BEING FRIENDS: EXPLORING RELATIONAL RESILIENCE
IN EMOTIONALLY INTIMATE FRIENDSHIPS
A Project
Presented to the faculty of the Division of Social Work
California State University, Sacramento
Submitted in partial satisfaction of
the requirements for the degree of
MASTER OF SOCIAL WORK
by
Holly C. Calderone
SPRING
2012
BEING FRIENDS: EXPLORING RELATIONAL RESILIENCE
IN EMOTIONALLY INTIMATE FRIENDSHIPS
A Project
by
Holly C. Calderone
Approved by:
__________________________________, Committee Chair
Maria Dinis, Ph.D., MSW
____________________________
Date
ii
© 2012
Holly Calderone
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
iii
Student: Holly C. Calderone
I certify that this student has met the requirements for format contained in the University
format manual, and that this project is suitable for shelving in the Library and credit is to
be awarded for the project.
__________________________________, Graduate Coordinator _________________
Dale Russell, Ed.D., LCSW
Date
Division of Social Work
iv
Abstract
of
BEING FRIENDS: EXPLORING RELATIONAL RESILIENCE
IN EMOTIONALLY INTIMATE FRIENDSHIPS
by
Holly C. Calderone
This solution-focused research explores relational resiliency in intimate friendships,
responding to reported increases in U.S. social and emotional isolation. Ten participants
were recruited from a 16-year social network, the People’s Republic of East Davis
(PRED), through a convenience sampling method.
Stories around participants’
navigation of relational dilemmas were solicited in face-to-face interviews. Stories were
analyzed using content and narrative analysis methodologies.
Content analysis
substantiated Relational-Cultural Theory (RCT) factors, mutual empathy and mutual
empowerment, as a basis of participants' relational resilience.
Narrative analysis
discovered a third factor, appreciation of common humanity, which was explored using
the Theory of Intersubjective Motivation. Finally, implications of this research for social
work practice and policy, specifically toward increasing voluntary socialization for
individual and political well-being, were discussed.
, Committee Chair
Maria Dinis, Ph.D., MSW
Date
v
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Fittingly, I would like to acknowledge the contributions of some very dear
friends, both their material assistance in this research and for being instrumental in
helping me become the woman I am today. First, to Samantha Krenn: for her assistance
in transcribing interviews and reviewing references, but most of all for engaging in a
discussion of “ways people are” for sixteen years and counting. Also, to Heidi Lypps; for
her editing and formatting of this document, as well as for introducing me to
postmodernism and being a most companionable motorcycle tourist. To the Peoples’
Republic of East Davis: for your collective individualism and unconditional support of
others’ endeavors, even those that may preoccupy or take us away for awhile.
I would like to express my appreciation to the professors in Sacramento State’s
Master of Social Work Program, as well as the Health Science professors I worked with
here on my undergraduate degree. Morro Bay High School prepared me to serve fish and
chips, and so I am indebted to you for the additional time and effort and patience you
have expended toward my success in higher education. I would also like to specifically
thank my thesis advisor, Maria Dinis, Ph.D., M.S.W., for her straightforward
expectations and timely edits that made this project not so intimidating.
Finally, I would like to express gratitude to my partner, Kerry Sweeney, for his
working class intellectualism and commitment to fighting sexism, racism and
homophobia. Also, for cooking omelets, serenading me with Iron Maiden and generally
being the best grad school boyfriend ever.
vi
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
Acknowledgements………..………………………………………………………...…... vi
Chapter
1. THE PROBLEM………………………………………………………………………. 1
Introduction………………………………………………………………………. 1
Background of the Problem……………………………………………………… 2
Statement of the Research Problem……………………………………………… 6
Purpose of the Study ……………………………………………………………...6
Research Questions………………………………………………………………. 8
Theoretical Framework…………………………………………………………... 8
Application of Relational-Cultural Theory………………………………………. 9
Definition of Terms……………………………………………………………... 10
Assumptions…………………………………………………………………….. 12
Justification……………………………………………………………………... 13
Delimitations……………………………………………………………………. 14
Summary………………………………………………………………………... 15
2. REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE………………………………………………….. 17
Introduction……………………………………………………………………... 17
Historical Perspectives on Friendship and Belongingness…………………...… 18
Relational-Cultural Theory on Friendship and Belongingness……………...….. 24
vii
Empirical Research on Belongingness and Loneliness………………………… 29
Toward a Diagnosis of Loneliness……………………………………………… 32
The Embodiment of Belongingness…………………………………………….. 33
The Self-Consciousness of Late Modernity…………………………………….. 36
Gaps in the Literature…………………………………………………………… 39
Summary………………………………………………………………………... 41
3. METHODOLOGY…………………………………………………………………... 43
Research Question……………………………………………………………… 43
Research Design………………………………………………………………… 44
Study Population………………………………………………………………... 47
Sample Population……………………………………………………………… 48
Instrumentation…………………………………………………………………. 49
Data Gathering Procedures……………………………………………………... 51
Data Analysis…………………………………………………………………… 52
Protection of Human Subjects………………………………………………….. 52
Summary………………………………………………………………………... 53
4. DATA ANALYSIS…………………………………………………………………... 55
Is Mutual Empathy Fundamental in the Intimate Friendship Relationship?........ 56
General Definition of Empathy…………………………………………………. 57
Sharing Affective State…………………………………………………………. 57
Perspective Taking……………………………………………………………… 59
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Awareness of Internal Process………………………………………………….. 60
Formulating Compassionate Affective Response………………………………. 62
Is Mutual Empowerment Fundamental to Intimate Friendships?......................... 65
General Definition of Empowerment………………………………………….... 65
Supporting Others’ Relational Needs…………………………………………... 66
Allowing Others to Meet One’s Own Relational Needs………………………... 68
Acting In Support of the Friendship……………………………………………. 70
Are There Emergent Themes Arising in Participants’ Friendship Narratives?.... 72
Appreciation of a Common Humanity………………………………………….. 72
Summary………………………………………………………………………... 75
5. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS…………………………………... 76
Introduction……………………………………………………………………... 76
Conclusions……………………………………………………………………... 76
Recommendations………………………………………………………………. 80
Limitations……………………………………………………………………… 83
Implications for Social Work Practice and Policy……………………………… 84
Conclusion……………………………………………………………………… 85
Appendix A
Request for Participants………………….……………………….…….. 87
Appendix B
End of Recruitment Notification…….………………………………….. 89
Appendix C
Survey Questionnaire…………………………..……………………….. 91
Appendix D
Consent to Participate in Research........................................................... 95
ix
References………………………………………………………………………………. 98
x
1
Chapter 1
THE PROBLEM
Introduction
Americans are experiencing an epidemic of social and emotional isolation,
occurring across the axes of race, class, and gender and with the greatest losses being
friendship (Hampton, Sessions, & Her, 2009; McPherson, Smith-Lovin, & Brashears,
2006). Robert Putnam’s popular social science tome, Bowling Alone, raised an alarm
about our decades-long social disengagement when it was published 2000 and then a
more resounding national disaster occurred. That the President of the United States
responded to the September 11th attacks with an admonition for Americans to continue
spending money, however, speaks to the context of late capitalism in which this epidemic
occurs (Bacevich, 2008; Habermas, 1984). The value of a citizen, in a post-industrial
capitalist nation, is that of a consumer and not their capacity for action on behalf of their
nation and fellow citizens (Bacevich; Habermas).
The field of Social Work, with its simultaneous interest in social justice and the
well-being of the individual in society, is uniquely poised to develop interventions toward
American social reengagement (Robbins, Chatterjee & Canda, 2006). The problem of
the “lonely American” is well described (Cacioppo & Patrick, 2008; Hampton, Sessions,
& Her, 2009; McPherson, Smith-Lovin, & Brashears, 2006; Olds & Schwartz, 2009). It
is vital that we now start identifying and understanding exceptions to the problem of
social and emotional isolation, with an eye toward using it for well-informed action
addressing this simultaneously personal and political problem. This research asks: How
2
are some people maintaining social belongingness and emotionally intimate connection,
in what is the strictly voluntary affiliation of friendships, and even in our culture of
disconnection (Jordan, Walker & Hartling, eds., 2004)?
Background of the Problem
American social isolation has been a pervasive concern of the 21st Century.
Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone (2000) compares the continued rise of bowling as a
hobby and the simultaneous decline of bowling leagues, using it as his central illustrative
metaphor. He then exhaustively documents decades of decreasing voluntary social and
civil activity, describing its negative consequences on the fabric of Americans’ lives and
on our democratic society (Putnam). The outlook became more grim in 2006, when
Duke University researchers comparing data from the 2004 General Social Survey (GSS)
against data from the 1985 GSS, found steep declines in the numbers and diversity of
people Americans considered confidantes (McPherson, Smith-Lovin, & Brashears, 2006).
These researchers conceptualized core social networks as those persons in which
individuals surveyed would be willing to discuss an important matter. In 1985, the
average American had a core social network of only three confidantes. Not even twenty
years later, that number was down to two (McPherson et al.).
Additionally, those two confidantes were more likely to be a spouse and other kin
than in 1985, with the most dramatic being a 22% drop in friend confidantes, followed by
11% drops in confidantes who were co-workers or fellow members of clubs (McPherson,
Smith-Lovin, & Brashears, 2006). The Duke study engendered both consternation and
dubiousness within the social science community (Fischer, 2009), as well as from the
3
researchers themselves (McPherson, Smith-Lovin, & Brashears, 2009). In 2008, Pew
Research Center replicated the survey using the GSS questions and these two findings by
the Duke scholars were validated (Hampton, Sessions, & Her, 2009).
That “people need people” seems obvious; however, The Need to Belong
(Baumeister & Leary, 1995) was a landmark meta-analysis of multidisciplinary research
that empirically supported our intuitive understanding of human beings as innately social
animals. In it, the authors lay out compelling evidence for our inherent proclivity to form
interpersonal bonds and resist losing them, as well as describe some of the well-observed
psychological consequences of loneliness and unmet need for emotional intimacy
(Baumeister & Leary). While the myriad consequences to individuals’ cognitive
abilities, emotional affect, mental health and physical well-being were quite supported,
many of the findings were incidental to those studies’ primary research goals (Gere &
MacDonald, 2010). Inspired by Baumeister and Leary’s paper, a decade and a half of
directly testing the “belongingness hypothesis” has ensued and this research has greatly
supported those authors’ proposal of humans as an obligate gregarious species (Gere &
MacDonald).
Materialist perspectives of the human condition, conceptualize the increasing
social isolation of Americans as a loss of social capital, the term being coined to describe
the sum total of social connections individuals, families and communities have lost
(Putnam, 2000). Loss of belongingness becomes more understandable when we consider
others and even ourselves to be commodities of variable social value - not only as
members of privileged versus marginalized populations, but as individuals having
4
contextually fluctuating worth as a human being (Prince, 2005). It is widely accepted
that this relational-cultural dynamic is, indeed, occurring and has created a “schizoid
society” (Giddens, 1990; Habermas, 1984; Jordan, Walker & Hartling, 2004; Laing,
1969; Prince). Schizoid references a psychological alienation, characterized by an
unrequited longing for belongingness that is fused with paradoxical fears of the Self
being overwhelmed by the relational power of others’ Selves (Prince). This results in
social isolation or the emotional isolation of shamed/protective holding of one’s true Self
back from relationship and, subsequently, the subjective experiencing of ontological
insecurity - a tenuous sense of one’s own existence and efficacy (Miller, 2008; Prince).
