International Encyclopedia of Communication Online

Extract

This entry focuses on communication skills associated with success in same-sex friendship across the life-span. The ability to maintain a variety of relationships throughout life is important to people's well-being, of which friendship is among the most significant. Individuals who lack friends experience myriad adjustment problems including drug and alcohol abuse, academic failure, antisocial conduct, depression, loneliness, anxiety, and fatigue. The relationship between friendship and communication has been studied in a variety of ways. One particularly promising approach involves analysis of individuals' conceptions and expectations of friendship, as well as the daily activities in which they engage ( Zarbatany et al. 1990 ). Understanding what people think of and do with their friends tells us something about the duties and obligations of being a friend, the standards to which friends are held, and the kinds of skills through which such duties and standards are met (→  Developmental Communication ). Three caveats are in order before going into detail. First, most work in this area has centered on communicative competencies predictive of children's friendship success. Perhaps this is so that negative, long-term consequences can be avoided through a concerted effort to understand and remediate skill deficiencies early in life, or because of the common assumption that romance ... log in or subscribe to read full text