to predictions, the perceived seriousness of the conflicts did not influence their inclusion in participants’ causal inventories. While high and low self‐esteem adolescents had similar beliefs about the causes of best friendship deterioration and dissolution, low self‐esteem adolescents perceived their conflicts as more serious and their friendships as more fragile.