Similarity between Adolescent Best Friends

The present study examined similarity between adolescents and their best friends on a variety of attributes. All 8th and 11th graders from several public and private schools completed a questionnaire that asked about their smoking behaviors, smoking attitudes, dispositional compliance, the importance offour activities, and parental socioeconomic status. They were asked also to identify their best school friend. Eighty-five percent of the adolescents could be matched and compared to their bestfriend on the 10 variables of interest. Adolescents were more similar to their friends than to other non-selected adolescents on all of the attributes. They were more similar on behaviors than on attitudes and the importance of activities, and the least similar on dispositional compliance and socioeconomic status. In addition, there were effects of the grade and ethnicity of the friendship dyad on the amount of similarity. Younger and African-American adolescents were less similar to their friends than were older and European-American adolescents.