This understanding of the individual as a relational consumer and relationship
commodity resonates well with the narratives of popular science that postulate evolution
has fostered an inherently selfish human nature, in which others hold varying degrees of
value to the individual, rather than being conceptualized as having innate and equal
human value (Monroe, 1996). Social science offers a similar narratives characterizing
individuals’ relational value as being diligently earned or subject to an interpersonal riskbenefit analysis, as described by social exchange and rational choice theories,
respectively (Robbins, Chatterjee & Canda, 2006). These materialist understandings of
the human capacity to be-for-another affect everything from governmental policy to the
meaning we make of our microcosmic lives (Habermas 1984). Sociologist and
philosopher, Jurgen Habermas, calls our unconscious adoptions of especially relatable
theoretical models “colonization of the life-world” and describes how we then use them
as the lens through which we interpret the social world.
5
In his opus, The Theory of Communicative Action (1984), Habermas posits a
heuristic adoption of late capitalist values as commonsense, which is then recursively
perpetuated by explanations of our actions in accordance with these heuristics. This
allows us to feel less individually responsible for our behavior and its effects on others,
because we are merely reacting to situations that illustrate these home truths and with the
reasonable expectation others will understand our actions (Habermas). Common
heuristics working against friendship, say, the common phrases “blood is thicker than
water” or “some people are not worth knowing” are consistent with the late-capitalist
understanding that there are relative degrees of deserving to belong in our society. We
use these cultural narratives to explain our relational disconnection to ourselves and
others (Giddens, 1990). Thus, declining to be-for-another in mutual empathy and mutual
empowerment is not the result of any number of legitimate personal choices, including
simply not wanting to, but the sagacious recognition of persons who do not deserve
belongingness and those who do (Jordan, Walker & Hartling, 2004).
However, these rationalizations have inspired millions of small inactions, from
not talking to the weird neighbor and never getting around to calling that college friend
we may have outgrown, and they are small units of U.S. culture - they are memes - and
all Americans are being affected by declining belongingness (Hampton, Sessions, & Her,
2009; McPherson, Smith-Lovin, & Brashears, 2006; Putnam, 2000). These memes
continue to be perpetuated even as the myriad negative consequences of social and
emotional isolation are being assiduously researched and revealed (Cacioppo & Patrick,
2008; Hawthorne, 2007; Stinson, Logel, Zanna et al., 2008). This research will therefore
6
move toward better understanding what still promotes and sustains belongingness for
some people, even living in a schizoid society, even engaged in the most tenuous of
emotionally intimate relationships. There are no simple answers to the problem of social
isolation: there are no pills to cure loneliness, and there are not behavioral interventions
guaranteed to elicit love and acceptance from others. Yet there are people who move in
this world, being both inspired and empowered by the purely voluntary relational support
of others, and there is a great deal we can learn from them. Those people are called
“friends” and we all deserve to be them.
Statement of the Research Problem
Little solution-focused research on addressing Americans’ declining capacity for
belongingness is evident and even those researchers, who so well describe the problem,
are less able to proffer solutions than to find themselves intellectually “hoping for the
best” (Cacioppo & Patrick, 2008; Olds & Schwartz, 2009; Putnam, 2000). Thus, the
dilemma of American social and emotional isolation becomes framed as an individual
failure of consumption affecting other people, “Why don't they have friends?” rather than
a call to collective responsibility. Now, we must ask ourselves what capacity to make
friends or even be friends we are losing and what are our ethical obligations toward
increasing our capacity for belongingness as a culture?
Purpose of the Study
In his opus on American's loss of belongingness, Putnam (2000) argues for a
movement away from civic society beginning with what are known as the “Baby Boom”
generation - that is, individuals born in and around the 1950s. The Baby Boomers’
7
parents, who came of age during World War II, are characterized by Putnam as having
been the last generation of “joiners” and they are dying off now. Meanwhile, Boomers’
children are young adults that have been reared without even the secondhand experience
of belongingness. Existential philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre, famously wrote “Hell is
other people.” and Americans seem to be developing solutions toward solving the
problem of other people. Without access to the satisfying phenomenological experience
of belongingness, our risky choice to trust in being-for-another and vice versa, as well as
taking on responsibility for our own and others’ well-being, may make the voluntary
emotional intimacy of friendship seem a dubious proposition.
That said, this study is inspired by the humanistic proposition that navigating the
messiness of belongingness is the process of the good life and that our relationality may
even be what it means to be human. Loneliness researcher, John Cacioppo, discusses
how unlikely it is our early hominid ancestors should have prevailed with what he calls
our hypercooperative behavior. He relates how juvenile chimpanzees will display
prosocial behaviors about half-the-time only and, “By contrast, human children will
almost always help others with a simple task, spontaneously and without reward, by the
age of 15 months,” (Cacioppo & Patrick, 2008, p. 205). This primary purpose of this
research is to seek support for RCT’s assertion that mutual empathy and empowerment
are the basis of relational resilience in adults’ intimate friendships. Another area of
inquiry is the participants’ phenomenological framing of their relational resilience and
exploring those emergent factors that seem to protect against friendship disconnections.
8
Research Questions
The questions of interest in this research are twofold: 1) Do the relational factors
of mutual empathy and mutual empowerment form the basis of relational resilience in
intimate friendship relationships? 2) Are there other factors arising from participants’
stories of navigating friendship dilemmas that also explain their relational resilience?
Theoretical Framework
Psychological theories of human beings in a social environment examine
relationships through the lens of the individual’s personal psychodynamics, thoroughly
exploring both the affective pushes and pulls of belongingness, as well as how the
individual’s assessment of their own self-efficacy affects relational agency (Robbins,
Chatterjee & Canda, 2006). Marxist sociological theories look at the same relationships,
relegating the individual to that of role-player enacting often-inequitable cultural
dynamics (Robbins, et al.). Jean Baker Miller’s Relational-Cultural Theory (RCT)
(1988) will be used as a basis for this research because it acknowledges both these
bottom-up and top-down approaches to understanding human relationships have some
validity (Jordan, Walker & Hartling, eds., 2004; Miller, 2008). Miller posits “growthfostering relationships” - comprised of mutual empathy between participants and mutual
empowerment - as being the basis of human development, having simultaneous personal
and a political dynamics (Jordan et al.). This research is interested in developing
solutions to the problems of American social and emotional isolation, and so will
examine the data for support that mutual empathy and mutual empowerment are
9
instrumental for these participants’ in their maintenance of belongingness within an
individualistic cultural context.
Relational-Cultural Theory falls under the rubric of feminist theory, foremost in
its assertion that mutual empathy and empowerment are fundamental characteristic of
women’s relationships (Jordan, Walker & Hartling, eds., 2004). RCT also engages in
interrogating the assumptions and overgeneralizions of psychology, especially the
pathologizing of women and other marginalized people, by positioning masculine ways
of being-in-the-world as psychological normalcy and health (Jordan et al.). More
specifically, RCT scholars assert that the Western philosophical and psychological
conceptualization of an individualistic Self valorize separation and independence as an
ideal, relegating interpersonal relationships to the position of being means of achieving
that more separate Self (Jordan et al.). Of the psychological theories, only RCT posits the
possibility of an intrinsic benefit to friendship itself, that of fostering the lifetime
relational growth of individuals through mutual empathy and mutual empowerment.
Furthermore, only RCT addresses the individual’s access to cultural power as having
direct and instrumental effects on the individual’s access to belongingness.
Application of Relational-Cultural Theory
Both the use of RCT as a theoretical framework and the use of Narrative Inquiry
as a research method, reflect a post-structuralist understanding of the individual within
their cultural context (Habermas, 1984; Jordan, Walker & Hartling, eds., 2004; SavinBaden & Van Niekerk, 2007). RCT explicitly identifies one outcome of engaging in
growth-fostering relationships as being the inclination to engage in more relationships
10
(Jordan et al.). This exemplifies the possibility of participants’ belongingness as being a
unit of culture that works against those cultural forces that promote social and emotional
isolation. Narrative Inquiry also recognizes participants’ stories as reflecting not only a
recitation of relational history, but an interpretation of a friendship dynamic in the
present, and actively informing participants’ continued involvement in those relationships
and enhancing future relational capacity (Savin-Baden & Van Niekerk). This recognition
of reflexivity has implications for this solution-oriented research, as it allows for the
participant’s stories to also be examined for frames of reference in addition to mutual
empathy and empowerment. Thus, the data will also be analyzed for participants’
identifying additional meanings or holding assumption also form the basis of their own
relational resilience. Both research questions seek to better understand what relational
dynamics promote acquisition of greater capacity for belongingness in adult friendship.
Definition of Terms
The following terms will be used throughout this study.
Friend. Inasmuch as this research is a directly inspired by the 2004 General
Social Survey (GSS) findings, this research will define friend using their eliminative
criteria. A friend is a voluntary social contact that is not also a: spouse, parent, sibling,
child, other family member, co-worker, co-member of a group, neighbor, advisor, or
confidante having any relation in addition to being a friend. Again referencing the 2004
GSS, for the purposes of this research, a friend or intimate friend is a person participants
have discussed an important matter with - a confidante (McPherson, Smith-Lovin, &
Brashears, 2006).
11
Mutuality. This qualifier is used by RCT in describing the interpersonal dynamic
of growth-fostering relationships and is used in this research with congruent
understanding, “Mutuality involves profound mutual respect and mutual openness to
change and responsiveness. It does not mean equality...This involves intersubjective
change; there is a certain, although different, vulnerability for both participants,” (Jordan,
Walker & Hartling, eds., 2004, p. 3).
Mutual empathy. RCT defines empathy as, “An awareness and concern for the
possible consequences of their feels and actions for other people while also remaining
aware of their own needs and the needs of the other person(s),” and it is this
conceptualization of mutual empathy as a communicative action or way of being-in-theworld that it is used in this research as well (Jordan, Walker & Hartling, eds., 2004, p.
14).
Mutual empowerment. RCT characterizes mutual empowerment as being
subjectively identifiable by one’s experience of “the five good things” that result from it
(Miller & Stiver, 1997). These are, “A feeling of increased zest, a sense of
empowerment, greater self-knowledge, increased self-worth, and - most important in the
context of friendship - a desire for more connection,” (Jordan, Walker & Hartling, eds.,
2004, p. 150). This research specifically addresses the use of mutual empowerment as
those communicative actions participants undertake for the purposes on initiating,
maintaining and reconnecting in intimate friendship.
