A Good Quality Friendship - Research Paper Example

Importance of Friendships A good quality friendship is characterized by behaviors which are social, have affection, and other positive elements. There are few negative behaviors such as enmity, conflicts, and other bad features. The quality of friendship has direct social effects on the growth and development of your child. Some of the elements affected by friendships are self-esteem, and social adjustment. Contemporary researchers argues that the quality of friendship affect the success of the children’s social spheres. Quality of friendship may also have some hidden effects such as increasing or reducing the influence of friends on their attitudes and behaviors. High quality friendship reduces the tendency of a person being shy or being withdrawn. As a proverb says “A friend in need is a friend indeed.” This means that friends help and share what they have with each other. A person growing in a high quality friendship, learn these pro-social behaviors. Introduction What brings happiness to people? This is a big question many people ask in psychology (Demir & Weitekamp, 2007). Therefore research needs to be done to find out the importance of friendships in one’s life. Friendship is related to happiness but not much is known about what friendship brings in the happiness of an individual (Demir & Davidson, 2013). Study on sex difference is mainly based on societal, parental, and biological influences. It is important to consider on how friends affect the way individual cope with stress, how they bring happiness and many more (Rose& Rudolph, 2006). This research will help you understand the effects that friends can have in all the stages of your life. Mostly friendships go unappreciated but there is a role played by friends to determine the direction of our lives. Literature review It is important to know that friends affect the way we live, work or school. Briefly these are some of the reasons why friends are important in our lives. We can get important skills from our friends. Some of these skills are necessary for us to be successful in life. For instance friends can sharpen your mind, they can help you understand yourself better. Knowing you strength and weakness help you to decide what kind of career you can pursue at every stage of your life. You can comfortably achieve your goals in life. With friends you will be able to meet and chose your love partner and have a healthy and happier life. When you start your learning process, friendships start from there. Childhood friendship plays an important role in your life because this is the time when significant growth and developmental changes occur. A child acquires some important life skills during this stage and this s the time that they define and shape their lives (Brooks, 2013). During teenage friend influence the love bonds. Sometime this brings about headache to parents, when they worry about the friend of their daughters and sons, who are they with, at what time they are where. But it is important to also note that it is this time that teenage children form bonds that they may go through with to later life. According to flora, parents should stop fighting their children’s friends or restricting them the amount of time they spend with their friend. They should instead invite their children’s friends in their homes and take their time to study them. After which they can advise their children accordingly (Flora, 2013). Likeness among adolescents is usually a key factor in forming friendships. Researchers have ignored this area. Similarities form the basis of friendships in adolescents (Simpkins, S. D. et al, 2006). This is an area that needs thorough study. According to Wise and King, (2008), many researchers have not explored how family environment affects the friendship quality, yet in an environment where people live together, friendship quality tends to be high. According to Neimeyer, Saferstein, and Hagans (2005), Friendship quality is also affected by the adult attachment style. This paper has the findings of the same. When defining what you like and love in life, friends can influence you. You tend to choose a friend who is similar to you. This is a general rule that like will attract like it is important to note that we are likely to fall into this trap of similarity. Therefore we should try to learn also from the opposites. Flora advises that by knowing birds of the same feather flock together, should motivate you to widen the range of friends that you have. When you have friends you will be able to have many more friends. People have a tendency of liking others who are known to be nice and helpful. They also like people who like them. Having these qualities will help you build a big social group. Friends in a high quality friendship support each other through thick and thin. Flora point out that, if you want to harvest the most out of the friends, then put effort to your closest friendships. You only need to be friendly to attract friends. As you grow older you need to trim your friendship to remain with only those ones who can be of importance in your wellbeing. Not all friends are important to your life. There is another side of friendships, a darker one. Friends can bring misery to your life. Those people who you love the most and know well are the ones who are the easiest to betray you if the relationship go wrong. Friend can get you into suffering. In most cases when your friends are doing bad things you will also be attracted to do the same. This is a fact that friends who drink together can confirm. They can also stress your life when they go way to some other important goals or relationship. You should stand strong and be ready to say no to all friends that betray, disappoint, or stress you. For you to be less lonely, you need to put more energy, you time, and attention into having close friends. Loneliness can be troublesome especially when you have it for a long period of time. It is painful to live with it. You should not forget the influence of online friends. Although they cannot be affect you as personal friends, they also affect you qualitatively by playing with you mind and reasoning. They can make good life support. They can also make you miserable. Have meaningful friends on the Facebook and other online platforms. Whether male or female, friends matter. A lot is being said about the difference between male and female friend and male to female friends. All of them have one similarity, the ability to influence you character and life in general. Having friendships