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August 15, 2026Journal of Research on Adolescence

The power of friendships in adolescents' daily lives: Bi‐directional within‐person associations between friendship interaction quality and affect

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Authors

GDGillian DebraNMNathalie MichelsMGMatteo Giletta

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Overview

Ecological momentary assessment study reveals bidirectional links between friendship quality and momentary affect in adolescents, highlighting dynamic day-to-day emotional impacts.

Key Points

  • To examine bidirectional within-person associations between daily friendship interaction quality (warmth and conflict) and momentary affect in adolescents, testing potential moderation by individual traits.
  • Conducted an ecological momentary assessment (EMA) study with 5 surveys daily over 2 consecutive weeks in N=247 adolescents (mean age = 12.94 years; 108 females, 224 identified as Belgian).
  • Applied pre-registered Dynamic Structural Equation Modeling (DSEM) to evaluate prospective lagged and concurrent within-person associations, testing moderation by depressive symptoms, rumination, and gender.
  • Higher momentary negative affect prospectively predicted greater subsequent friendship conflict, whereas friendship warmth prospectively predicted higher subsequent positive affect.
  • Concurrent exploratory models showed conflictual interactions were associated with higher negative affect and lower positive affect, while warm interactions showed the reverse pattern.
  • Associations between friendship interaction quality and momentary affect were not consistently moderated by depressive symptoms, habitual rumination, or gender.

Cite This Study

Debra et al. (2026) studied this question.

synapsesocial.com/papers/6a8019fe75c2e31742c8658ahttps://doi.org/10.1111/jora.70245
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