Response Evaluations and Decisions: Importance of Friendship and Stress

Affective ties play a significant role in how adolescents interpret ambiguous social information, with such interpretations influencing their social behaviors and psychological adjustment. This brief report evaluated affective tie differences (friends versus unfamiliar peers) in three types of response evaluations and decisions (RED; self-efficacy, response valuation, outcome expectancies) pertaining to avoidance and revenge coping. Also explored was whether variability in stress helps to explain RED affective tie differences. Participants were 179 adolescents ( M age = 13.72; 54% female; 23% minority) who completed a social information processing measure. Results revealed that adolescents reported more negative peer group outcome expectations, more negative response valuations, and lower self-efficacy if they used revenge and avoidance in response to peer provocation by friends (versus unfamiliar peers). Several affective tie differences in RED revenge became nonsignificant when stress was controlled, a novel finding pointing to the importance of assessing stress in studies of affective ties and RED.