with a couple will help to build your relationship. When friends are experiencing similar life experiences, often become the best supporters of each other. Some couples withdraw from their relationship when their relationship turns sour. Couples are helpful especially when it comes to experiences of transition such as being a parent. Raising young children. Also how to helping old people in the family. Work related stress can be a burden to you. With the help of friends, the stress can be alleviated. Investing in these relationships in terms of time is important even though you may become much stretched time wise. You will get a lot psychologically. You can get a reality check from friends. Only the closest friends can tell you how you look when you wear what or tell you to your face about your character. Only close friends who can let you know that your love interests will break your heart. Friends know us well and they see us with a third eye. Although friends can break you or cause you misery as we saw earlier, there are those who care about you and they see you on a good perspective and they can rectify your behavior. Flora points out: “friends are better at describing our behavioral traits than we are” (Flora, 132). Personality researchers take other reports to make a comparison with the self-rating that participants provide. Sometimes the other reports come closer to the point especially for the people who their personality make it hard to view themselves in reality. A company with friends can help you effect social change. Doing things for a community prove to be difficult. For instance, raising funds for charity, fighting for a cause, and making social and physical. It is not easy on your own. In such a case friends are the first step. If you decide to build a block, Facebook gives a platform to enlisting the support of the people. According to Flora being good friends to you friends help them to. So it is a two way directions “Being a friend is a great honor and responsibility, so treat your friends carefully” (p. 235). Being aware of how you’re affecting your friends helps you to work harder to be close to them. You get some returns as well. Procedure The experiment will entail carrying out surveys to find the relationship between friendship and happiness. From the given number of participants, the procedure will entail carrying out what is akin to a social experiment. In particular, the psychological test will be empirically done in order to retain the validity of the data use. The kind of research, in this case, is mostly qualitative. In essence, the variable which will be of utmost concern is the level of happiness. In carrying out the experiment, the participants selected will not be from a particular demography. The participants will have diversity in order to minimize the errors that are inherent in homogenous selections. Concern for human participants Participation in the social experiment is purely out of consent. No one will be coerce or even force to participate in the experiment. Other than that, the participants will be explained to every single step in the process. The intention is to have them well informed about the procedures as well as expectations so that they would abide by the experiment’s expectations. Other than that, the participants must be of good physical as well as mental health. All these will be ascertained through the consent form that will be administered to them. Statistical Procedures The social experiment will be conducted through a survey. The survey will be conducted through what are close to close ended questionnaires. In this kind of survey, the participants will be given questionnaires against which the main variable which is level of happiness (satisfaction) will be measured on a scale. Typical of a qualitative experiment, the values measured will be relative in that they will represent some attribute and not a numerical value. For instance, the closer the level of satisfaction to 7 the happier the participant will be perceived. The lesser the score on the satisfaction scale, the less happy the participant will be. After the collection of the data, they will be organized into tables as well as graphs. To statistically interpret the data collected from the survey, different methods of statistical analysis will be employed. The best and most appropriate way of analyzing the data would be through the Anova. Anova is a qualitative data analysis technique which makes it possible for complicate data to be analyzed statistically to enable one get to know the trend from the data. The analyzed data will be tabulate or graphically represented to make it easy to understand for anyone who will be interested in the experiment. Other than that, regression might also be used in the statistical analysis of the data. For each of the hypotheses, the most appropriate form of statistical analysis was applied. Method Students who participated in this experiment formed the sample of this study. The research was a longitudinal study examining the relationship between happiness and the friendship. The participants had an average age of 19.1 years. This was from the males as well as the females. Three types of relationships (partner, friends, and parents) constituted the factors. Results The results of the study show that the incorporation of information about the quality of personal relations with Parents, Friends, and a Partner occurs as per an averaging model. In spite of some important interaction effects in some ANOVA’s, which is likely be clarified by the high power in the design, it can also be seen that equal weights averaging applies. This is in line with the belongingness literature (for instance Baumeister & Leary, 1995 ; Demir, Ozdemir & Weitekamp’s, 2007) This indicates relationships can be interchangeable of which “good” relationships has the ability to protect people against the bad effects of relationships of a lower quality, or “negative” relationships that can trouble good ones. However, previous researches included more different life domains. There are differences in results. An explanation may be from the reason that the relation of a partner to the other offer various forms of satisfaction. The above analysis showed that the scale values for the stimuli in the three considered parts covered comparable values in the happiness scale. It is only for the medium level of Partner Relation Quality the scale value digressed. However, it would be of utmost importance to study a larger population. You can think of different adolescent groups such as students