Interactive Motifs and Processes in Old Age Friendship

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the connections between interactive motifs and dyadic and network structure and process. Cognitive, affective, and behavioral motifs reveal individuals' propensities to think, feel, and act in certain ways across situations and contexts. Applied to relationships, these interactive motifs reflect how individuals evaluate, respond to, and engage with other people. Thus motifs act as mediators between individual characteristics and the friendship patterns that emerge when partners engage with one another. The chapter analyzes research on older adult friendship to illustrate fundamental aspects of each interactive motif and show how these motifs are expressed through cognitive, affective, and behavioral interactive processes that influence friendship outcomes at the dyadic and network levels. The chapter concludes with discussion and empirical examples of how research on interactive motifs suggests evidencebased approaches for interventions aimed at sustaining psychological well-being.

Friendship in Later Life: A Research Agenda

“…They point to numerous individual, interpersonal, and interactional characteristics that can have an impact on friend relationships and outcomes. Our conceptual framework for friendship research (Adams & Blieszner, 1994; Adams, Hahmann, & Blieszner, 2017; Ueno & Adams, 2006) integrates the psychological and sociological perspectives highlighted in social exchange, convoy, socioemotional selectivity, social network, and other theories to provide a flexible and comprehensive guide for investigating many intersecting dimensions of friendship in old age. Propositions and hypotheses from the focal theory can be formulated around the concepts and variables identified in the friendship framework.…”

“Doing” Intergenerational Friendship: Challenging the Dominance of Age Homophily in Friendship

“…Adams and Blieszner (1989) argued that age peers are likely to share similar experiences in tandem throughout the life course, such as status changes, problems, and losses. Adams, Hahmann, and Blieszner (2017) point out that age-related changes, such as retirement or moving to older age living accommodation, may shape how friendships are conducted. Homophily in friend choice has been purported to reinforce an individual's personal identity through a shared "sameness" (Allan, 2010).…”

A modified conceptual framework for peer relationship amongst community‐dwelling older people in China: A qualitative study

“…The framework demonstrates that friendship patterns are contextualised in the structural, cultural, temporal and spatial contexts. Individual characteristics, consisting of social structural positions and psychological dispositions, which affect each other through interpretation and internalisation, lead to the development of interactive motifs (cognitive, affective and behavioural), which in turn affect friendship patterns (Adams et al., 2016). For either friendship dyads or networks, internal structural features (homogeneity and hierarchy in dyads; size, density, homogeneity and hierarchy in networks) facilitate and constrain interactive processes (cognitive, affective and behavioural), which reciprocally modify or sustain the internal structural features.…”