Social Construction,Gender/Sex Similarity and Social Interaction in Close Personal Relationships

Abstract

Participants maintained a social interaction diary, a variant of the Rochester Interaction Record, to describe their close personal relationships. Relationships were defined using relative frequency of contact with different individuals and via participants' descriptions of relational partners. Individuals with whom participants had more contact were more likely to be described as close friends than were individuals with whom participants had less contact. The results suggest that the characteristics of same-sex relationships depend less on the specific partners composing the relationship than do the characteristics of opposite-sex relationships. As hypothesized, the characteristics of close same-sex relationships did not differ from the characteristics of other same-sex relationships, although interactions with best friends were more intimate than interactions with other same-sex partners. In contrast, the characteristics of close opposite-sex relationships differed from the characteristics of other opposite-sex relationships. Men and women who were romantically involved had more contact with their romantic partners than with other opposite-sex persons, and they had more contact with their romantic partners than men and women who were not romantically involved had with their most frequent opposite-sex interaction partner. For women, interactions with most frequent opposite-sex interaction partners were more affectively rewarding and instrumentally positive if these men were romantic partners, whereas for men, the affective quality and instrumentality of interactions with most frequent opposite-sex interaction partners did not differ as function of whether these women were romantic partners.

Keywords

defining relationships interaction diary social construction

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Altman, I. & Taylor, D.A. (1973) Social Penetration: The Development of Interpersonal Relationships. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.

Allport, F.H. (1967) `A Theory of Enestruence (Event Structure Theory): Report of Progress', American Psychologist 22: 1-24.

Argyle, M. & Henderson, M. (1984) `The Rules of Friendship', Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 1: 211-237.

Bales, R.F. (1950) Interaction Process Analysis. Cambridge, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Berger, P.L. & Luckman, T. (1966) The Social Construction of Reality. Garden City, NY: Doubleday-Anchor.

Berscheid, E. , Snyder, M. & Omoto, A.M. (1989) `The Relationship Closeness Inventory: Assessing the Closeness of Interpersonal Relationships', Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 57: 792-807.

Byrne, D. (1971) The Attraction Paradigm. New York: Academic Press.

Cliff, N. (1959) `Adverbs as Multipliers', Psychological Review 66: 27-44.

Duck, S.W. (1990) `Relationships as Unfinished Business: Out of the Frying Pan and into the Fire', Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 7: 5-29.

10.

Festinger, L. , Schachter, S. & Back, K. (1950) Social Pressures in Informal Groups: A Study of Human Factors in Housing. New York: Harper & Brothers.

11.

Goffman, E. (1971) Relations in Public. New York: Basic Books.

12.

Harre, R. & Secord, P.F. (1973) The Explanation of Social Behavior. Totowa, NJ: Littlefield, Adams & Co.

13.

Hays, R.B. (1989) `The Day-to-Day Functioning of Close vs Casual Friendships', Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 6: 21-38.

14.

Kaplan, J. (1992) Bartlett's Familiar Quotations. Boston: Little, Brown & Company.

15.

Kelley, H.H. & Thibaut, J.W. (1978) Interpersonal Relations: A Theory of Interdependence. New York: Wiley.

16.

Nezlek, J.B. (1993) `The Stability of Social Interaction', Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 65: 930-942.

17.

Nezlek, J.B. & Wheeler, L. (1984) `RIRAP: Rochester Interaction Record Analysis Package', Psychological Documents 14: 6. (Ms. No. 2610.)

18.

Nezlek, J.B. , Wheeler, L. & Reis, H. (1983) `Studies of Social Interaction', in H. Reis (ed.) Naturalistic Approaches to Studying Social Interaction. New Directions for Methodology of Social and Behavioral Science, 15, pp. 57-75. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

19.

O'Meara, D. (1989) `Cross-sex Friendship: Four Basic Challenges of an Ignored Relationship', Sex Roles 21: 525-543.

20.

Pilkington, C.J. & Bilbro, K. (1993) `Interactions with Same-sex Friends, Opposite-sex Friends, and Lovers: How Different Are They?' Paper presented at the annual conference of the International Network on Personal Relationships, June, Milwaukee, WI.

21.

Reis, H.T. & Wheeler, L. (1991) `Studying Social Interaction Using the Rochester Interaction Record', in M. Zanna (ed.) Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 24, pp. 269-318. Orlando, FL: Academic Press.

22.

Shotland, R.L. & Craig, J.M. (1989) `Can Men and Women Differentiate Between Friendly and Sexually Interested Behavior?' Social Psychology Quarterly 51: 66-73.

23.

Wheeler, L. & Nezlek, J.B. (1977) `Sex Differences in Social Participation', Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 35: 742-754.

24.

Wright, P.H. (1988) `Interpreting Research on Gender Differences in Friendship: A Plea for Caution', Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 5: 367-373.