Relational anxiety. This term will be used to describe the phenomenological
experience of disquiet engendered by an ambivalent desire for and fear of relational
12
connection, what RCT describes as the “central relational paradox” as resulting from an
individual’s history of lacking mutuality in relationships (Miller & Stiver, 1997). This
anxiety may also be attributed to a more universal existential angst, described by social
psychologist Erich Fromm as “Awareness of [an individual’s] aloneness and
separateness, of [the individual’s] helplessness before the forces of nature and society all
this makes [an individual’s] disunited existence an unbearable prison... it means the
world can invade me without my ability to react,” (Yalom, 1980, p. 357-358).
Assumptions
As few assumptions as possible have been made around research participants’
experience of belongingness. However, several assumptions were necessarily considered
in the undertaking of this solutions-focused research and include:
Assumption #1. The interview prompts assume the participants have experienced
some degree of consternation when faced with possibility of relational disconnection due
to their friendship dilemmas, whether a mild eagerness-to-please or a more profound
anguish.
Assumption #2. This research assumes that participants’ membership in a longterm social network supports their consideration as appropriate informants in this inquiry
into relational resilience.
Assumption #3. This solution-focused research also assumes that participants, in
fact, are exceptions to the problem of social isolation, experiencing social and emotional
isolation with less intensity than the average American or are even deviant cases.
13
Justification
These data exploring the scope and depth of declines in Americans’ relational
connection, and specifically the loss of community-based relationships, support Putnam’s
assertion (2000) that their loss has the power to affect civic society and American
democracy itself (Hampton, Sessions, & Her, 2009; McPherson, Smith-Lovin, &
Brashears, 2006). The implications of social isolation on the well-being of the
individuals themselves is also disturbing, especially in light of the disquieting report from
the Center for Disease Control (CDC) this year, that antidepressant use in the U.S. has
increased 400% since 1988 (Pratt, Brody & Gu, 2011). This is roughly the same 20-year
time period that saw the precipitous decline in Americans’ core social networks
(McPherson et al.). While loss of social connection and emotional intimacy have
essentially become the new normal in American culture, the need for feeling we belong
and engaging in strong interpersonal relationships appears to be mandatory for the mental
and even the physical well-being of human beings (Gere & MacDonald, 2010).
The Social Work Code of Ethics holds promotion of human relationship as a
fundamental principle of our work, doing so for the sake of individuals, as well as
household-sized to global communities (NASW, 2008). Thus, relational connection and
belongingness are a recognized as benefitting the mental health and well-being of
individuals and as means toward achieving greater public health and social justice. This
awareness is one way clinical social work has a distinct perspective when compared to
clinical psychology. Whereas, a clinical psychologist might encounter and individual
who complains of being lonely and having no friends, then seek to discover the
14
underlying pathology of the individual which has caused such a state of affairs. As a
social worker, taking a broader ecological view of the same situation, the question
becomes what about our society is causing this individual and countless others to suffer
loss of belongingness? What are some relational practices and philosophies might act as
protective factors? The impetus behind this research is a social work mandate to seek
solutions, in this case exploring the efforts individuals and their community have made
toward sustaining belongingness, even in a cultural climate of social and emotional
isolation. In clinical social work, we call these efforts toward helping clients increase
relational efficacy “social rehabilitation” and this research is undertaken out of
recognition that the U.S. has become a nation in need of social rehabilitation.
Delimitations
Like many social problems, relative incidence within affected populations vary,
marginalized populations experiencing a greater degree of effect. The most salient
protective factors against social and emotional isolation are higher education and
European descent (McPherson, Smith-Lovin, & Brashears, 2006). Interestingly, this
education effect used to occur at a bachelor’s degree, but the 21st Century data is notable
for the increase in relationality occurring for individuals holding a master’s degree
(Hampton, Sessions, & Her, 2009; McPherson et al.). While there is some variety in the
sample population, this social network was established in a Northern California college
town and these individuals are generally white and educated, if not gainfully employed.
This begs the question as to whether the insights they provide, as to how they have come
15
to make and maintain friendships, may be applicable for those having dissimilar
demographics.
Summary
This chapter introduced the scope and background of the problem of increasing
American social and emotional isolation, with the even more precipitous declines around
our engagement in emotionally intimate friendships especially, and positioning these both
within the larger sociological concerns of our post-industrial consumer culture in late
capitalism. Chapter Two explores the dynamics of individual human relatedness in
greater depth and from a variety of perspectives, both scientific and philosophical, and
especially as they are understood by RCT (Miller, 1988). The mechanisms and
motivations around the voluntary relationship of friendship are again the central concern,
with the implications of contemporary modes of belongingness - such as Facebook being discussed at length. Chapter Three outlines the proposed research and methods,
including a more in-depth discussion of Narrative Inquiry which was introduced very
briefly in this chapter. Chapter Four contains qualitative analysis of the interview data,
examination participants’ stories for support of mutual empathy and mutual
empowerment being the basis of participants’ efficacy in friendship, as well as seeking
additional factors of relational resilience those narratives may offer. This research
project concludes with a discussion in Chapter Five of this research and its usefulness
toward engaging in the crafting of interventions toward greater American belongingness,
and thereby greater personal health and well being. Finally, the implications for
16
belongingness as increasing our political efficacy, as citizens of the U.S. and the
globalized world, are discussed.
17
Chapter 2
REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE
Introduction
This review of the literature on friendship and belongingness explores various
perspectives on the individual engaged in emotionally intimate friendships. First,
historical perspectives around understanding friendship and belongingness will be
examined from the standpoint of philosophy and sociology, as well as developmental and
social psychologies (Condella, 2010; Hart, Shaver & Goldenberg, 2005; Olds &
Schwartz, 2009, Yalom, 1980). This historical scholarship will be compared against
some Relational Cultural Theory (RCT) (Miller, 1988) framework (Jordan, Walker &
Hartling, eds., 2004). Second, this feminist theory of human development is then
discussed directly as the most germane framework for researching friendship and
belongingness, including the specific strengths of RCT for solution-focused research and
its acknowledgement of the implications of friendship toward greater social justice. The
central tenet of RCT is that the basis of human development and mental health is
engagement in growth-fostering relationships, between individuals and in communities
(Jordan et al.). This challenging theory moves psychological motivation for human
behavior from internal psychodynamic drives - posited by Freud - to relational
intersubjectivity (Greenberg & Mitchell, 1983).
Third, support for RCT’s assertion will be a sought in examination of empirical
research on belongingness and isolation, including experimental psychology, neurology
and biology research (Baumeister & Leary, 1995; Gere & McDonald, 2010). Additional
18
attention to the effects of social and emotional isolation on mental health, and the
difficulties of addressing loneliness as a public health concern, are explored in the fourth
section (Cacioppo & Patrick, 2008). The discussion in the fifth section returns to some
biosocial contexts working against intersubjectivity, specifically the embodiment of
belongingness in maleness and other empathetic deficits, as it is phenomenologically
experienced (Baron-Cohen, 2009; Bergman, 1996). The sixth section returns to the
universal experience of American social and emotional isolation, exploring cultural
structures supporting our anomie and its recursive relationship to the self-consciousness
of late modernity (Giddens, 1990; Habermas, 1984). The final concern of this review is
gaps in the literature, especially addressing the paucity of research devoted specifically to
the friendship relationship and the place this research seeks to fill toward the seeking of
solutions to our declining capacity for intimate friendship (Hampton, Sessions, & Her,
2009; McPherson, Smith-Lovin, & Brashears, 2006).
Historical Perspectives on Friendship and Belongingness
Prior to the advent of social science, philosophers were tasked with
contextualizing Western culture’s learned understanding of the self and society, including
the relationship of friendship. Philosophy has so long concerned itself with friendship
that Aristotle’s (384 BC - 322 BC) term “philia” - the love to be found in intimate
friendships - is the root word of philosophy itself (Condella, 2010). Aristotle devotes two
of his ten books in Nichomachean Ethics to the character and development of friendship
and his delineations of three types of friendships are applicable to this research. He
describes friendships of utility, what we might call “colleagues” or “work friends” today,
19
as lesser friendships (Condella). He also describes friendships of pleasure, we have with
those who enjoy similar leisure pursuits, as lesser friendships - not to devalue them, but
in recognition that changes in our interests or material circumstances may diminish our
ability to maintain them friendship across changing circumstance (Condella). Aristotle
considered friendships between people who share values and a common sense of what is
good as being the highest form of relationship - that it has an essentially ethical basis
(Condella). He proposes that friendships such as these necessarily must develop intimacy
over time, opining, “For though the wish for friendship comes quickly, friendship does
not,” (Condella, p. 113). This 4th century BC philosopher posits the impetus of these
friendships to be the appreciation of one another derived from conversation and the
activities of both parties toward helping each other to become better people. This
conceptualization of intimate friendships is analogous to RCT’s contemporary
description of growth-fostering relationships (Condella; Jordan, Walker & Hartling eds.,
2004).
While Aristotle laid out a logical rationale for and about friendship, it has been
the more recent Existentialist philosophers who presaged psychology in seeking to
understand the divisive emotional forces at work in friendship, sometimes below our
explicit realization (Yalom, 1980). Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) describes an inherent
human anxiety borne of acknowledging the subjectivity of our personal experience - an
ultimate aloneness borne of our inability to truly see the world through another’s eyes or
have others see the world through ours (Marino, 1998). This desire to fully relate, and
the attendant awareness of its impossibility of full intersubjectivity, at once draw us
20
toward relationship and engender fear of rejection. “Deep within every human being,” he
writes, “There still lives the anxiety of being alone in the world, forgotten by God,
overlooked among the millions and millions in this enormous household.” (Marino,
p.321). RCT calls that attraction/repulsion to relationship the central relational paradox,
positing a more plebian source of this relational anxiety in the individual’s history of
cultural marginalization and its related empathetic dismissals and disempowerments
(Jordan, Walker & Hartling, eds., 2004). The exquisite suffering in the freedom and
possibility of relating with others, that Kierkegaard concludes are a portion of the human
condition are contextualized as less poignant and more offensive to those experiencing
what RCT calls “condemned isolation” (Jordan et al., Marino).
Condemned isolation is described by RCT not only as a literal aloneness, but an
isolation borne of not being able to fully represent oneself out of a legitimate fear of
rejection for some perceived deficiency, such as when queer people remain “in the
closet,” being unable to share important aspects of themselves and their lives in their
social relationships (Jordan, Walker & Hartling, eds., 2004). In their works, philosopher
Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) and her philosopher partner Jean-Paul Sartre (19061980), describe the ramifications of these existential states of being-for-oneself versus the
dynamics, and especially the power dynamics, of being-for-another (Thalos, 2010). Like
Kierkegaard, Sartre positions our self-consciousness in relationships as deriving from the
realization of our own subjectivity, self-consciousness developing when we are faced
with the equally subjective perspective of another (Thalos). A dissonance is created, he
21
posits, when we become aware that others have a perspective on us that may or may not
reflect how we would prefer to be perceived (Thalos).
