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Similarities between Friends and Nonfriends in Middle Childhood
Author(s) -
Haselager Gerbert J. T.,
Hartup Willard W.,
Lieshout Cornells F. M.,
RiksenWalraven J. Marianne A.
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
child development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.103
H-Index - 257
eISSN - 1467-8624
pISSN - 0009-3920
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-8624.1998.tb06167.x
Subject(s) - friendship , psychology , prosocial behavior , shyness , sociometry , sociometric status , developmental psychology , set (abstract data type) , social psychology , anxiety , psychiatry , computer science , programming language
Similarities were assessed between target children (mean age, 11.1 years) and their friends and nonfriends, respectively. One target child of each sex ( N = 192), along with one same‐sex friend and one nonfriend, were selected from 102 participating classrooms. “Guess who” nominations obtained within these classrooms were used to measure prosocial behavior, antisocial behavior, shyness/dependency, and sociometric status; self‐reports were used to measure depressive symptoms. Children and their friends were more similar to one another than nonfriends across the entire data set—as the participants were rated by their classmates and as their classmates were rated by the participants. Friendship similarities varied from attribute to attribute, being greater in antisocial behavior than in the other domains. Similarities between friends in sociometric status and size of the friendship network were also greater among socially accepted than nonaccepted children.