Matthew Milewski Professor Rios ENC 1102H 6 April 2014

College Students and Boundaries to Interpersonal Friendships

College is a time for education, community, and, for many students, making friendships with tons of new people. But when it comes to forming these connections, are there barriers when it comes to people that differ from each other on religious, racial, or other ways? And more importantly, what benefits do these interpersonal relationships bring? I attempt to analyze this with this research question: Do college students have more difficulty making friendships with individuals that differ from them on a basis of race, religion, or sexuality, and do such friendships provide benefits absent from homogeneous ones? These factors were chosen because they are, in my experience, the most common lines of divide among groups of people. My current conclusions are varied, but suggest that factors like race, religion, and sexuality can be barriers to forming friendships, and that said friendships are correlated with more progressive attitudes. Goldstein, Susan. "Predicting College Students' Intergroup Friendships Across Race/Ethnicity, Religion, Sexual Orientation, and Social Class." Equity and Excellence in Education 46.4 (2013): 502-519. UCF Libraries. Web. 19 March 2014. Susan Goldstein's "Predicting College Students' Intergroup Friendships Across Race/Ethnicity, Religion, Sexual Orientation, and Social Class" seeks to establish information on the creation of friendships during college based on the aforementioned factors. Goldstein opens her article by discussing the many positive impacts intergroup friendships can have, saying "intergroup friendships have been associated with improved intergroup outcomes, including

reduced anxiety (Page-Gould, Mendoza-Denton,&Tropp,2008), diminished expectations of rejection (Barlow, Louis, & Hewstone, 2009), more positive intergroup affect (Wright, Aron, McLaughlin-Volpe, & Ropp, 1997), and increased perceived outgroup variability (Paolini, Hewstone, Cairns, & Voci, 2004)." (Goldstein 503). Analyses of friendships were conducted through the use of questionnaires. Goldstein reaches the conclusion that the potential to form intergroup friendships was largely based on how successful students were able to do so prior to reaching college (with the exception of interracial friendships, which were much more common). Goldstein's study is imperfect, as it only has a small sample (151 people) from a liberal arts college to go off of, but it at least points to how easily intergroup relationships can be established when the student has been brought up in such a background. This makes sense with me, because ultimately people will carry what they have been taught in developmental stages throughout the rest of their life. It's also important to note that since past experiences are so central to this study, it indicates that these factors can indeed be barriers to friendship, making it relevant to my research question. The Human Mind 3 - Making Friends. Dir. Nick Murphy. Perf. Robert Winston. BBC, 2003. Web. "The Human Mind 3- Making Friends" is part of a series of documentaries about the intricacies of the human mind, with this particular one focusing on how people form friendships. I approached this documentary with five different questions: How do people initially form friendships? How do we determine whether friendships are genuine? What are some positive effects of friendship? What causes people to distrust others? Can differences (whether they be cultural, racial, or otherwise) prohibit friendship?

The first question is explored in depth, with the documentary noting that people tend to gravitate towards those that seem approachable and similar to them, which indicates possible differences arising from my chosen factors. On the subject of genuine friendship, it is revealed that people can rarely notice if a friendship isn't true, but signs are there regardless. The film notes that positive effects of friendship are generally empathetic, describing an increased ability to empathize and interact with others as a result. "The Human Mind" also shows that people can distrust others that have physical features typically classified as negative, which suggests that racial connotations could have a negative impact on people's willingness to make friends with certain people. This would imply that, yes, people can oftentimes distrust others reasons that are simply due to differences within a person's background. "The Human Mind 3 - Making Friends" helps my research question by describing how exactly humans conduct the process of making friends. Muraco, Anna. "Heterosexual evaluations of hypothetical friendship behavior based on sex and sexual orientation." Journal of Social & Personal Relationships 22.5 (2005): 587-605. UCF Libraries. Web. 22 March 2014. "Heterosexual evaluations of hypothetical friendship behavior based on sex and sexual orientation" is focused on what beliefs are typically held by heterosexual males and females about members of their own sex that are either heterosexual or homosexual. The article begins by introducing the concepts of sexism and heterosexism (the latter being the oppression of homosexual men and women), and discussing how they shape social attitudes of friendship. The study took quantitative and qualitative measurements: the quantitative measurements were formed through assigning levels of appropriateness to several vignettes, while qualitative measurements were collected from comments made during the study. The article draws the

