The effect of best friend selection among freshmen

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate if participants changed their best friend or not over a three-month period after they entered university. The second purpose was to clarify how the pattern of selection of their best friend influenced the indices of interaction with friends among three points in time. Participants numbered 304 freshmen (131 male and 173 female students). They were administered a questionnaire on 3 occasions. According to the results, 44.4% of participants did not change their best friend during the 3 months. However, 55.6% of participants changed their best friend once or twice. These results showed the occurrence of early differentiation of relatedness in relationship development. On the other hand, these results also suggested that the reason why the relationship developed could not be explained only by the early differentiation of relatedness.