Naive theories of friendship : From a cross-cultural perspective

本项目的目的是通过与先前研究中提出的西方人的友谊理论进行比较，调查日本儿童、青少年和年轻人的幼稚友谊理论。在三项研究中，共有近300名参与者-儿童（二至六年级），青少年（初中生）和年轻人（大学生）-在一次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，日本和西方参与者之间没有友谊的概念差异。也就是说，日本参与者具有与西方人相同的“朋友”内涵和相同的朋友结构。日本人对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着清晰而相似的理解。第二，日本儿童比德国儿童命名的朋友数量要多得多，他们不愿意将一些同学和/或同学排除在朋友之外。这是因为日本的儿童在一种鼓励人们对他人敏感并与他人建立和谐关系的文化中长大。第三，然而，很难与许多朋友同时进行密集的互动，日本儿童区分他们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.