from different countries and/or disciplines such as biology, adolescents at the church, adolescents on welfare, and many more. However, it would be good if we study a group of adolescents who have children with or without the support from their parents. For this group, one can examine the opposite direction of the child-parent relation in regards to happiness. For older generations, this seems even more intriguing. Conclusion Happiness and friendships are correlated. Human beings are social; this implies that friendship forms the primary reason of human existence. People make friendships from the experiences they have. Over the years, even in times of sadness, people usually come together to face whatever challenge they have. These are the social signs which point to the importance of friendships in happiness. In the discourse, the focus is on a social experiment which sought to measure the relation of happiness to friendships. The participants are allowed to take part out of their own consent. Other than that, the questions that are given out for the survey are closed ended in that the participants chose answers from the choices that were already given. From the experiment carried out, it is quite evident that there is a correlation between happiness and friendship. The level of satisfaction one exhibits in life is influence by the nature of social ties and friendships that the person has. Another study was set to find out how the number of friends one has affects the quality of friendship and happiness among 10 young adults. (5 women and 5 men). The method was to answer questionnaires. (See the attached questionnaires) After the questionnaires, friendship quality brought many of them happiness more than the number of friends. The analysis of the results revealed that companionship also brought more happiness to individuals. These findings were only out of theory and observational research, and therefore it is important to carry out more research. The findings in this paper will help to understand how friendships of different kinds affect your happiness. The variables in this study will be how individual socialize with peers (members of different sex and age). How do they help you cope with stress? How happy an individual is in the relationship? A study set to find out the relationships between friendships and similarities uses 20 young men and women with an average age of 17. They were assessed every year. A friend would be allowed to select his or her friend. Their views on how they can help each other, conflict, companionship, and how they would solve the conflicts among themselves were taken using questionnaires. The finding pointed out that, their perceptions on many of the variables used were similar between friends. A sample of 10 men and 10 women were put under the test. Friendship Qualities Scale (Bukowski, Hoza, and Boivin, 1994) and the Adult Attachment Measure (Hazan and Shaver, 1987) were used to measure. The findings indicated that the avoidant persons had many conflicts and low level of companionship. On the other hand the attached individuals had few conflicts were able to increase the level of companionships. Questionnaires Part A: 1. Would you help a friend if they really need it? a) Yeah of course! b) If I am not busy, I will. c) No. I think they should figure it out themselves. 2. Did you ever spread rumors about your friends? a) No! I would never do that! b) Once or twice or maybe four times. c) Yes. They deserved it. 3. Do you know if your friends trust you? a) Yes at all times. b) Sometimes. c) No, Im not trustworthy. 4. Do your friends say you are a good friend? a) Yea! b) Sometimes c) Never 5. Do you think your friends trust you? a) Yeah they tell me all of their secrets. b) Sometimes c) Never Part B: 1. What is the most important quality a friend needs to have? a) Honesty b) Loyalty b) Trustworthy 2. A friend should be... a) Sweet and upbeat personality b) Someone who always tells you the truth whether you want to hear it or not c) Someone similar to yourself. 3. How many best friends do you have? a) 1-3 best friends b) 5-8 best friends c) so many I cannot count 4. Does your best friend live near you? a) Yes b) No 5. Do you put time and effort in friendships? a) Yes, I work hard at them. b) No, I dont put much effort. 6. Do your feel like your friends let you down at times? a) Yes, all the time b) No, rarely 7. Do you consider yourself a good best friend? a) Yes b) No References Agnew, R. (2012). The interactive effects of peer variables on delinquency. Criminology, 29, 47–72 Anderson, S. A., Russell, C. S., & Schumm, W. R. (1983). Perceived marital quality and family life-cycle categories: A further analysis. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 45, 127-139 Baumeister, R.F., & Leary, M.R. (1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117(3), 497-529 Brooks, J. 2012. The process of parenting, 5th ed. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield Publishing Co. Demir, M., & Davidson, I. (April 01, 2013). Toward a Better Understanding of the Relationship Between Friendship and Happiness: Perceived Responses to Capitalization Attempts, Feelings of Mattering, and Satisfaction of Basic Psychological Needs in Same-Sex Best Friendships as Predictors of Happiness. Journal of Happiness Studies : an Interdisciplinary Forum on Subjective Well-Being, 14, 2, 525-550. Demir, M., & Weitekamp, L. A. (June 01, 2007). I am so Happy `cause Today I found my Friend: Friendship and Personality as Predictors of Happiness. Journal of Happiness Studies : an Interdisciplinary Forum on Subjective Well-Being, 8, 2, 213. Flora, C. (2013). Friendfluence: The surprising ways friends make us who we are. New York: Doubleday. Neimeyer, G., Saferstein, J., & Hagans, C. (January 01, 2005). Attachment as a predictor of friendship qualities in college youth. Social Behavior and Personality, 33, 8, 767. Rose, A. J., & Rudolph, K. D. (January 01, 2006). A review of sex differences in peer relationship processes: potential trade-offs for the emotional and behavioral development of girls and boys. Psychological Bulletin, 132, 1, 98-131. Simpkins, S. D., Parke, R. D., Flyr, M. L., & Wild, M. N. (January 01, 2006). Similarities in Childrens and Early Adolescents Perceptions of Friendship Qualities across Development, Gender, and Friendship Qualities. Journal of Early Adolescence, 26, 4, 491-508. Wise, R. A., & King, A. R. (January 01, 2008). Family Environment as a Predictor of the Quality of College Students Friendships. 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