Browsing by Author "Putallaz, Martha"

Friendship has consistently been found to act as a buffer against psychological maladjustment for healthy youth and youth experiencing difficulties including parental divorce and natural disasters. Less known is the role of friendship may have for females coping with a chronic health problem. Therefore, the objective of the current study was to evaluate the health factors and friendship precursors that may influence friendship, and in turn, how those friendships may predict psychosocial adjustment. A sample of chronically ill females (N = 30) was compared to a control group of healthy females (N = 45) on measures of opportunities for social interaction, similarity to their best friend, social capability, friendship quality, and psychological adjustment. Results revealed that health condition and friendship precursors were not associated with friendship quality. However, higher friendship quality was predictive of fewer externalizing symptoms for healthy girls. Additionally, positive parent relationships predicted fewer internalizing symptoms for both groups of females. Notably, chronically ill girls noted their friendships were higher in punishment and lower in companionship than healthy girls. Further assessment, including objective measures, will elucidate the beneficial processes of friendships and parent-child relationships that buffer youth from maladjustment.

Using a mix of quantitative and qualitative measures, the current study examines how jealousy is experienced and expressed in close peer relationships during emerging adulthood. 193 college student participants (94 males, 99 females) described actual jealousy experiences, answered questions from a newly developed jealousy questionnaire, and completed questionnaires assessing individual characteristics. To better understand the phenomenon of jealousy, descriptive data are presented regarding a variety of jealousy features. An interest in the role of gender and relationship context prompted an examination of the association between gender, relationship context, and jealousy variables. Additionally, a number of hypotheses are tested regarding factors that affect jealousy intensity and frequency. Results suggest jealousy experiences during college are normative and similarly experienced by males and females. However, friendship jealousy has qualities that differ markedly from romantic relationship jealousy. Implications of these findings are discussed. Study limitations and ideas for future research are also addressed.

Self-distancing has been consistently found to regulate emotional reactions and attenuate the strength of automatic behavioral responses to many negative interpersonal experiences. Because self-distancing is an easily deployable emotion regulation strategy it holds great promise as a large-scale intervention to assist individuals in coping with the distress that is an inevitable part of interpersonal relationships. Despite its promise, however, there remain many unknowns regarding self-distancing. The aim of the present research was to examine these unknowns. Results of the present research suggest that individual difference and contextual factors are not associated with the use of self-distancing, that self-distancing does not help buffer associations between negative relationship schemas (attachment anxiety and rejection sensitivity) and chronic indices of adjustment, and that individual differences (attachment avoidance and public self-consciousness) do not moderate its effectiveness. In addition, results suggest that self-distancing does not broaden individual’s thought-action repertoires in response to a negative interpersonal experience and that it is not associated with linguistic psychological distancing. These questions were examined on a sample of 293 Duke Undergraduate students, through a mixture of self-report measures and random assignment to experimental condition, either self-distanced or its conceptual opposite, self-immersed.

The current project is the first study to investigate the competence of academically gifted youth across multiple dimensions of the peer system. To date, there is no comprehensive examination of the social functioning of gifted youth, severely limiting what is known about the overall social world of gifted youth and the extent to which the subset of gifted youth with peer problems experience the same adjustment difficulties related to negative peer interactions. By examining how aspects of sociometric status, friendship and social network centrality relate to a myriad of outcome variables, the current study permits a comprehensive investigation of the risk profile associated with problematic peer relations among gifted youth within the adjustment domains (behavioral, academic and psychological functioning). Participants included 327 adolescents, 149 identified as gifted, who were initially assessed in the 7th grade and were then reassessed 2 years later.

Consistent with prior research, findings from the current student provided evidence that academic giftedness was generally associated with more positive peer relations as well as more positive functioning across behavioral, academic and adjustment domains when compared to non-gifted adolescents. However, findings from the current study did not find evidence suggesting that gifted youth experience significantly less peer problems than their non-gifted peers. As such, the current study substantiates predictions that there are indeed subgroups of gifted youth who experience peer problems and they were found to be similarly at risk as non-gifted adolescents with peer problems regarding negative behavioral, academic and psychological adjustment. However, the most alarming finding revealed that the negative effects of being rejected were more pronounced for gifted students, who were the most victimized students in the entire sample, even more than non-gifted peers who were rejected. Findings from the current study highlight the complexity of the social world of gifted adolescents and underscore the importance for future research to continue examining the social difficulties of gifted youth. Limitations and implications of these results are discussed.