An Eriksonian Approach to Conceptions of Friendship of Aggressive and Withdrawn Preadolescent Girls

Abstract

A multi-assessment approach was used to examine problems in social development involving the interaction of the cognitive and affect domains. Teachers identified 30 aggressive, 30 withdrawn and 30 popular girls by the Behavioral Description Form, and then administered the Children's Friendship Expectancy Inventory that taps conventional morality, mutual activities, loyalty and empathy. A TAT-type projective test evaluated psychosocial adaptation on five ego stages. In the affect domain, the withdrawn and the aggressives were similar in the inadequacy of their conflict resolutions, a possible development delay problem. The best discriminator of the low and high status girls was group identity versus alienation, posited by Newman and Newman (1975) as the basic conflict of early adolescence. The withdrawn and the aggressives differed in their conceptions of friendship. The withdrawns placed less value on empathy and more value on loyalty than the aggressives, whose social cognitions were more like the populars than the withdrawns.