De Beauvoir also tackles the dynamic of relational anxiety, exploring the
dynamics of a relationships in which power differentials affect participants’ efficacy in
being-for-another, based on their relative cultural normality versus marginalization
(Thalos, 2010). RCT similarly posits contemporary culture, which continues to define
human beings in relation to an increasingly narrowly defined “normal” - via the
pathologizing of psychology and difference - privileging some over others in their ability
to assume belongingness (Jordan, Walker & Hartling, eds., 2004). This privileged
expectation of feeling accepted for who they are allows some individuals greater power
to initiate and benefit from the shared relational efficacy that characterizes growthfostering relationships and so is also a social justice issue (Jordan et al.). These historical
and contemporary assessments of relational efficacy as being relative to social status is
supported by data indicating there is, in fact, greater social and emotional isolation
amongst marginalized populations (Hampton, Sessions, & Her, 2009; McPherson, SmithLovin, & Brashears, 2006).
As societal well-being came to be conceptualized as open to empirical analysis
and interventions, the effects of social and emotional isolation became a concern of
science. Emil Durkheim is widely considered the father of sociology and in his
influential early work, Le Suicide (1897), described two of his three types of suicide as
the direct result of social isolation and disconnection (Robertson, 2006). These types of
suicide are anomic and egoistic: anomie describing an individual’s experience of a
22
cultural breakdown in social connectedness, while egoistic suicide relates to an
excessively individualistic person becoming estranged from connection to others
(Robertson). Observers of American society since Alexis de Toqueville in 1883, have
noted a cultural disposition to valorize excessive individualism even while engaged in our
collective cultural efforts toward democracy (Olds & Schwartz, 2009). More recently,
however, we have also come to espouse values that leave us vulnerable to anomie as
well, such as adopting a relentless lifestyle that cultural critic Barbara Ehrenreich has
described as the “Cult of Busyness” (Olds & Schwartz). This anomie has replaced what
was, until the 1960s, another American tradition of being notable “joiners” of clubs and
civic organizations, labor unions and political movements (Putnam, 2000). It is proposed
that the virtuous life in contemporary American life produces our anomic culture,
including our cultural appreciation of the righteous willingness or seemingly miraculous
ability in managing increased workloads and packed schedules (Olds & Schwartz). In
this anomic social climate, then, protestations of lacking “free time” for socializing and
leisure become more admirable than pitiable.
While sociologists frame the problem of social and emotional isolation as
deriving from unhealthy social structures and ideals, psychology has traditionally located
isolation as arising from the individual’s maladaptive internal processes. Psychodynamic
theories explain our interpersonal behavior as arising from implicit or even subconscious
understandings of self-in-relationship. Attachment theory (Bowlby, 1969) was originally
developed to explain the dynamics of parent-child relations, then expanded to explore
romantic relationships, and is also germane to discussing the dynamics of intimate
23
friendship (Hart, Shaver & Goldenberg, 2005). Attachment theory specifically examines
the attraction and repulsion toward intimacy we may experience ourselves or observe in
others (Hart et al.). This ambivalence may be observed especially in voluntary
relationships like friendship, because they are understood as based in intentionality,
rather than biological drives or legal obligation. Derived from object relations theory,
attachment theory posits individuals have an “attachment style” resulting from
internalized models of early experiences in relationship and that our attachment style is a
persistent character trait (Robbins, Chatterjee & Canda, 2006). The perceived constancy
of this internalized conceptualization of other people, the feeling that relational partners
are reliably supportive, is generally a reflection of parental relationships and is used as
schemas in our development of subsequent relationships (Robbins et al.).
For an individual with a secure attachment style, these internalized models give
individuals a sense of felt security in their connection with others even in the absence of
the actual person’s presence (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2010). For those with the various
anxious attachment styles, however, the internal models of “the other” easily falter and
are accompanied by visceral fears of rejection or abandonment, resulting in sometimes
frantic attempts at affiliation. Avoidant attachment style is characterized by anxieties
around being overwhelmed by others, resulting in suppression of emotion and distancing.
The fears anxious and avoidant attachment may be in the individual’s explicit awareness,
as when critical theorist, Erich Fromm asserts, “The experience of separateness arouses
anxiety; it is indeed the source of all anxiety,” (Yalom, 1980, p. 358) but are more often
only in our implicit awareness or even a subconscious process (Mikulincer & Shaver).
24
RCT critiques attachment theory as weak, in that it does not consider the cultural contexts
in which attachment occurs or how extrinsic forces, such as individual or cultural
marginalization, may affect individuals’ perception of their own value as a relational
partner throughout the lifespan (Jordan, Walker & Hartling, eds., 2004). While RCT’s
holistic assessment adds to the discussion of voluntary relational bonds like friendship in
breadth, the depth of attachment theory and object relational analysis, also adds to thick
interpretation of relational anxiety in voluntary interpersonal relationships. There is,
however, substantial agreement between both theories in conceptualizing our relational
efficacy in the present as being informed by our lifetime history of developing through
relationships.
Relational-Cultural Theory on Friendship and Belongingness
Relational-Cultural Theory is not simply a theory that describes the dynamics of
self-in-relationship as a character trait, but asserts the necessary relational skills to
develop growth-fostering relationships are subject to mastery through a process of
intentional practice (Jordan, Walker & Hartling, eds., 2004). This makes RCT an
especially applicable foundation for solution-focused research on the dynamics of adult
friendship and the possibility of increasing Americans’ efficacy in this type of
relationship. RCT posits the basis of our lifetime development is engagement in growthfostering relationships, beginning with family and including romantic relationships, but
also emphasizing the importance of relationships with friends and mentors and even
therapists as integral to development of relational efficacy (Miller & Stiver, 1997). Any
of these relationships may be built on a foundation of mutual empathy and mutual
25
empowerment, which is sustained by the commitment and conscientiousness of the
participants in that relationship (Jordan et al.). The experience of engaging in a growthfostering relationship, then, is reflected by the presence of what RCT calls the “five good
things” which they posit are a direct result. The first good thing we feel when engaged in
these relationships is a feeling of zest or enthusiasm for life itself. Additionally, our
feeling of self worth increases when we feel valued by another. Self-awareness is also
enhanced when we acknowledge how we are perceived by another person and,
conversely, our ability to understand others is increased by coming to know that person.
We feel capable of shaping the course of that relationship, as well as taking other actions
in our lives. Finally, the positive experience we have in that relationship causes us to feel
more able and inspired to engage in additional growth-fostering relationships (Jordan et
al.).
Paradoxically, RCT acknowledges and even honors the necessity of disconnection
at times (Jordan, Walker & Hartling, eds., 2004). This may be necessary, especially
when we recognize that a particular relationship may be suffering from a lack of
mutuality, perhaps when one person feels their feelings and needs are being unrecognized
or they feel unable to influence the dynamics of the relationship in ways they prefer
(Miller & Stiver, 1997). Disconnection may be subtle, a stepping back from emotional
intimacy, or a literal isolation of the self from another. Ideally, the time and space for
developing perspective and for autonomous personal growth, provides both parties
opportunity for greater efficacy when re-connecting in relationships - even increasing
their ability to promote a mutual empathy and mutual empowerment the relationship may
26
not have previously have had (Miller & Stiver). Regardless of whether reconnection
occurs, RCT holds that, on some level, disconnection from engagement in non-mutual
relationships may be necessary for personal well-being (Jordan et al.). In fact, RCT
posits that engaging in relationships without mutuality is the source of many
psychological problems, specifically those especially prevalent or diagnosed in women:
depression, anxiety and phobias, eating disorders, and what RCT scholars describe as
“so-called personality disorders” (Miller & Stiver).
RCT engages in a personal-as-political critique as well, positing that women's’
continued lack of social power and control has caused them to overdevelop an emotionfocused coping style (Jordan, Walker & Hartling, eds., 2004). Emotional coping is the
use of emotional regulation to mediate responses, generally to circumstances beyond our
power to change in the moment, and is personally and interpersonally effective much of
the time (Jordan et al.). However, emotional coping may be disempowering when
women encounter situations where a problem-solving coping approach would be more
appropriate. Conversely, RCT posits the traditionally-male problem-solving coping style
is not universally useful either, being misapplied to relational dynamics in which
women's more-developed access to emotions become “the problem” (Jordan et al.).
What RCT proposes is a view of relational mental health arising from a model of
“supported vulnerability,” wherein there is an acknowledgement of shared human need to
be supported and to be supportive, through mutual empathy and mutual empowerment
(Jordan et al.). It is acknowledged by RCT scholars that American individualism is not
supportive of this relational model, speculating it is “... because we live in a cultural
27
milieu that does not respect help-seeking and that tends to scorn the vulnerability implicit
in our inevitable need for support,” (Jordan et al., p. 34-35).
RCT may sound utopian in nature, having no place for baser emotions like fear
and anger. In actuality, RCT acknowledges constructive conflict is also a necessary part
of growth-fostering relationships (Jordan, Walker & Hartling, eds., 2004). Conflict is
constructive when it occurs in a spirit of respect for each other’s subjective experience as feminist Simone De Beauvior puckishly challenged: for the subject to remain a subject
and not become an object (Thalos, 2010). RCT describes mutual empathy as a reciprocal
capacity to experience our embodied feelings, for others to listen to us and attempt to
understand our perspective, as well as our commitment to hearing and validating the
experience of others even when we do not agree with them (Miller & Stiver, 1997).
RCT, as a feminist theory, reflects the understanding that differences in the cultural
valuation of individuals affect the dynamics of mutual empathy and especially mutual
empowerment, such as when we engage in interracial friendships, have much older or
younger friends and are friends across gender lines (Jordan, Walker & Hartling, eds.,
2004). Additionally, most RCT scholars are therapists, endeavoring to develop growthfostering relationships with their clients in the context of culturally well-recognized
power disparities between the so-called expert therapist and the ostensibly maladapted
client (Miller & Stiver). They clarify even relationships with culturally-sanctioned power
disparities may become mutually empowering, but in this case would only occur if the
therapist acknowledges the power differential and is willing to collaborate on
ameliorating it (Miller & Stiver). In their discussion of dynamics around only implicitly
28
recognized power differentials in friendship, or even denial of their being a power
differential, is likely caused one or both participants to feel they have little ability to be
active and effective in the shaping of their relationship - especially, in cases where power
differentials are related to intransigent social inequalities (Jordan et al.). Mutual
empowerment is augmented, however, when individuals are able to explicitly
acknowledge and negotiate the power dynamics of their relationship (Jordan et al.).
The systematic lack of mutuality in relationships, described by RCT as
condemned isolation, is akin what psychologists call “ontological insecurity” or the
feeling of being insubstantial or unreal in a world that invalidates an individual’s need for
belongingness (Prince, 2005). The inability to psychologically cope with ontological
insecurity has been theorized as the basis of mental illnesses from schizophrenia (Laing,
1969) to borderline personality disorder (McDonald, Pietsch & Wilson, 2010), which is
characterized by intense fear of abandonment and high suicidality. RCT posits this sense
of unworthiness to belong is secondary to having experienced violations in relational
trust, especially psychological invalidation and exploitation by those having greater
relational efficacy (Jordan, Walker & Hartling, eds., 2004). Having a more ecological
perspective than most psychological theories, RCT contends these power-over
relationships do not necessarily arise from participants bad intentions or personal
psychology or even family dynamics, but are reflective of cultural hierarchies and the
differentials in relative social power that they breed (Jordan et al.). Thus the lack of
mutual empathy and empowerment disadvantages various marginalized populations from foreign-born Americans to those with mental illness - decreasing opportunities for
29
belongingness and the support of a continuous sense of self that supports ontological
security (Giddens, 1990).
