Cross-Sex Friendships in a Changing Society: A Comparative Analysis of Cross-Sex Friendships, Same-Sex Friendships, and Romantic Relationships

365 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1988.In this dissertation I attempt to identify the antecedent conditions predicting the frequency of cross-sex friendships, to investigate the functions those friendships serve, and to determine in what ways the communication of cross-sex friends might be differentiated from that of same-sex friends and romantic partners.An eleven page survey and the videotaped conversations of 120 dyads were used. An individual's romantic status predicted the frequency of cross-sex friends for females but not males--whereas the frequency of interaction with opposite-sex others predicted the frequency of cross-sex friends for males but not females. The need for opposite-sex companionship was positively correlated with the frequency of cross-sex friendships for females; for males the need to be expressive and the need for sexual gratification was positively correlated with the number of cross-sex friends.Individuals placed more than a moderate degree of importance on the functions served by cross-sex friends, and support was also garnered for the proposition that in many ways these functions are unique and cannot be met by same-sex friends or romantic partners.There was no significant difference in the intimacy displayed and reported on by males and females in cross-sex friendships, nor were there significant differences in attempts to control conversations, or actual control of those conversations. Though male same-sex friends were rated as being less intimate than the other dyads by the coders, when reporting on self-disclosures and emotional expressiveness they indicated being just as intimate as were males in cross-sex friendships, but less so than females in same-sex friendships, and males and females in romantic relationships.Females in same-sex friendships reported self-disclosing more and being more emotionally expressive than all other individuals, and the ratings of intimacy by the coders verified their self-reports. Though romantic partners reported self-disclosing more and being more expressive than all other individuals in all other dyads (except for females in same-sex friendships), they were rated by the observers of the videotapes as lower in intimacy than the cross-sex friends and female same-sex friends, and higher than the male same-sex friends.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD