Conformity and psychological distance in adolescent friendship

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relation between adolescents' views on friendship and personality characteristics. Six hundred twenty (620) randomly-sampled high-school students completed a questionnaire. Hayashi's Quantification Method of the Third Type showed two more-or-less independent dimensions for the views: friends as a source of conformity and preferred psychological distance to them. The students, in accordance with the above two dimensions, were classified into four types: independent, individual, surface, and close friendship seekers. Analyses indicated that these types were related to such personality characteristics as inferiority, family-adjustment, public self-consciousness, frequency of problem-behavior thoughts, and purposes in life. Surface friendship, with high conformity but more psychological distance to each other, might characterize contemporary youth relationship in Japan. The students who viewed friendship in this way, in general, loved family more and were better socially adjusted, but the males of this category felt inferiority and thought about problem behaviors more frequently. © 1994, The Japanese Association of Educational Psychology. All rights reserved.