Friendship and Expression of Intimacy

Friendship and Expression of Intimacy

This is a collection of pages developed by the cyberparent.com site that explores questions about friendship. It's heading describes the goal of the page as: "The friendship web explains the basics of friendship, making friends, and maintaining true friendships."

Best Friends: How to Grow a Friend

Written by Joy Stevens, this piece offers advice about a twelve step process of forming friendship. It is part of the cyberparent.com site.

The Warmth of Friendship in a Cold Season

Time Magazine writer Lance Morrow reflects about friendship in this short essay.

Communicating affection in dyadic relationships: an assessment of behavior and expectancies. Kory Floyd. Communication Quarterly, Wntr 1997 v45 n1 p68(13).

The present study examines affectionate behavior in platonic friendships and individuals' perceptions of the appropriateness and importance of affection in such friendships. It hypothesizes that when levels of relational closeness are held constant, biological sex and the sex composition of the dyad will influence actual affectionate behavior, perceived affectionate behavior, the reported appropriateness of affectionate behaviors, and the intensity of the behaviors accounted for in each effect. Substantial support for the predictions was obtained. InfoTrac.

The Measurement of Affectionate Communication. Kory Floyd and Mark T. Morman. Communication Quarterly, Spring 1998 v46 i2 p144(1).

Affection is central to the communicative processes of personal relationships. While several empirical investigations have examined the communication of affection, there is little consistency from study to study in how affectionate communication is operationally defined, making it difficult to interpret the findings of such research and to compare findings across studies. The present paper reports the results of a multi-phase scale development procedure and two supplemental studies, involving a total of 781 participants, utilizing and validating a new self-report measure of affectionate communication. The resulting scale, the Affectionate Communication Index, is offered as a practical and psychometrically sound operational definition for the overt communication of affection in personal relationships. Subjects for the study were father and son dyads. InfoTrac.

Some Things are Better Left Unsaid II: Topic Avoidance in Friendships. Walid A. Afifi and Laura K. Guerrero. Communication Quarterly, Summer 1998 v46 i3 p231(1).

This study examines the extent to which members of same- and cross-sex friendships avoid topics related to relationship issues, negative life experiences, dating experiences, sexual experiences, and outside friendships. Four reasons for topic avoidance are also explored: self-protection, relationship protection, partner unresponsiveness, and social appropriateness. InfoTrac.