Effects of Friendship on Prosocial Intentions and Behavior

BERNDT, THOMAS J. Effects of Friendship on Prosocial Intentions and Behavior. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1981, 52, 636-643. On the basis of their responses to a sociometric measure, kindergarten, second-, and fourth-grade children were paired either with a close friend or with an acquaintance (a classmate that they neither strongly liked nor strongly disliked). In a separate interview children were asked how they intended to behave toward their partner in specific situations where they could share with or help their partner. For each situation, children also were asked what they thought they should do, what their partner expected them to do, and what they really wanted to do. Girls said they would share and help a friend more than an acquaintance; boys said they would treat friends and acquaintances similarly. For both friends and acquaintances, what children said they would do was highly correlated with what they said they should do and wanted to do, but uncorrelated with what they believed their partner expected them to do. In another session the pairs of friends and acquaintances were observed as they performed 2 tasks. On each task, sharing with or helping the partner was likely to result in fewer rewards for a child. No effects of friendship were found for the task that involved helping. Sex differences were found for the task that involved sharing a crayon. Evidence from several measures indicated that boys behaved less prosocially toward friends than toward acquaintances. Friend-acquaintance differences were not significant for girls. The results were explained in terms of boys' competition with friends.