Chapter Review

KEY TERMS

friendship

image communal friendships

image agentic friendships

identity support

valued social identities

cross-category friendships

professional peers

friendship rules

FWB relationships

Chapter Activities

  1. Consider this statement from scholar William Rawlins: “Friendships are permeated with ambiguities.” What does it mean to you? If you consider the many types of friendship, how they are created, and all the different rules for each, is it even possible to fully define friendship? What characteristics of a friendship would you add to the ones listed in the chapter?

    Question

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  2. image Watch the videos on communal friendships and agentic friendships. Then write short journal entries describing two of your friendships, one of each type. What are the differences in the relationships? (Be as specific as possible.) Do friends ever change categories? Have the reasons for considering friends agentic or communal ever changed?

    Question

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  3. Researchers Blieszner and Adams (1992) study friendship by asking people “What does friendship mean to you?” They have discovered that social and individual characteristics, such as age or stage of life, influence a person’s view of friendship. Conduct your own version of this survey by asking several males and females, ranging in age and life experience, the same question. Then, write a short analysis about their responses: What did they say? How do male and female responses differ, or how are they similar? Do age or life experiences affect the responses?

    Question

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  4. Which one of Argyle and Henderson’s (1984) 10 friendship rules is the most important in your life? Which rule is possibly the least important? Have you ever had a friendship end because one of these rules was broken? What kind of relationship repair is necessary after a rule is broken?

    Question

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  5. With a partner, discuss times you both faced a friendship challenge such as betrayal or geographic separation. How did you deal with the difficulty? Did the challenge end the friendship? What other friendship challenges have you faced? List some suggestions for handling these challenges and share them with the class.

    Question

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