Conversely, an overvaluation of one’s own power, in the even extreme valuation
of individualistic independence or drive to exert full control over relationships,
experience a variety of self-condemned isolation in that they are unable to be relationally
present for another (Jordan, Walker & Hartling, eds., 2004). RCT theorizes this
relatively-privileged disconnection is based internalization of the cultural devaluing of
individuals and generally not a conscious process, but results from being unaware of
unearned privilege or having “come up in the world” from marginalized populations,
individuals seeing themselves and similar others as more worthy of relationship (Jordan
et al.). Those who remain marginalized or are deemed incapable of success by cultural
standards, then, are deemed less worthy of relational empowerment and belongingness
(Jordan et al.). When friendships are formed, maintained and dissolved based on these
cultural narratives around worthiness, there is a relentless tension borne of individuals
perceiving themselves and others as more or less inherently deserving of belongingness
(Jordan et al.).
Empirical Research on Belongingness and Loneliness
The comprehensive implications of social isolation on health and well-being of
individuals appears to be profound. In the same period Americans lost ground in
maintaining social connections and emotional intimacy, research scientists have increased
our understanding of the intrinsic human need for belongingness. Beaumeister and
Leary’s 1995 The Need to Belong was a landmark meta-analysis of multidisciplinary
30
research that empirically supported the popular notion that humans are ‘social animals.’
In it, the authors lay out an argument for belongingness as a fundamental human
motivation that may be satisfied by two relational imperatives, “First, there is a need for
frequent, affectively pleasant interactions with a few other people; and, second, these
interactions must take place in a temporally stable and enduring framework of affective
concern for each other’s welfare,” (Beaumeister & Leary, p. 497). These postulates were
a veritable prescription for holistic health and well-being, given the myriad serious
consequences to individuals’ cognitive abilities, emotional affect, mental health and even
physical well-being, the authors describe are consequences of being deprived of
belongingness.
While the studies the authors cited were strongly supportive of their
belongingness hypothesis, many of the findings were incidental to those studies’ primary
research goals (Gere & MacDonald, 2010). For example, subjects who reported
loneliness or relational disconnections experienced decreased immune function and
poorer prognosis in multiple studies whose primary focus was disease progression
(Beaumeister & Leary, 1995). Even in these incidental findings, evidence of
belongingness having independent and holistic protective effects persisted when
confounding factors such as income were controlled (Baumeister & Leary). Still,
correlation is not causation. Inspired by this relational approach to understanding human
behavior, a decade-and-a-half of directly testing the belongingness hypothesis has ensued
and the twin assertions that: feeling we belong and engagement in mutually supportive
interpersonal relationships are necessary for physical and mental health, have held up
31
well to direct scrutiny (Gere & MacDonald). In a follow-up meta-analysis of
belongingness research, Gere and McDonald reported that when Baumeister and et al.’s
subjects were told that their score on a sham personality test indicated they could look
forward a lifetime of loneliness, they subsequently performed worse on tests of complex
cognitive ability than those given a prognosis of lifetime belongingness (Baumeister,
Twenge, & Nuss, 2002). In another study, primed only by encouragement to identify
with a known high achiever in math, subjects exhibited increased persistence and
motivation to solve the unsolvable on math puzzles (Walton, Cohen, Cwir & Spencer,
2011).
Additionally, insights into attachment theory’s delineations of relational styles
were observed; specifically, that anxious and avoidant attachment styles seemed borne of
unique antecedents wherein individuals exhibiting these attachment styles perceived
social situations as threatening versus unrewarding, respectively (Elliot, Gable & Mapes,
2006). Elliot et al. also found that friendship, in particular, benefits more from increased
initiations of intimacy than efforts at avoiding relational strife. Establishing intimacy is
an approach behavior, with even anxious approaches toward intimacy increasing
subjects’ well-being, while avoidant behaviors are emotionally defensive responses that
may paradoxically increase emotional isolation (Elliot et al). Neurological differentiation
of approach versus avoidance motivations indicate reward-driven or approach behaviors
are mediated by systems regulating the neurotransmitter dopamine, while our relative
tolerance or avoidance of potentially unrewarding stimuli is mediated by serotonin
(Flaherty, 2011). RCT’s central relational paradox and even Kierkegaard’s existential
32
anxiety may also be understood as tensions inherent between our twin desires for
belongingness and for preserving our sense of self, which becomes subject to invalidation
by others whenever we engage in the intersubjectivity of relationship.
Toward a Diagnosis of Loneliness
Thirty-year loneliness researcher, John Cacioppo, notes there are few conditions
more stigmatizing in American culture, than being lonely and that may be why it is such
a difficult problem to address (Cacioppo & Patrick, 2008). Loneliness has been
described as a “debilitating psychological condition characterized by a deep sense of
emptiness, worthlessness, lack of control, and personal threat,” (Cacioppo, Hawkley &
Thisted, 2010, p. 453). This experience of condemned isolation causes patients and even
practitioners to feel so helpless, Cacioppo contends, that the 20% of Americans who
acknowledge and report loneliness are most commonly treated for depression or social
anxiety (Cacioppo & Patrick). While a mental health diagnoses may recontextualize the
loneliness patients feel as a disease and not a personal failure, increases in prescription of
anti-depressant medications and decreases in the use of individual and group therapies
fail to address individuals’ need for increasing relational efficacy (Boyles, 2010;
Cacioppo & Patrick) This is not to say these lonely patients are not depressed, but the
relationship between lack of belongingness and subsequent development of depression is
causal (Cacioppo et al.). In a five-year longitudinal study of depression, researchers
validated a dynamic whereby loneliness leads to depression, rather than depressed people
becoming lonelier or that the two affective states are simply co-occurring (Cacioppo et
al.).
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Unfortunately, loneliness researchers further posit a brutally cyclical effect in the
dynamics of social isolation, in that experienced loneliness inhibits individuals from
seeking out social contacts, as well as their decreased ability to emotionally regulate
when engaging in relationships (Cacioppo & Patrick, 2008). The latter becomes
especially detrimental because emotions in addition to relational anxiety - guilt and
jealousy, empathetic failure and potential for invalidation - are inevitable aspects of
engagement in emotionally intimate relationships (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). Even
Cacioppo and Patrick conclude their review of Cacioppo’s lifetime research, Loneliness
(2008), with the feeble suggestion that forlorn people volunteer in the community to
assuage their suffering. Therefore, solutions to the American problem of social isolation
must not only address increasing an individual’s social contacts, but also increasing our
understanding and comfort around the emotional dynamics of increasing relational
intimacy (Cacioppo & Patrick). Insight into the mechanics of explicit learning of
relational efficacy comes from some unlikely sources: men’s psychology and autism
research.
The Embodiment of Belongingness
RCT explicitly posits their relational ideal of mutual empathy and mutual
empowerment reflects an identifiably female way of being-in-the-world (Miller, 1988),
an understanding echoed by men’s relational psychology:
In the face of the man’s dread and withdrawal, the woman, yearning to
make connection at first pursues and then she, too, withdraws... An
34
impasse is relational in the sense that it cannot reside in one person or
the other, but in the process between them (Bergman, 1996, p. 25).
Intersubjectivity is lost in this impasse, both parties experiencing yearning as well
as dread, but also alike in their inability to meet in that liminal interpersonal space
between them. RCT scholar, Stephen J. Bergman (1996), contextualizes males’
experience of dread at others’ expectations of mutual empathy and mutual empowerment
as one of inadequacy. Bergman argues that men are less socialized for interpersonal skill.
This is not a mother-blaming argument, but rooted in the empirical observation that most
boys have a period of differentiation from others around 3 years old that may develop
into an isolating individualism, secondary to a cultural narratives invalidating male
connectedness (Bergman). Having histories of unskilled efforts and interpersonal failures
in the past, adult men’s experience of intimacy may then become infused with feelings of
incompetence and disaster, precariousness and shame (Bergman). Bergman, however,
does not view these developmental deficits as excusing men from responsibility for their
lifetime relational efficacy in a relational world.
A therapist himself, he asserts that the greatest leaps men experience toward
increasing empathetic skillfulness results from their participation in group therapy with
other men. This may be because men perceive emotionally intimate friendships as safer
relational spaces, an environment that supports men's overcoming of their isolating fears
of feeling relationally defective (Bergman, 1996). Advocating for men’s group therapy,
Robert Garfield (2010) asserts, “We have found that the capacity for emotional intimacy
in men is best fostered through their development of friendship skills,” (p. 115) and
35
shares his four-step program to increase these friendship skills: connection,
communication, commitment, and cooperation.
Another interesting effort in solution-focused interventions for increasing
relational efficacy is autism research, specifically that of Simon Baron-Cohen, who first
proposed a Mind-Blindness Theory of autism spectrum disorders. This theory explained
the intersubjective difficulties those who have autism and Asperger’s Syndrome
experience as a result of lower innate capacity for the embodied experience of affective
empathy; these individuals have less ability to feel what another is feeling, but have
unimpaired capacity for deductive or cognitive empathy (Baron-Cohen, 2009). Theories
of Mind, like this one, seek to understand neurological bases for the human ability to
implicitly understand that others have a subjectively different view of the world and that
it might be different from our own. On a relational level, this necessitates some
intersubjective theorizing as to the internal experience of the other; otherwise, others in
our relational world would seemingly act in no predictable manner (Baron-Cohen).
Subsequently, a computer-based course, Mind Reading, was developed that presented
viewers with a systematic education in observing and recognizing non-verbal emotionalbehavioral cues (Baron-Cohen).
Baron-Cohen’s testing of his Empathizing-Systemizing Theory (2009) also
yielded interesting results in understanding individuals’ relative tendency toward
affective empathy. Extreme position on the far end of empathetic cognition alone was
not predictive of diagnosis with autistic spectrum disorders. A mutually extreme
tendency toward systemizing ways of thinking, defined as the seeking regularity and
36
developing rules-based explanations of the social world was also exhibited by those
meeting autistic criteria (Baron-Cohen). His unexpected findings were that biologicallymale subjects also expressed a less extreme, but significant, differential between their
tendency toward systemizing cognitive style and decreased tendency toward empathetic
cognition (Baron-Cohen). Clarifying that Empathizing-Systemizing Theory is not a
theory of gender essentialism, Baron-Cohen notes significant numbers of biologically
female subjects also exhibited preference for cognitive systemizing and male subjects for
empathizing.
