Psychology and its Contexts (Dec 2014)
Friendship quantity and quality as predictors of rejection sensitivity in adolescents
Abstract
The current study examines friendship quality and quantity as unique predictors of rejection sensitivity in adolescents. The purpose of the study was to analyze whether the unique contributions of friendship quality and quantity differ in adolescent boys and girls. Rejection sensitivity is conceptualized as the disposition to anxiously expect, readily perceive and intensively react to social rejection. That is why rejection sensitivity is considered to be a cognitive-affective mechanism which leads to increase of internalizing problems in children and adolescents (loneliness, social anxiety, depression...). Friendship variables have been found to predict the level of internalizing problems in adolescents. Little to no research, however, has examined friendship quality and quantity as predictors of level of rejection sensitivity. Participants in this study were 184 students (98 girls and 86 boys), aged from 13 to 16 (M=13.83, SD=1). Adolescents completed measures assessing number of their friends, quality of best friendship (self-report questionnaire Friendship qualities scale, Bukowski, Hoza, Boivin, 1994) and rejection sensitivity (self-report questionnaire Rejection sensitivity scale, Downey, Feldman, 1996). Regression analysis indicated that friendship features (companionship, balance, help, security, closeness), friendship quantity and overall friendship quality are significant unique predictors of sensitivity rejection in adolescents with. Results suggest that adolescents with higher number of and higher quality friendships have lower concerns about the possibility and expectation of rejection, which can lead to minimizing the risk of development of internalizing problems. However, only a small proportion of variance was accounted for in rejection sensitivity by the friendship variables (small to medium effect size). This suggests that different kind of peer relationships (peer acceptance, popularity, peer victimization) make unique, differential (greater or lesser) contributions to rejection sensitivity. Different types of peer relations can moderate and mediate each other´s influence on specific types of internalizing problems in adolescents. The future research simultaneously examining more types of peer relationship is needed. There has been empirical evidence that girls have more quality friendships which provide them more emotional and instrumental support, than for boys. Our results support this empirical evidence. Regression analysis indicated, that balance (large effect size), help, security and closeness in friendship (small to medium effect size) and overall friendship quality (medium effect size) are significant unique predictors of rejection sensitivity for adolescent girls, but not for boys. Results suggest that predictors of sensitivity rejection in boys are other than interpersonal factors, for example personal or coping strategies. Further directions in research are discussed.
