Friendship, a state of enduring affection, esteem, intimacy, and trust between two people. In all cultures, friendships are important relationships throughout a person’s life span.
Friendship is generally characterized by five defining features:
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1. It is a dyadic relationship, meaning that it involves a series of interactions between two individuals known to each other.
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2. It is recognized by both members of the relationship and is characterized by a bond or tie of reciprocated affection.
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3. It is not obligatory; two individuals choose to form a friendship with each other. In Western societies, friendships are one of the least prescribed close relationships, with no formal duties or legal obligations to one another.
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4. It is typically egalitarian in nature. Unlike parent-child relationships, for instance, each individual in a friendship has about the same amount of power or authority in the relationship.
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5. It is almost always characterized by companionship and shared activities. In fact, one of the primary goals and motivations of friendship is companionship. In addition, adolescent and adult friendships often perform other functions, such as serving as sources of emotional support and providing opportunities for self-disclosure and intimacy.
Such features differentiate friendship from several related phenomena. The fact that friendships are dyadic relationships distinguishes them from cliques or peer groups. (Of course, many members of cliques are also friends with other members.) Similarly, having friendships is different from being popular or having a high social status. Individuals who are not popular certainly may have close friendships, and a popular person may not have a real friendship. The affective bond that is a component of friendship distinguishes friendship from acquaintanceship.
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Friendship across the life span
Friendships play an important role in healthy human development and adjustment across the life span. Friendships exist in practically every stage of development, although the form they take varies considerably with age.
Early childhood
Although there is no clear consensus regarding at what age children first begin to form friendships, the foundations of such friendships begin to emerge quite early. Toddlers behave in a regular, predictable manner in their interactions with familiar peers earlier than they do with unfamiliar peers. Within the first two years of life, children show stable preferences for certain peers over others; further, with these preferred playmates, the interaction patterns they follow differ from those with other familiar peers. By the time children reach preschool age, the existence of true friendships is even more evident.
Children themselves tend at first to define friendships in terms of interactions, such as “we play together.” Companionship is generally viewed as the primary function of friendship among toddlers and preschoolers. Preschool friends have more social contact with each other, talk more with each other, and demonstrate more equality and less dominance in their interactions with each other than they do in their interactions with nonfriends. Differences between friends and nonfriends are particularly evident in social pretend play.
By preschool, children also begin to incorporate more emotional and affective functions into their friendships. Preschool friends express more positive affect toward each other and score higher on measures of mutual liking, closeness, and loyalty than nonfriends do. Moreover, even young children frequently become sad or lonely when a friend moves away.
Friendships are not always harmonious, however, and young children may engage in conflict with their friends. In fact, in early childhood, friends tend to engage in more conflict than nonfriends. Yet, friends also expend more effort to resolve conflict and are more successful at such resolution than are nonfriends. Conflict resolution is frequently seen as one of the important social skills that young children develop within their earliest friendships.
Additionally, friendships are not always mutual among young children. Although the definition of friendship typically requires reciprocity, unilateral friendships, in which only one child of a pair nominates the other as a friend, are quite common in early childhood. In fact, about half of nominated preschool friendships are unilateral.
To be continued…
Britannica
