PSYC 3310 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Adolescent Sexuality, Preadolescence, Adolescent Sex
20 Jun 2018
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CHAPTER 10 INTIMACY
Friendship Development
• Preschool – more affectionate, approving, and sympathetic with friends than
with others, and their play together is more advanced cognitively
o Those who form solid friendships at this age are more socially
competent, too.
• Affection, approval, sympathy, and understanding are qualities essential to
our concept of friendship.
• A friend is someone who
o Likes to spend time with you, and do the kinds of things you like to do
o Has interesting, stimulating, and funny things to say and do
o Lends a hand when you need help and sticks up for you with others
o Makes you feel more positive about yourself
• Friendships also go through developmental changes:
o Around age 7 – a friend is someone who is easy to get together with
and fun to be with
▪ Someone who has cool toys, and liked the same games and
activities
o Later in the elementary school years – emphasis on shared values
and social attitudes (reciprocity, loyalty, and mutual support)
Friends in Adolescence
• As children approach puberty, the qualities of mutual trust, warmth, and
understanding take on more and more importance in their friendships.
• Self-disclosure: the process in which individuals communicate to others
intimate information about their experiences and feelings
o Mutual trust is particularly crucial.
o Young adolescents begin to talk about their ambitions and doubts, the
problems they have with parents/siblings/other peers, their hopes,
dreams, and fears.
• Intimacy: an emotional sense of attachment to someone with whom one
shares personal knowledge and a concern for each other’s well-being as well
o A joint commitment to maintaining and deepening the relationship
o More disclosure
o Girls – through discussion
o Boys – shared activity
• Empathy
o More abstract thinking in older children
o Teens understand themselves and others in a more complex,
differentiated way.
o This makes them able to empathize with other person more deeply
and more accurately, which in turn makes them able to respond on a
more intimate level.
• Attachment
o Attachment is built so that friendships are characterized by more
commitment.
o Friendships can withstand conflicts.
• Complexity
o More interested in the complexity of relationships
o Adolescents have greater ability to understand how situational factors
can lead friends to behave in ways that are not like them.
• Shared perspective
o A friend will have a shared viewpoint on the situation, whereas a
parent will have a very different perspective, and may not understand
the nuances of the social milieu.
• Validation and support
o When they need information, reassurance, and support, they are more
likely to turn to a friend who is going through the same changes and
confronting the same problems.
o More similarity with friends, more validating
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• Time with Friends
Sullivan’s Interpersonal Theory of Friendship Development
• Sullivan believed that all children pass through a sequence of stages, and that
what happens to them during those stages is crucial to their psychological
functioning as adults.
• Development in terms of changing interpersonal needs and social
relationships
o Those who are able to get their needs met build up a sense of
interpersonal security that prepares them well for coping with the next
stage.
o Those who do not get their needs met are left with feelings of
interpersonal insecurity and anxiety that make it more difficult to deal
with later needs as they emerge.
• Infancy – need for tenderness and it is met by parents
• Preschool – need is for companionship and parents are the source
• Early school years – need is for acceptance and is fulfilled by same-sex peers
o Children that are not accepted tend to have less confidence and less
positive sense of self, and suffer from feelings of exclusion and
ostracism.
Preadolescence
• Late childhood – early adolescence (10 to 12 years)
• Need for intimacy fulfilled by same sex peers – isophilic relationships
o A desire to develop a relationship with a close friend or chum, that
emerges during the preadolescent years
• These are close interpersonal relationships based on mutual caring, regard,
reciprocity, and an exchange between equals.
• Gain sense of sensitivity to other’s feelings
• Friendships become more realistic, more leeway, giving friends the benefit of
the doubt
Document Summary
Maintaining an intimate nonsexual friendship while keeping an emotional distance from romantic partners. Late adolescence: the need is to merge intimacy and sexuality and it is fulfilled by romantic partners, need to integrate themselves with the adult world, develop a network of mature interpersonal relationships. The purpose and quality of friendships: positive elements, companionship, intimacy, trust, loyalty, warmth, assistance, acceptance, support, guidance, negative elements, hostility, conflict, strong competitiveness, betrayal, abandonment, domination, rivalry, belittlement. Age of onset of dating: 71% of 15-year olds have started dating, 90% of 18 and older have had at least one romantic relationship. Early bloomers (about 11 to 13-year olds who have been in a relationship) might have less parental monitoring, more peers already dating, and may have gone through puberty earlier. Reason for dating: dating gives adolescents a socially recognized way to satisfy a variety of needs that are important to them. Mid-adolescence: recreation fun and enjoyment, socialization improving romantic interactions, status impressing others.
