Behavior state matching during interactions of preadolescent friends versus acquaintances.

Abstract

Face-to-face interactions of 56 sixth-grade friend and acquaintance pairs were videotaped, heart rate was recorded, and saliva cortisol was sampled. During interactions the friend dyads were more attentive, affectively positive, vocal, active, involved, relaxed, and playful, and their cortisol values suggested lower stress levels. They also spent more time together in mutually interested and animated states, and they assigned higher ratings to liking their interactions and interaction partners. Greater coherence in the friend pairs' behavior states and in the acquaintance pairs' vocal activity suggested that the friend pairs more often shared the same behavior state (e.g., playful), and the acquaintance pairs more often paid attention to each others' turn-taking signals, so that when one person talked, the other was silent.

Face-to-face Interaction Behaviors of Preadolescent Same-Sex and Opposite-Sex Friends and Acquaintances

“…That the best friends engaged in more laughing is consistent with the more affectively positive ratings the best friend dyads received in our earlier study [7], although percent time laughing coded in real time in this study is a more precise measure than the rating used in the earlier study. These data along with less time spent interrupting and talking at the same time and the greater time agreeing suggests that the best friend dyads had more positive interactions than the acquaintance dyads.…”

“…For the first study the videotapes were rated for several interaction behaviors including attentiveness, affect, vocalizations, activity level, involvement, relaxation and playfulness [7]. The tapes were also coded for behavior states including disengaged, neutral, interested, animated and playful states and for what percent time the members of the dyad were jointly in these states.…”

“…Face-to-face interactions of 56 sixth grade friend and acquaintance pairs were videotaped in an earlier study by our group [7]. During those interactions the best friend dyads versus the acquaintance dyads were rated as being more attentive, affectively positive, vocal, active, involved, relaxed, and playful, and their lower cortisol levels suggested less stress.…”

“…For the [7] study the preadolescents first specified their best friend and acquaintance. To check the consistency of their selection, we asked them to specify the student they knew "the best" and the student they knew "the least" so that we could form close friend and acquaintance pairs, The children were then paired with their best friend and with an acquaintance for separate interactions (as in a repeated measures design).…”

“…The purpose of the current study was to recode the archival videotapes of the [7] study to address questions raised by the ratings from that study including: 1) did preadolescent best friend pairs behave more similarly and did they have more positive interactions than acquaintance pairs; and 2) did preadolescent same-sex best friend dyads behave more similarly and did they have more positive interactions than opposite-sex dyads. …”