A social relations perspective on attachment orientations and judgments of relationship quality in friendships

Abstract

How well friendships are going likely depends on perceptions people have about their friends, such as how they approach relationships in general. Adopting a social relations model perspective, we examined sources of variation in relationship quality (across 10 indicators) and attachment judgments in a sample of 377 quads of friends (N = 1,508 individuals). Relationship quality largely stemmed from the shared interactions between two people, although some perceiver variance was found. Judgments of avoidance largely stemmed from consensus; judgments of anxiety came from a mix of consensus and perceiver variance (i.e., tending to see everyone as anxious or not). Bivariate analyses found that people seen as anxious were seen as ambivalent friends — providing both positive and negative experiences for friends.