Naive theories of friendship : From a cross-cultural perspective

该项目旨在调查日本儿童、青少年和年轻人之间天真的友谊理论，并将其与先前研究提出的西方人的友谊理论进行比较。在三项研究中，共有近300名参与者--儿童(从二年级到六年级)、青少年(初中生)和年轻人(大学生)--在个人访谈中被问及与友谊有关的问题以及他们与朋友的日常互动。结果表明，首先，日本和西方参与者对友谊的概念没有差异。也就是说，日本参与者具有与西方人相同的“朋友”内涵和朋友结构。日本人清楚而相似地理解什么是友谊，以及与最好的朋友的关系与普通朋友的关系有何不同。其次，与德国孩子相比，日本孩子说出的朋友数量要多得多，而且他们不愿意把一些同龄人和/或同学排除在朋友之外。可以证明，这是因为日本儿童成长在一种鼓励人们对他人敏感、与他人发展和谐关系的文化中。第三，然而，很难同时与许多朋友进行密集互动，日本儿童区分每个朋友的亲密程度，并在日常生活中有选择地与他们互动。

This project was aimed at investigating naive theories of friendship among Japanese children, adolescents and young adults by comparing with those of Westerners which were suggested by previous research. In three studies, a total of nearly 300 participants-children (from second to six graders), adolescents (junior-high schoolers), and young adults (college students)-were questioned in an individual interview about issues related to friendship and their everyday interactions with friends.The results indicated that, first, there were no conceptual differences of friendship between Japanese and Western participants.That is, the Japanese participants have the same connotation of "friends" and the same structure of friends as Westerners. The Japanese have clear and similar understandings what is friendship and how a relationship with the best friend differs from that of a casual friend. Second, the Japanese children named a significantly larger number of friends than their German counterparts, and they are reluctant to exclude some of agemates and/or classmates from the category of friend. Provably because Japanese children have grown up in a culture that encourages people to be sensitive toward others and to develop harmonious relationships with others. Third, however, it is difficult to interact intensively with many friends at the same time, Japanese children differentiate the closeness of each of their friends and interact selectively with them in everyday life.