Boston, MA, USA. Young girls have been viewed as far more savvy than boys at navigating the emotional pitfalls of friendships. But a new report shows that when friends let them down, girls are even more devastated than boys.

Despite previous research, the new findings suggest that when more serious violations of a friendship occur, girls struggle just as much and, in some ways, even more than boys.


A research pairing from Boston College and Duke University examined whether or not girls cope better than boys when a friend violates a core expectation of friendships. The study of fourth- and fifth-grade children found that these violations — taking the form of cancelling plans, sharing a secret with a friend, or failing to be supportive at a difficult time — upset girls more than boys and left them feeling more angry and sad in response. The findings appear in the journal Child Development.

Sample Hypothetical Questions From The Study

Betrayal. One day you are really upset because you got a bad grade on your social studies test.

You tell your friend how upset you are about your bad grade. You also tell your friend that you don't want the other kids in your class to find out how poorly you did.

Later that day, though, you find out that your friend told a bunch of kids in your class about your bad grade.

Lack of Validation or Emotional Support. You're really upset because your pet is sick.

You tell your friend about how sick your pet is but your friend won't listen to you talk about your pet and instead says, "It's no big deal — it's just a pet."

Lack of Instrumental Help. It's lunchtime and you are so hungry that your stomach is growling. You sit down at the lunch table in the school cafeteria and realize that you forgot your lunch at home.

You don't have any money with you so you can't buy any food.

Your friend is sitting next to you and has a really big lunch. So, you ask your friend if you can have some food but your friend says "no."

Being an Unreliable Partner. You and your friend are working on a school project together.

You worked really hard on your part of the project and think you did a really good job.

On the day the project is due, though, you find out that your friend didn't do the part of the project that your friend was supposed to do.

Because your friend didn't do part of the project, you both end up getting a bad grade on the project."Our findings stand in contrast to previous research that has shown boys to experience more anger than girls in their relationships," said Julie Paquette MacEvoy. "Here, we found that girls are in fact just as capable as boys are of anger. What leads boys and girls to feel angry, though, seems to be different. For girls, the anger comes out when they think that their friends have betrayed them or haven't been there for them."



Julie Paquette MacEvoy, PhD, a former Duke doctoral student who is now at Boston College as an assistant professor in the Psychology Counseling, Developmental, and Educational Psychology Department.



Steven R. Asher, PhD, a professor in the Department of Psychology & Neuroscience at Duke University.
Julie Paquette MacEvoy and Steven Asher showed 267 fourth- and fifth-grade children 16 hypothetical stories in which they were asked to imagine that a friend violated a core expectation of friendship.

These stories included a friend failing to hold up responsibilities in a joint school project, resulting in a bad grade for both friends, and a friend shrugging off the seriousness of another friend's sick pet, saying, "It's no big deal, it's just a pet."

The 267 children were representative of the regions in which they were located. The sample was also ethnically diverse: 49.3 percent Caucasian, 26.6 percent Latino, 21.5 percent African-American and 2.6 percent "other."

For each story, the 9- to 11-year-olds from Granville County, N.C., and Providence, R.I., were asked how they would feel if the incident really happened to them, how they would interpret the friend's behavior, what they would do and how much the incident would bother them.

"Previous research suggests that girls may hold their friends to a higher standard than boys do, which led us to think that girls might have an especially hard time coping if one of their friends does something to disappoint them," MacEvoy said.

Other studies have suggested that girls generally are better at friendships than the boys are because girls are more emotionally intimate in their friendships, they help their friends more, and they more readily resolve conflicts with their friends.

And yet, previous studies had also found that friendships among boys last just as long as those of girls, boys are just as satisfied with their friendships as girls, and the boys are no lonelier than the girls.

The researchers wanted to test a possible explanation for this paradox: that girls have a particularly difficult time coping when a friend disappoints them.

"There tends to be a perception of girls as being more passive than boys, but this just doesn't seem to be true. It seems that when girls feel that something that matters to them is in jeopardy, like their friendships, they are just as likely as boys to want to retaliate and to respond with aggression," said MacEvoy.

Girls were as likely as boys to report they would seek revenge against an offending friend, verbally attack the friend and threaten to end the friendship when their expectations were violated, such as telling one of their secrets. The girls also reported they were more bothered by the transgressions, felt more anger and sadness, and were more likely to think the offense meant their friend did not care about them or was trying to control them.

"Our finding that girls would be just as vengeful and aggressive toward their friends as the boys is particularly interesting because past research has consistently shown boys to react more negatively following minor conflicts with friends, such as an argument about which game to play next," Asher said.

"It appears that friendship transgressions and conflicts of interest may push different buttons for boys and girls."

The study found that anger and sadness played significant roles in how boys and girls reacted to offending friends. For both genders, the more strongly they felt a friend had devalued them or was trying to control them, the more anger and sadness they felt. The angrier they felt, the less likely they wanted to fix the relationship.

But feelings of sadness actually motivated both genders toward reconciliation: The more sadness the children reported feeling, the stronger their desire was to want to solve the problem and maintain the friendship. Sadness, the authors said, can sometimes function like "social glue" that holds relationships together.

The study has implications for how to help children maintain their friendships in a healthy way. This is especially true for girls when a friend is unreliable, doesn't provide emotional support or help, or betrays them, the researchers said. "When we try to help children who are struggling in their friendships, we may need to focus on somewhat different issues for boys versus girls," MacEvoy said. "For girls, it may be critical to help them learn how to better cope when a friend lets them down."

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