The Self-Consciousness of Late Modernity
Sociological theories of modernism trace the increasing ambiguity of the
individual’s phenomenological experience of self-in-society, especially in our felt sense
of security derived from sharing a congruent sense of community values and meanings
with others (Drozek, 2010; Giddens, 1990; Habermas, 1984). For example, critical
theorist Jurgen Habermas characterizes an individual in a traditional culture as having a
relatively stable of sense of self borne of internalizing defined relational-cultural
expectations of someone-like-him, Freud’s ego and superego, respectively (Habermas).
As, say, a father and a farmer and a Christian, this hypothetical gentleman’s sense of
himself is reinforced in turn by those expectations being reflected back to him through his
relationships with his family, his village, his church and his God (Habermas). Inasmuch
as individuals in traditional cultures experience human subjectivity, they are more or less
likely to live up to their cultural expectations, losing respect and even belongingness in
the worst case. Still, those individuals may possess a more secure sense of deserving
37
belongingness than may be found in the post-industrial cultures of late capitalism, such as
the United States and Britain, where it is understood that respect is earned and
belongingness is conditional (Giddens; Habermas). Centuries of movement toward
capitalism and democracy have allowed people significantly more personal autonomy
and economic opportunity, but it has also decreased the embeddedness of the individual
in their social environment and their subjective sense of belongingness (Habermas).
Karl Marx’s concern was that of the well being of the modern individual when he
or she became primarily valued as a unit of labor in capitalist society (Habermas, 1984).
Similarly, Habermas and other concerned critical theorists posit decreased well-being in
the U.S. and other post-industrial nations, as a result of cultural valuation based on the
disembedded individual’s position as a unit of consumption. Internalization of cultural
passivity, and the deferential stepping back from effecting the action necessary for
belongingness, is the form of relational disempowerment Olds and Schwartz describe in
The Lonely American (2009). This occurs when we cease making plans out of
consideration of others’ time and stop sharing our concerns for fear of burdening others
with our problems, believing they will seek us out and - if it seems worthwhile - we can
choose to reconnect. In support, clinical social worker Robert Drozek’s, Theory of
Intersubjective Motivation (2010) posits the action of belongingness as being
psychologically predicated on our recognition of an “unconditionally valuable self” and
its recognition of an “unconditionally valuable other.”
The evaluative behavior of the colonized self is differentiated from the often
performative nature of social roles, such as the American tradition of providing
38
“customer service” and our expectation of receiving it. Whether in the workplace or
classroom or social event, individuals may strive to present social competence through
the performance of contextually valued self or role to an audience who understand their
own roles and are complicit in the performance (Giddens, 2009). However, when we
have assimilated the anomic cultural view of late capitalism as our own, when the
unconditionally valued self and the intimate vulnerability of a “behind-the-scenes” is lost;
the performer loses insight that he is performing (Giddens). Perhaps nowhere is the 21st
Century blurring of lines between the self and the performance-of-self more apparent
than in online social networking sites, such as Facebook (Wittkower, 2010).
On these sites, individuals are able to curate being-for-another as a solitary and
asynchronous exhibition (Hogan, 2010). This activity is removed even from the
immediacy and spontaneity of the performative action, such as engaging in a job
interview or other synchronous communications, such as talking on the telephone or text
“chatting” (Hogan). Generally, online social networks have 24-hour-a-day access to the
written, photographic and video “status updates” that members post on home pages for
their “Friends” to see - Friends in this case, meaning anyone from a teenage daughter to a
fondly-recalled high school sweetheart (Wittkower, 2010). These updates and related
commentaries lack the specificity of audience and recognition of relative intimacy
intrinsic to more contextual communications, giving individuals the leeway of sharing
more about themselves with a wider variety of people (Hogan; Wittkower).
Communications research, however, indicates the same declines in emotional intimacy
even among individuals having expanded online social networks (Hampton, Sessions, &
39
Her, 2009). Explanations of this paradox may be found in research on social media, and
especially online social networking sites, that reveal necessary reconceptualization of
such basic concepts: as identity, intimacy and privacy (Gammon, 2009; Van Manen,
2010).
British psychiatrist R. D. Laing, who developed his patients’ phenomenological
descriptions of the relational fear of becoming not-oneself into the psychological concept
of ontological insecurity, also described development of “false self-systems” (Laing,
1969; McDonald, Pietsch & Wilson, 2010). This false-self system is more than a
contextually-adopted persona, but is a fully-formed external self that protects the
individual from the relational anxiety of being overwhelmed or controlled by others in
their social environment (Laing; McDonald et al.). It is pathological inasmuch as it
paradoxically increases emotional isolation by protecting the individual against being
truly known by another, experiencing mutual empathy and feeling of belongingness
(Giddens, 1990; Laing; McDonald). Maintenance of online reproduction of self, by a
curator and audience who may or may not recognize it as such, may be a form of falseself system and therefore unable to meet our need for belongingness (Hampton, Sessions,
& Her, 2009; Hogan, 2010). Amongst those who related long-term feelings of loneliness,
for example, online communications actually increased the acuity of their distress around
emotional isolation (Hu, 2009).
Gaps in the Literature
The greatest barrier and inspiration for this research has been the lack of scholarly
sociological and psychological interest toward better understanding the dynamics of the
40
friendship relationship specifically. It may be the abundance of family and romantic
relational research is reflective of our cultural value of these relationships, Aristotle’s
lesser friendships of utility and pleasure being closest to our contemporary understanding
of friendship (Condella, 2010). Even the few books specifically devoted to friendship
posit friendships are borne from commonalities of specific interest and interests related to
life stage, and not opportunities for lifelong growth-fostering relationships (Blieszner &
Adams, 1992; Yager, 1997). In this conceptualization, the “outgrowing” or
disconnection of friendships as life and interests change becomes an organic and even
healthy inevitability (Blieszner & Adams; Yager).
Communications researcher William K. Rawlins (1992; 2009) has moved the
study of friendship away from transactional theories of friendship and toward dialectical
theory, positing the co-creation of relational narratives and identities as being the basis of
friendship. He starts with Aristotle as well, positing the relational anxieties and
communicative actions of intimate friendship arise from the seemingly opposed ethical
project of philia. He identifies the mutually growth-fostering activities of intimate
friendships as dialectical tensions arising from the seemingly paradoxical obligations of
friends to support our preferred identity, as well as their obligation to challenge our selfidentity by articulating their intersubjective experience of us (Rawlins, 2009). His
reflections on friendship, as a dynamic process of mutual growth and change, supports
RCT’s most basic assumption, which is that growth-fostering relationships like these are
the source of human development (Jordan, Walker & Hartling, eds., 2004). While other
feminist scholarship supports Rawlins abstract understandings of friendship (McLeod,
41
2002; McNay, 2010), RCT has articulated a process through which relationships become
growth-fostering through cultivation of mutual empathy and mutual empowerment
(Jordan et al.). This research seeks to make a pragmatic contribution to the study of
friendship, by seeking support for these assertions and to ascertain whether RCT is an
appropriate framework toward developing interventions for promoting belongingness
through intimate friendship. Additionally, this research is looking for other factors that
may arise from analysis of participants’ narrative and appear useful for addressing the
problem of American social and emotional isolation in the 21st Century.
Summary
This review of literature has explored the dynamics of loneliness and
belongingness from a critical theory perspective. In keeping with the conceptualization
of this research, that American social and emotional isolation is simultaneously a
personal and political problem, it begins with the original ethicist of democracy Aristotle. His analysis of ethics positions intimate friendship as the highest form of
relationship, for its purpose of engaging citizens of a democratic nation in dialectical
analysis of the greater good and thus creating a citizenry possessing ethical virtue and
efficacy (Condella, 2010; Rawlins, 2009). This and other historical understandings
around the nature of friendship and the ramifications of belongingness were explored, as
well as contemporary empirical research, and compared against the assumptions of RCT
(Miller, 1988).
Ample support was provided for the use of RCT as the appropriate framework for
this solution-focused research, as well as contributing to a thicker description of human
42
belongingness. Included in this multidisciplinary review, were subsequent philosophical
inquiry into relational dynamics, psychological and sociological research, and mostrecently neurological research into the physiology of intersubjectivity. Finally, this
review returned to the consequences of loneliness on us and our culture, as obligate
gregarious beings thwarted in their need to be-for-another. The literature reviewed
supports a post-structuralist understanding of late capitalist society in which we have lost
cultural support for belongingness, eschewing the relational anxiety seemingly inherent
in voluntarily being-for-another to pursue ontological security through consumption and
self-aggrandizement. RCT is a theory that presupposes a human desire for empathetic
action (Miller & Stiver, 1997), dissecting the dynamics of growth-fostering relationships
with as much phenomenological precision as Kierkegaard used in observing his
existential loneliness (Marino, 1988). This research is approached, then, from the
humanist understanding that we are capable of growth-fostering relationships, and seeks
to establish RCT as a basis for developing interventions toward increasing Americans’
capacity for intimate friendship. The next chapter will present Methodology.
43
Chapter 3
METHODOLOGY
The research question will be introduced in this section, as well as a rationale
provided for use of this research design and choice of drawing research participants from
this particular intentional social network. This researcher will also specifically discuss
development of a semi-structured interview tool, and methods used for increasing the
collaborative nature of this research throughout the process of gathering data. Finally,
implementation of protocols for the protection of participants in this research will be
discussed. Note: this researcher preferentially uses the term “participants” over
“subjects” to better capture the cooperative nature of the relationship between the
researcher and those interviewed.
Research Question
It is recognized in American culture that there is an essentially obligatory aspect
to family relationships and romantic partnerships, which are characterized as much by
legal obligations and formal contracts as any assumption of lifetime affinity. On the
other hand, our understanding of friendship is that it is essentially voluntary in nature,
and therefore more subject to the vagaries of affection. “Blood is thicker than water” is
the heuristic metaphor commonly used to describe this dichotomy. Yet some people do
engage in long-term platonic relationships: for better or worse, in sickness and health,
and persevere in those relationships beyond what might explained by cost-benefit
analysis or even rational choice (Alford, Hibbing & Smith, 2005). This research is
interested in both the interpersonal skills and the self-other perspectives that maintain
44
these voluntary relationships over the lifespan. The study focuses on friendship
dilemmas in an effort to better understand what allows intimate friendships to flourish in
spite of higher potentials for disconnection. Specifically, this research seeks to answer
the following questions: 1. Are the relational factors of mutual empathy and mutual
empowerment (Miller, 1988) the basis of growth-fostering relationships, in this case
intimate friendships, as evidenced by these participants’ stories around their emotional
responses and related behaviors in difficult friendship situations? 2. Are there some
other factors, implicit assumptions or particular perspectives that emerge from these
participants’ generalizations around their relational experiences and are supportive of
intimate friendships?
Research Design
The researcher will engage in an exploratory semi-structured interview with
participants, followed by qualitative analysis of the transcribed narratives. Narrative
inquiry is useful in the study of interpersonal relationships. It captures participants’
understanding of themselves in their contexts, gathers what social scientists call a “thick
description” and it is even be argued that, “…stories are the closest we can come to
shared experience.” (Savin-Baden & Van Niekerk, 2007, p. 462). In addition to reading
for explicit content, in this case stories about coping with dilemmas encountered in
friendships, the collected narrative itself also becomes a piece of data that may be
analyzed for more implicit content or its meaning in-and-of-itself (Savin-Baden & Van
Niekerk). For example, the participant’s choice to participate in this study or the
45
narrative they provide may be a means of verifying their own mastery of relational skills
or a reification of their conceptualization of what it is to be a good friend.
