Friends First? The Peer Network Origins of Adolescent Dating

The proximity of dating partners in peer friendship networks has important implications for the diffusion of health‐risk behaviors and adolescent social development. We derive two competing hypotheses for the friendship–romance association. The first predicts that daters are proximally positioned in...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of research on adolescence 2016-06, Vol.26 (2), p.257-269
Main Authors: Kreager, Derek A., Molloy, Lauren E., Moody, James, Feinberg, Mark E.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent development
Couples
Dating
Friendship
Gender
Health
Health behavior
Health risks
Heterosexuality
Hypotheses
Risk behavior
Romantic relationships
Sexes
Social development
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The proximity of dating partners in peer friendship networks has important implications for the diffusion of health‐risk behaviors and adolescent social development. We derive two competing hypotheses for the friendship–romance association. The first predicts that daters are proximally positioned in friendship networks prior to dating and that opposite‐gender friends are likely to transition to dating. The second predicts that dating typically crosses group boundaries and opposite‐gender friends are unlikely to later date. We test these hypotheses with longitudinal friendship data for 626 ninth‐grade PROSPER heterosexual dating couples. Results primarily support the second hypothesis: Romantic partners are unlikely to be friends in the previous year or share the same cohesive subgroup, and opposite‐gender friends are unlikely to transition to dating.
ISSN:1050-8392
1532-7795
DOI:10.1111/jora.12189