Human males appear more prepared than females to resolve conflicts with same-sex peers

The Development and Preliminary Validation of a Measure of Victimization within the Friendships of Emerging Adults

For emerging adults, high-quality friendships can be an important source of companionship and support. The most commonly studied negative interaction between friends is conflict, yet work with youth suggests more serious victimization also occurs in friendship. In the current study, we developed and obtained preliminary psychometric evidence for the Friendship Victimization Scale, a measure that assesses physical, sexual, relational, and verbal forms of victimization in the friendships of emerging adults, as well as coercive and controlling behaviors. Emerging adults (N = 316, Mage = 21.27 years, SD = 1.47; 60.4% women, 37.0% men; 59.2% White) completed the Friendship Victimization Scale along with measures to examine construct validity. The majority of the sample reported experiencing at least one act of victimization by a friend, and men reported more victimization than did women. Results supported a 2-factor structure, with relational and verbal victimization loading on one factor and physical and sexual victimization and controlling behaviors loading on the other. Cronbach's alphas exceeded .90 for the total score and both subscales. Greater friendship victimization was predicted by negative features in each of a best and a challenging friendship, even after accounting for negative features in a dating relationship, and was unrelated to positive features in any of these relationships. Overall, results indicate that victimization is common in emerging adults' friendships. The findings provide preliminary evidence for the utility of the Friendship Victimization Scale as a measure of this understudied source of risk in the interpersonal lives of emerging adults.

Why Warmth Matters More Than Competence: A New Evolutionary Approach

Multiple lines of evidence suggest that there are two major dimensions of social perception, often called warmth and competence, and that warmth is prioritized over competence in multiple types of social decision-making. Existing explanations for this prioritization argue that warmth is more consequential for an observer's welfare than is competence. We present a new explanation for the prioritization of warmth based on humans' evolutionary history of cooperative partner choice. We argue that the prioritization of warmth evolved because ancestral humans faced greater variance in the warmth of potential cooperative partners than in their competence but greater variance in competence over time within cooperative relationships. These each made warmth more predictive than competence of the future benefits of a relationship, but because of differences in the distributions of these traits, not because of differences in their intrinsic consequentiality. A broad, synthetic review of the anthropological literature suggests that these conditions were characteristic of the ecologies in which human social cognition evolved, and agent-based models demonstrate the plausibility of these selection pressures. We conclude with future directions for the study of preferences and the further integration of social and evolutionary psychology.

Relationship dissolution in the friendships of emerging adults: How, when, and why?

Maintaining high-quality friendships is a key predictor of well-being during emerging adulthood, yet factors leading to friendship dissolution-defined here as actions that may decrease friendship quality or end the relationship completely-are poorly understood. Using an open-ended interview paradigm, we elicited 179 emerging adults' (55.9% female; M_age = 20.42, SD = 1.54; 95.0% full-time university students) description of their behavioral responses to 53 hypothetical vignettes involving challenging situations with same-gender friends. We systematically coded participants' 9,487 verbatim responses, identifying three types of friendship dissolution behaviors: completely ending the friendship, distancing from the friend, or compartmentalizing aspects of the friendship. Examining the occurrence of each response across different types of challenging situations, we found that transgressions by friends were more likely to elicit reported use of distancing and ending strategies. We also began to investigate associations between interpersonal goals and dissolution strategies, finding that stronger endorsement of the goal of asserting oneself was linked to greater odds of reporting ending the friendship, whereas the more participants reported that they would be trying to stay friends, the lower the odds of reporting either ending the relationship or distancing from the friend. Implications for future research on interpersonal processes in friendships are discussed.

Psychological and Gender Differences in a Simulated Cheating Coercion Situation at School

This study aimed to analyze gender, anxiety, and psychological inflexibility differences of high school students’ behaviors in a simulated situation of peer coercion into academic cheating. Method: A total of 1147 volunteer adolescents participated, (Men: N = 479; Mage = 16.3; Women: N = 668; Mage = 16.2). The participants saw 15 s animated online video presenting peer coercion into an academic cheating situation, including a questionnaire about their reactions to face the situation. They also answered the State–Trait Anxiety Inventory for children and adolescents and the Avoidance and Fusion Questionnaire for Youth (AFQ-Y). Gender was associated with the behaviors facing the situation. Higher state anxiety and inflexibility were present in those participants that avoided aggressive behaviors facing the situation; on the other hand, trait anxiety was present in those who reacted aggressively. Finally, higher anxiety and inflexibility were associated with the used moral disengagement mechanisms, but also with peers’ perception as sanctioning or being against the participants’ decision. The most aggressive students were more flexible and less stressed than those who tried to solve assertively. Expectations about peers seem to be relevant to the decision-making facing moral dilemmas and peer victimization.

Initial Development of a Situation-based Measure of Emerging Adults' Social Competence in their Same-gender Friendships

This paper describes the development of a situation-based tool to assess emerging adults' social competence with same-gender friends, providing information about (1) challenges occurring in these relationships, (2) the behaviors used to manage these situations, and (3) the perceived effectiveness of these strategies. Undergraduates (N = 747; 409 women; M_age  = 20.16, SD = 1.43) participated in five studies. Transgressions, conflicts of interest, and support situations emerged as key challenges, and emerging adults reported using aggressive, assertive, avoidant, and apologizing behaviors to manage these situations. In general, apologizing and assertive behaviors were judged more effective than aggressive or avoidant behaviors. Results yielded the Inventory of Friendship Challenges for Emerging Adults (IFCEA), which showed expected associations with measures of interpersonal behavior.

Contest versus scramble competition: sex differences in the quest for status

Both sexes benefit from attaining higher status than same-sex peers, but each sex employs distinctive competitive tactics. Men engage in conspicuous public contests for status and directly interfere with others' success. Despite frequent and intense contests which occasionally turn lethal, men typically employ ritualized tactics and accept status differentials within a group. More recently, research has examined women's subtle, safe, and often solitary, competitive tactics. Women's main competitive tactics consist of maintaining a few long-term alliances and gaining advantages when competitors are not present. When competitors are present, women utilize leveling, social exclusion, and low-cost forms of contest competition to best other women.

Competition Elicits more Physical Affiliation between Male than Female Friends

Across species, cooperative alliances must withstand internal tensions. The mechanisms by which allies respond to competing against one another have been studied extensively in non-human animals, but much less so in humans. In non-human species, affiliative physical contact and close proximity immediately following a contest are utilized to define reconciliation between opponents. The proportion of conflicts that are reconciled however differs markedly by species and sex. The purpose of this study was to examine whether, like many other social species, humans utilize physical contact and close proximity following a competition between friends, and if so, whether one sex is more likely to exhibit these behaviors. Using a standardized procedure, two same-gender friends competed against one another producing a clear winner and loser. Prior to and following the competition, the friends relaxed together. Videotapes of the relaxation periods showed that male friends spent more time than female friends engaged in affiliative physical contact and close proximity both before and after the competition, but not during a brief intervening cooperative task. These results suggest that in the face of competing self-interests, physical contact and close proximity facilitate repair of males’ more than females’ valuable relationships.