Qualitative analysis of narrative is especially appropriate for the study of
relationships, with the nuances of behavior and attitude most likely to be lost using
surveys or other quantitative methods (Rubin & Babbie, 2008). The transcribed
narratives were examined through content analysis and grounded theory. Content
analysis is the research practice of operationalizing abstract concepts, such as empathy,
empowerment or mutuality, and analyzing the content of communications for the
presence of these concepts (Rubin & Babbie). For example, this research will
operationalize “mutual empathy” and code participants’ mentions of sharing affective
state, perspective taking, etc., as being examples of this concept. This is called latent
content analysis, in that it is the implicit meanings mentioned in the narrative that are
being looked at, as opposed to manifest content, which might analyze only mentions of
specific words appearing in the narrative (Rubin & Babbie). Latent content analysis
allows the writer to look for the participants’ phenomenological descriptions of
experienced mutual empathy, which are more likely to occur in the participant’s spoken
vernacular than in such social science terminologies as “mutual empathy” or
“unconditional positive regard” (Miller, 1988; Rogers, 1961). In this case, the
participants’ interview narratives describing their emotional responses and related
behaviors will be analyzed in light of the central tenets of RCT, which defines growthfostering relationships as those based on the principles of mutual empathy and mutual
empowerment (Jordan, Walker & Hartling, eds., 2004). However, this research is not
46
only interested in examining the presence of these RCT concepts in real-world
relationships.
This researcher also desires to remain open to additional understandings
participants might have about supportive factors, or even the essential nature of their
intimate friendships. Therefore, the participants’ stories and especially the data related to
participants’ generalizations about their experiences will be examined using grounded
theory, which uses deductive analysis of data to discover what themes or concepts
beyond mutual empathy and mutual empowerment might be present in these narratives
(Rubin & Babbie, 2008). This research is especially interested in what have been called
“canonical expectations” (Monroe, 1996), these being generalizations individuals make
about what response and behaviors are can reasonably expected of themselves and others,
and “meaning frames” (Savin-Baden & Van Niekerk, 2007). In this case it is the gestalt
of what it means to engage in intimate friendships. This is especially germane, as
participants have been drawn from a social network having an explicit code of values, as
well as the tacit behavioral norms generally found in social groups (Moskalenko, 2008).
Each story then is recognized by this research as both dynamically resulting from
participants’ understandings around friendship and responsible for creating the realities of
the friendships described in the participant’s narrative (Savin-Baden & Van Niekerk).
One of the constraints of qualitative analysis, and especially when participants are
drawn from a homogenous sample, is that the results are not generalizeable (Rubin &
Babbie, 2008). Thus, this writer would not be able to claim that these participants’
experiences in friendship are similar to those experienced by other populations. The lack
47
of ability to generalize is less of a concern for this writer, however, because the sample
population has been identified as intensity sample or even a deviant case sample (Rubin
& Babbie). These participants’ experiences, embedded in a long-term social network of
intimate friendships, deviates entirely or in intensity from what must now be considered
the “normal” contemporary American socialization (Hampton, Sessions, & Her, 2009;
McPherson, Smith-Lovin, & Brashears, 2006). Specifically, this sample population has
exhibited long-term commitment to engaging in intimate friendships, as opposed to the
American trend toward a decreasing number of intimate relationships, and especially
friendships, that has left kin and romantic partners as most individual’s sole confidantes
(Hampton et al.; McPherson et al.). This researcher’s interest lies in understanding this
population’s anomalous behavior, as well as exploring the implications for those “lonely
Americans” who may be interested in increasing their capacity for more intimate
friendships.
Study Population
The only criterion for participants was identifying as a member of the People’s
Republic of East Davis (PRED). The first 10 responding to recruitment, via this social
network’s Facebook group, were interviewed as participants in this research. At the time
of this study, only one of the participants resided in Davis, CA. Actual participants in
this study were: three women, one female-to-male transgender and six men, the majority
being in their thirties and two each in the mid-twenties and early-forties age ranges.
Ethnically, nine participants were of European ancestry and one Mexican-American.
48
Educationally, two participants had no college and one some college, while five had
completed a bachelor’s degree and two held master’s degrees.
Sample Population
The People’s Republic of East Davis (PRED) is an intentional friendship network
founded in 1996, whose members have exhibited a high degree of mastery in the
initiation and maintenance of intimate friendships. Over the last 16 years, members have
multiply engaged in what RCT describes as “growth-fostering relationships” (Miller,
1988). RCT founder, Jean Baker Miller, describes the experience of being in this type of
relationship as exemplified by “the five good things” or: 1. Increased zest, 2. A sense of
empowerment, 3. Greater self-knowledge, 4. Increased self-worth, and 5. A desire for
more connection (Jordan, Walker & Hartling, ed.s, 2004). The final attribute is realized
in that PRED relational dynamics oppose an oft-observed propensity for in-group
insularity in social networks (Moskalenko, 2008). Instead, there is a tendency for
members to both have intimate friendships outside the network and for newcomers to be
incorporated into the network via intimate friendships with individual members.
Illustrating this relational openness, is the fact that this researcher has been a
participant-observer in this network since its inception, but personally knows perhaps
25% of those persons identifying as “PREDsters” today. The usual method of obtaining
a deviant case sample is through purposive sampling, such as the researcher hand-picking
individuals for participation after having identified them as maintaining social and
emotional relatedness through engagement in intimate friendships (Rubin & Babbie,
2008). However, this researcher identified coercion (or the perception of coercion to
49
participate in this research) as a possible conflict of interest. Therefore, an availability
sample was obtained through participants’ voluntarily responses to a request-forparticipants post on the PRED Facebook page. The first 10 respondents were interviewed
as an available sample of a deviant population that has retained belongingness, up to and
including empowering this research.
Instrumentation
This researcher developed a survey tool (see Appendix C) which presents
participants with nine different friendship dilemmas, such as: You feel compelled to share
something in a deepening friendship and are not sure they will approve, and: Your friend
seems to disappear whenever becoming involved in a new romantic relationship. The
scenarios reflect three periods common within the span of friendships: formation of
friendship, maintenance of friendship and reconnecting following a disconnection
(Blieszner & Adams, 1992; Miller & Stiver, 1997). Participants were asked to choose
three of these challenging friendship situations they have experienced themselves - one
from each period - which they would be comfortable discussing with this researcher. The
situations have face validity around their potential for relational disconnection, querying
such common dilemmas as: personal disclosure in formation of friendship, evolving
lifestyles and priorities while maintaining friendships, and barriers to initiating
reconnection. While no reliability tests were performed, these scenarios appear broad
and general enough to have been experienced by a variety of people, while refined
enough to control the variety of acquired data. The dilemmas themselves were gleaned
from literature review and convenience sampling around common personal experiences
50
leading to friendship disconnections (Blieszner & Adams; Jordan, Walker & Hartling,
eds., 2004; Miller & Stiver).
The open-ended interview questions then elicit three perspectives from
participants around their experience in these friendships dilemmas. The questions are
requests for description, do not reflect any particular bias and meet social science
guidelines around relevance (Rubin & Babbie, 2008). Participants were queried about:
their affective and cognitive response to the situation, their internal and interpersonal
reactions, and finally the meaning they made of their experience. The interview
questions are present on the survey tool and participants were able to review these
questions before choosing the situation they wanted to discuss. Only clarifying probes, to
ascertain full understanding of the participant’s story, and no additional questions were
asked by this researcher during the interview. Use of narrative inquiry has allowed for
participants’ interpretation and process, even their descriptive vocabulary, to be available
for research analysis and interpretation (Savin-Baden & Van Niekerk, 2007).
Social desirability bias was recognized as having the likeliest potential for
participant discomfort and the factor most likely to skew participants’ responses to
interview question (Rubin & Babbie, 2008). This is because participants are likely to
encounter this researcher again in social contexts. Additionally, this researcher
recognized participants might also be uncomfortable discussing specific relationships
where both parties may be known to the writer. These concerns have been addressed by
the language and structure of the survey design, in researcher’s explicit statements and
attitude of unconditional positive regard, in the confidentiality of the research data, and
51
finally by development of a collaborative interview in which participants choose the
topics they prefer to speak about.
Data Gathering Procedures
For the purposes of this study, a passive solicitation of volunteers was made by
posting a Request for Participants on the PRED Facebook page (79 members: 37 women,
42 men), as well as a posting announcing End of Recruitment (see Appendix A and B,
respectively). Solicitation was made only via posting on this social networking site and
not through any individualized request, with potential participants being requested to
reply with expressions of interest to the researcher’s encrypted Yahoo! e-mail only. The
posting specified the interview would last one hour and the dates between which the
interviews would take place.
Negotiations regarding participation were made via e-mail, this writer meeting
participants in coffee shops convenient to both, and refreshments served there were the
only material incentives offered to participants. One coffee shop was identified having a
private meeting room with a door and others offered semi-private areas acceptable to the
majority of participants. There is a separate acknowledgement and agreement on the
Consent to Participate in Research (see Appendix D) regarding the tape recording of
interviews. Participants signed both prior to being interviewed. This writer did not take
notes during the interview and no demographic information was deliberately collected by
this writer, other than the participant’s preferred gender pronoun, for use in discussion of
the data. In-depth demographic information was deemed irrelevant to the research
questions; however, additional demographic information was gleaned in the course of
52
these interviews, such as ethnicity and approximate age of the participants, as well as
educations background and city of current residence.
Data Analysis
Interviews were transcribed directly and the recording erased. The transcripts
were numbered and assigned a pseudonym for use in the discussion of these participants’
narratives of friendship. The transcribed narratives were examined by this writer using
latent content analysis (Rubin & Babbie, 2008). Evidence of the growth-fostering
qualities: mutual empathy and mutual empowerment were sought, these being
operationalized in a manner consistent with Relational Cultural Theory understanding of
them as interpersonal responsiveness and support for the friendship, respectively, by both
parties (Jordan, Walker & Hartling, ed.s, 2004). Grounded theory (Rubin & Babbie) and
narrative inquiry (Savin-Baden & Van Niekerk, 2007) were then used to seek other
themes or conceptualizations participants might have around the characteristics of their
intimate friendships, with special attention paid to evidence of canonical expectations
(Monroe, 1996) of what participants consider to be normal expectations in this type of
relationship.
Protection of Human Subjects
This minimal-risk social science research was approved by the California State
University, Sacramento Division of Social Work’s Committee for the Protection of
Human Subjects with the approval number: 11-12-013. The application included
attached the copy of Request for Participants and End of Recruitment postings appearing
on the social network site, Facebook. Also attached were the survey instrument and
53
interview questions document: Making and Maintaining Intimate Friendships in
Adulthood and the Consent to Participate in Research, containing a separate
acknowledgement and consent to be audio recorded. Participants were given a copy of
both for their own reference and to retain information regarding availability of counseling
in the community contained on the Consent. Questions about the Consent and the
purpose of the research itself were encouraged and participants were admonished by this
writer, verbally and on the survey, that there were no right or wrong answers to these
research questions - only insights.