conclusions that both heterosexual men and women held heterosexist attitudes towards the same sex, but weren't opposed to being friends with said individuals. The biggest problem with this article is that it is not as relevant as it used to be; there has been a relative whirlwind of support for the LGBT movement since the time this article was released in 2005. Despite this however, the article also seems to suggest that if heterosexist individuals weren't aware of a friend's sexuality, it wouldn't pose much of an issue (at least with individuals of the same sex as themselves). I've gotten this impression myself while overhearing people with such attitudes; they may make snide comments about a friend's sexuality, but still refer to them as a friend all the same. This study points to how establishing an empathetic connection with someone can make a factor like sexuality far less important than it might have been otherwise, making this relevant to my research question. Martin, Judith, Trego, Allison, and Thomas Nakayama. "College Students' Racial Attitudes and Friendship Diversity."Howard Journal of Communications 21.2 (2010): 97-118. UCF Libraries. Web. 23 March 2014. "College Students' Racial Attitudes and Friendship Diversity" examines the ways in which racial attitudes of individuals coincide with the diversity of their friend groups. The article begins by stating that colorblind attitudes of white people can discourage conversations about race, and results in racial minorities feeling marginalized. The study was conducted by giving a questionnaire, which asked questions about the individual's attitudes towards and race and the diversity of their friend groups, to a group of 480 students in an introductory college class. Findings of the study noted that students frequently held conventional colorblind racial attitudes, but that these could be reduced when in a more diverse friend group.

This article, while limited in scope, does suggest a very interesting relationship between diversity in interpersonal groups and racial attitudes. The study seems to suggest that friendships between people can enhance their abilities to empathize, and change previously held beliefs. In addition, the results indicate a tendency of Whites to categorize others based on skin color. Unlike factors like religion and sexuality, race is a physical characteristic, making opportunities for such discrimination more plentiful. As a result, I don't find it hard to believe that this provides an unconscious basis for forming friendships; interracial friendgroups are by no means uncommon, but I've often noticed that people just as often hang out with people exclusively of their own race. As such, I think this system of categorization is relevant to my research question. Park, Julie. "When Race and Religion Collide: The Effect of Religion on Interracial Friendship During College." Journal of Diversity in Higher Education 5.1 (2012): 8-21. UCF Libraries. Web. 23 March 2014. "When Race and Religion Collide: The Effect of Religion on Interracial Friendship During College" examines the connections between race and religion when it comes to interpersonal friendships. The article opens by discussing the necessity for more studies about race and religion due to the fact that around 90% of churches are classified as racially homogenous. It also notes that interracial friendships can generate positive feelings from individuals that color how they see similar people to their friend group. The study used data from the NLSF to determine a correlation between race and religion, which was based on a response to whether the individual had a person from another race as one of their four closest friends. Julie Park found a negative correlation between religion and interracial friend groups, but also cautioned against direct action against religion on campuses.

The article itself has issues with how its question is framed: the NLSF only asks whether an individual had a racially varied group among their four different friends, not whether they had a diverse friend group in general. Still, the article does effectively establish the potentially prohibitive effects religion can have on close interracial friendships, which I think is in-line with my own experiences. I've been to a few different churches, and there hasn't been an exception where one wasn't comprised almost entirely of White or Black people. As such, I think this is a very relevant article for my research question. Fischer, Mary. "Does Campus Diversity Promote Friendship Diversity? A Look at Interracial Friendships in College." Social Science Quarterly 89.3 (2008): 631-655. UCF Libraries. Web. 24 March 2014. The goal of "Does Campus Diversity Promote Friendship Diversity? A Look at Interracial Friendships in College" is to examine variables like social distance from other groups and precollege friendship diversity in relation to how interracial friendships are created in college. The article opens by stating why college diversity is important: it is likely the first educational institution to feature an ethnic background different from the one the individual grew up in. The study was performed by analyzing data gathered by the NLSF, including college characteristics, traits of individuals, and interracial friendships. The article concludes that college and friendship diversity have a positive relationship to each other, and that having an out-group friend prior to college increases the likelihood of having one during college. There are issues with this study; students were asked to list the races of ten friends they had made since coming to college, but it is possible that such "friends" were mere acquaintances. Despite this, the study makes a compelling case for how college diversity ends up promoting friendship diversity. This also connects to my research question by addressing a situation that

would make it easier for students of different backgrounds to form friendships, which means that these are likely factors to begin with.