Chapter 8

1. Chapter 8 Making and Keeping Friends

2. Chapter Overview Making and Keeping Friends • Keeping Friends • Friendships Are Precious • When Friends Get Together • Self-Disclosure--Those Little Secrets • Same-Sex, Opposite-Sex Friends • Staying Friends • Loneliness • Meeting People • Are First Impressions Most Important? • Mistaken Impressions • Shyness

3. Chapter Outline Meeting People Are First Impressions Most Important? Mistaken Impressions Shyness

4. Chapter Outline CONT’D Keeping Friends • Friendships Are Precious • When Friends Get Together • Self-disclosure – Those Little Secrets • Same-sex, Opposite-Sex Friends • Staying Friends • Loneliness

5. Meeting People • We need both intimate and casual friendships. • Those who lack such relationships feel lonesome. • People differ in their respective needs for social relationships. • Even our momentary moods can influence how social we prefer to be.

6. Are First ImpressionsMost Important? First Impressions--are those initial impressions we form of others and are based on very little information. • First impressions do appear to be most important. • In impression management, not all impressions are treated equally. • There are a number of factors on which we base our first impressions (see next few slides):

7. Type of Behavior • Positive behavior is the expected norm. • When someone does something negative, it stands out in our minds. • We presume the negative behavior was done intentionally.

8. Physical Attractiveness …colors our first impressions. Attractive people are judged to be more: • compassionate • successful • intelligent • interesting • sociable …although they may not be! • Unattractive others are perceived negatively. • The matching hypothesis--People usually settle for someone about as attractive as they are.

9. Other Factors Influencing First Impressions • Reputation – hearsay from someone else influences us. • Similarity – assumed similarity leads to liking. • Propinquity – the less the physical distance, the more the liking. • Nonverbal signals – a person’s posture and gestures also influence our attraction to them. • Verbal signals – not what is said, but how it is said. Paralinguistics – unspoken but important features of spoken communication.

10. Mistaken Impressions We often use heuristics (mental shortcuts) to form impressions; thus, impressions can be wrong. For example: • The False Consensus Effect--we assume others feel as we do. • Stereotypes--widespread generalizations based little on reality also shape our impressions of others. • The Halo Effect--inferring uniformly positive traits from the appearance of a few positive traits. • The Horns (Devil) Effect--inferring uniformly negative traits from the appearance of a few negative traits. Errors of judgment also make us misconstrue others. For example, the fundamental attribution errortends to make us focus on traits, not on situations.

11. Shyness • Shy people often are perceived as aloof. • Some shy people may experience an extreme form of shyness known as social anxiety. • Shy people dislike being shy and see shyness as a personal fault. • Shyness can be reduced by learning to censor or cut off self-monitoring of thoughts and behaviors. • Shyness is on the rise in America. • Some people are finding relief from shyness on the Internet.

12. Keeping Friends • The desire for interpersonal connectedness is a fundamental human motive. • The more we get to know someone, the more likely the attraction will ripen into friendship.

13. Friendships Are Precious Friendship--the affectionate attachment between two or more people. Friendship is more than attraction, though. High quality friendships are characterized by: • Helping • Disclosure of secrets • Praise • Loyalty • Warmth and closeness Friendships in childhood are very important!

14. When Friends Get Together • One of the most common activities is the sharing of intimate talk. • …friends engage in self-disclosure – the sharing of personal information with someone else. • Women are more likely to self-disclose... • Doing favors for one another is a sign of friendship. • They also engage insocial support – a process whereby one individual or group offers comfort and advice to others so they can use it for coping.

15. Self-Disclosure: Those Little Secrets Self-disclosure--the sharing of intimate or personal information with others. • Self-disclosure may help us vent! This may be healthy if it is done carefully. • “Unwritten rules” about self-disclosure: • don’t disclose intimate information to strangers • don’t disclose so much to a friend that he or she feels obligated to disclose equally sensitive material and thus feels uncomfortable. • There are gender differences: women are more willing to disclose….

16. Same-Sex, Opposite-Sex Friends • Intimacy plays a bigger role in women-to-women friendships. • Men are not as close to each other as women are. • Men typically do “buddy activities” (e.g. sports) with one another rather than disclose. • Opposite-sex friends are sometimes used to explore ways to meet others of the opposite-sex.

17. Staying Friends Some reasons why friendships cool: • Life transition--one friend moves away, takes a new job, or becomes too busy • Trust or confidentiality is broken. • Or they realize they are more different than they initially thought or one experiences personal growth and the other doesn’t.

18. Loneliness A subjective state reflecting the fact that the quality and quantity of relations wanted is lower than what is available. • It is not the same as solitude! • College students often report high levels of loneliness. • Loneliness tends to decline as we age.

19. Lonelinesscont’d • People with secure attachments to parents are less like to be lonely. • Other factors: low self-esteem, poor social skills, culture, and passivity. • People with high levels of emotional intelligence (EQ) report being less lonely than those without high EQ. EQ--the ability to regulate one’s own emotions as well as to be empathic for others’ emotions.