Social Construction, Gender/Sex Similarity and Social Interaction in Close Personal Relationships

Abstract

Participants maintained a social interaction diary, a variant of the Rochester Interaction Record, to describe their close personal relationships. Relationships were defined using relative frequency of contact with different individuals and via participants' descriptions of relational partners. Individuals with whom participants had more contact were more likely to be described as close friends than were individuals with whom participants had less contact. The results suggest that the characteristics of same-sex relationships depend less on the specific partners composing the relationship than do the characteristics of opposite-sex relationships. As hypothesized, the characteristics of close same-sex relationships did not differ from the characteristics of other same-sex relationships, although interactions with best friends were more intimate than interactions with other same-sex partners. In contrast, the characteristics of close opposite-sex relationships differed from the characteristics of other opposite-sex relationships. Men and women who were romantically involved had more contact with their romantic partners than with other opposite-sex persons, and they had more contact with their romantic partners than men and women who were not romantically involved had with their most frequent opposite-sex interaction partner. For women, interactions with most frequent opposite-sex interaction partners were more affectively rewarding and instrumentally positive if these men were romantic partners, whereas for men, the affective quality and instrumentality of interactions with most frequent opposite-sex interaction partners did not differ as function of whether these women were romantic partners.

Everyday lies in close and casual relationships.

“…Second, it is the only research to include a measure of participants' opportunities to lie, that is, the number of social interactions they had with each partner. Previous studies that reported that people told more lies to close relationship partners than to casual ones (Hample, 1980;Lippard, 1988) are difficult to interpret, in that people interact more frequently with close partners than with casual ones (Nezlek, 1995). Rate of lying (number of lies per number of social interactions) is a more appropriate measure.…”

Psychological well‐being and day‐to‐day social interaction among older adults

“…Unfortunately in this regard, many of the studies that have used intensive repeated measures techniques such as the Rochester Interaction Record have studied collegiate samples and have therefore studied interactions involving a relatively limited variety of relational partners, typically close same-sex friends and romantic partners. Keeping such a limitation in mind, such studies have suggested that the absence or presence of different relational partners (such as best friends or romantic partners) is related to interaction outcomes such as satisfaction, intimacy, and self-presentational concerns (e.g., Leary et al, 1994;Nezlek, 1995;Wheeler & Nezlek, 1977). These studies have suggested that interaction outcomes associated with the absence or presence of different relational partners may in turn be differentially related to more dispositional measures such as depressive symptoms and that, at least among collegians, romantic partners are one of the more important relational partners in this regard.…”

“…Such a scheme is similar to that used by Nezlek et al (2000) except that Nezlek et al differentiated interactions at work from those in other contexts, a distinction that was not appropriate for this study because the participants were retired. Given the importance of interactions with romantic partners in studies of the day-to-day interactions of collegians (e.g., Nezlek, 1995), the importance of interactions with spouses in the studies of the day-to-day interactions of adults (Nezlek et al, 2000), and the importance of the quality of marital relationships in studies of well-being (e.g., Gove, Hughes, & Style, 1983), we expected that interactions with spouses would be related more closely to well-being than interactions with other relational partners. It is important to note that this prediction is also consistent with Carstensen's (1995) socioemotional selectivity theory.…”

Attachment styles in everyday social interaction

“…fear). Moreover, although Tidwell et al did not find relationships between attachment style and how people distinguished interactions with same-sex others, intimacy concerns have been found to be relevant to close same-sex relationships (Nezlek, 1995). With these considerations in mind, no specific hypotheses were formed about relationships between attachment style and how people distinguished interactions with close and not close others.…”