In addition to the Consent, this writer verbally explained the participant’s rights to
privacy and how confidentiality of the data collected will be maintained. Specifically,
that all participants will be assigned a pseudonym to be used within the thesis itself and
no specific identifying information, other than their preferred gender pronoun, will be
revealed in analysis and discussion of their narrative data. This writer has also reviewed
the Committees guidelines for online activities and there is no online surveying or storage
of survey data. Participants were directed to the researcher’s encrypted Yahoo! e-mail
only and replies to the posting itself - “Comments” in Facebook parlance - were not
considered intention to participate. Participants requesting to participate through
Facebook’s personal messaging system were redirected to this writer’s encrypted Yahoo!
e-mail.
Summary
In this section, the research interests and questions being explored in this research
endeavor were introduced. The use of narrative inquiry, a research design that
54
incorporates latent content analysis and grounded theory toward a gestalt of participants’
friendship experience, was described and defended as appropriate for this exploratory
qualitative research. The rationale for using the intentional social network, PRED, as a
sample population for this research was examined. Finally, this researcher’s commitment
to the protection of those participating in this research was illustrated by review of
protocols put in place for the maintenance of their confidentiality. In the next chapter,
the data will be analyzed.
55
Chapter 4
DATA ANALYSIS
Ten interviews were conducted with members of the 16-year social network, the
People’s Republic of East Davis (PRED), around their strategies for connection in longterm intimate friendships and pseudonyms were assigned. One of the strategies narrative
analysts use to gain a holistic picture of the participant-in-relation is to write up
participant biographies contextualizing the participant’s connections to their community,
rather than describing simple demographic information (Savin-Baden & Van Niekirk,
2007). However, in the interests of space, this researcher will briefly and relationally
introduce the 10 participants and their pseudonyms.
Five of the participants were present at the founding of PRED in 1996, which
took place at Kyle and Nemo’s Colgate Drive house: Nemo and Kyle, Ruth and Chad, as
well as Nick, who lived around the corner. All were in their twenties at the time. Nemo
and Chad had previously dated and were then UC Davis Medieval Studies scholars, while
Nick and Kyle were older and had already graduated. Kyle had met Nick through mutual
friends around 1993, as well as sharing a Latin class with Chad at one time. Ruth and
Nemo met through their boyfriends in their late teens and had previously been
roommates. Ivan knew Nick and some other PRED founders, having shared a dorm and
later a house with them, and encountered this larger and more self-aware social network
when on a break from his grad studies at UC Irvine. Etta and Jeff were introduced to
PRED through another member in the late 1990s, having grown up with him in, and all
being members of, the “Redding Contingent.” Ruth lived with Doug in 2002, when he
56
was in his late teens and questioning his Mormon faith, while Bree was introduced into
the network by a PRED co-worker around the same time.
The questions of interest in researching this intentional social network are
twofold. First: Are mutual empathy and mutual empowerment the basis of these growthfostering relationships, as evidenced by these participants’ narratives around their
emotional responses and related behaviors in difficult friendship situations? Feminist
psychiatrist Jean Baker Miller (1988) proposed these as being the two factors supportive
of relational resiliency. Manifest and latent content analysis of participants’ narratives
will explore these RCT assumptions. Second: Are there other relational factors or
perspectives that emerge from these participants’ stories that also are supportive of these
participants’ relational resilience within intimate friendships? The purpose of these
inquiries is to consider whether RCT is an appropriate theoretical framework for
development of interventions increasing our capacity for intimate friendship relationship,
as well as exploring other relational factors supporting belongingness in American
culture today.
Is Mutual Empathy Fundamental in the Intimate Friendship Relationship?
There are two related aspects of the first research question: mutual empathy and
mutual empowerment. For the purposes of this analysis, they have been split them apart
in the analysis to better understand the mechanisms of mutual empathy and
empowerment in intimate friendships. RCT scholar, Judith Jordan, describes empathy as
an active practice in addition to an affective state (Jordan, Walker & Hartling, eds.,
2004). Derived from a relational awareness that appears more common in women,
57
Jordan’s praxis of ‘anticipatory empathy’ is: being-for-another with simultaneous
awareness of others’ wants and needs, as well as awareness of the ramifications of one’s
own wants and needs.
General Definition of Empathy
In 2004, Decety and Jackson conducted an exhaustive analysis of existing social
science understandings of empathy and concluded, like RCT scholars, that there is wide
agreement around empathy being not only a subjective state, but encompassing the
capability for an empathetic communicative action. So, while our empathetic
experiences often began with sharing another’s affective state and mirroring those
feelings, they also include cognitive knowledge of another’s feelings based on
perspective taking and the ability to be-for-another by successfully differentiating our
own feelings and perspectives from others’ through metaconsciousness (Decety &
Jackson). These subjective and communicative aspects of mutual empathy are examined
individually in this section as: sharing affective state, perspective taking, awareness of
internal process and formulating compassionate affective response.
Sharing Affective State
For research participants, having felt similar emotions did not generally seem
predicated on having had the actual experience of another or evening imagining they had.
These two participants’ responses to others having children illustrate this, with Ivan being
the only participant did not discuss feeling affective empathy. He volunteered this
awareness, “I don’t think I lack empathy, per se, but I have a very hard time
understanding desires and motivations that aren’t like mine... It is baffling to me why
58
you’d want to be a parent.” Nick is also childless and he recalls his friend being
preoccupied with her first baby. He instead tapped into an awareness of them both
missing each other being the irreducible dilemma “When her kid was born, she was not
available for like six months,” he recalls, “I missed her. I missed hanging out with her...
And, you know the, the thing is she also missed me.” Nick used affective empathy to
formulate a compassionate relational response, not reading it as his friend having entered
a foreign lifestyle or pulling back from friendship. That he was able to identify his
friend’s affective state of desiring belongingness as a friend, is less surprising the more
we learn about unconscious social cognition.
It is accepted that lack of belongingness causes dysfunction in our physiological
systems (Beaumeister & Leary, 1995; Gere & MacDonald, 2010). Now, the
neuroscience of social cognition is elucidating the physiological systems of affective
empathy in promoting the mind state of belongingness (Gerdes & Segal, 2011). The
human brain has “mirror neurons” which appear to provoke the actual physiological
feeling that we are simultaneously having the experience of another, via the embodied
experience - such as when we salivate watching another person eating (Gerdes & Segal).
Therefore, we are able recognize others’ affective state without consciously
recalling having been in a similar situation - in this case, living with the choice of having
a child - or even engaging in perspective taking, a cognitive explanation of what others’
affective state would likely be (Gerdes & Segal, 2011). The validity of Nick’s mutual
empathy is reflected in Chad’s observation of his affective experience of early childrearing, “I was a stay-at-home dad, and being a stay-at-home parent is an inherently
59
isolating thing. It is an amazingly isolating experience...there’s me playing the D & D
[Dungeons & Dragons] that we have... It’s about once a week.” In these cases, Nick and
Chad’s awareness of their own and others’ empathetic responses has allowed them to
identify their needs for belongingness and navigate potential relational disconnections.
By adjusting their communicative responses through affective empathy, each adjusted to
the contingencies around the relational state - new parenthood - and examined what effect
it had their friendships. Nick waited the situation out and Chad took a night out for
friends once per week, and both maintained connection in intimate friendships.
Perspective Taking
There are several ways participants used perspective taking for increasing
empathy, the most common being use of the cognitive process of recall or association,
understanding another’s perspective by rationally relating it to a similar experience of our
own (Winkielman & Schooler, 2008). This deductive and rules-based awareness of ways
other people are likely to think seemed a more common approach, being used by all
participants and related considerably more than affective responses. However, this
researcher is also attentive to the sample’s male skew and the possibility that perspective
taking may simply be easier to explain in words than affective states. Ruth articulately
discusses the intersection of affective and cognitive empathy, discussing the relational
dilemma of a friend who abruptly ceased contact upon entering a new romantic
relationship:
60
I thought she was really incredibly pissed at me and that she had
dumped me as a friend... When she did get a hold of me again and
was just so wrapped up for a freak’n year, I was absolutely livid.
Despair and indignation promote disengagement; however, Ruth was able to
empathize through perspective taking, remaining in mutual empathy and not abandoning
the friendship entirely. She reflected on her own experience of infatuation, “There is a
point when you get to the third date, and realize there’s probably going to be a seventh
date, that everything’s about New Guy. Ah, New Guy.” In addition to providing a
conscious explanation of others’ behavior, our increased understanding of neuroplasticity
indicates an individual’s capacity for feeling empathy can be enhanced simply by the
naming and associating others’ empathetic states emotions we experienced in similar
situations (Gerdes & Segal, 2011).
Awareness of Internal Process
Winklieman and Schooler (2008), discuss a third kind of empathy in “Splitting
Consciousness: Unconscious, Conscious, and Metaconscious in Social Cognition.” They
describe the cognitive process that occurs when we ask ourselves, “What am I thinking or
feeling?” and describe is as another cognitive observation of ourselves - an outsider’s
perspective on ourselves, different from our unconscious affective and conscious
cognitive interpretations of empathetic experience (Winklieman & Schooler). It reminds
us our affective and cognitive interpretation are our own and not necessarily reflective of
another’s experience. Interestingly, this metaconsciousness did not seem necessarily
related to greater ability for abstract thought. Jeff and Ivan who have both attained a
61
Master’s level education, in Literature and Political Psychology, respectively, evinced the
most difficulty separating their emotional and cognitive suppositions from the possibility
of alternate explanations their friends might provide. Bree and Doug, on the other hand,
were the youngest and least-educated participants, and evinced self-reflexivity seemingly
reflexively - perhaps because postmodern cultural understanding became a matter of
course in the decade they were adolescents. Other participants demonstrated the ability
to hold multiple perspectives in addition to their own, with Chad and Nemo discussing
their explicit awareness of holding metaconsciousness throughout their interview.
Nemo recounts a dilemma occurring early in his friendship with a fellow student:
he described having harbored some self-righteous feelings when his married friend
disclosed her affair with their professor. This self-righteousness precluded his ability to
engage in mutual affective or cognitive empathy - it felt wrong and was wrong:
I don’t know that I was particularly supportive about her pursuit of that
relationship, but I was in a position to be supportive of her when it ended
because it had previously been disclosed to me... It looked like it was a
pretty difficult time, partially because she didn’t have many folks she
could share the distress of that experience with.
Nemo reports having successfully supported his friend in her heartbreak,
separating his moral judgments about her adulterous relationship having occurred, from
his expression of mutual empathy when it was over. He referred to his phenomenological
experience of this budding friendship as “hard” and “scary” and “sometimes upsetting.”
He also relates that his mutual empathy was derived from the same friend having
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previously modeled a similar acceptance and positive regard toward him. An epiphany
around being judgmental arrived later. He found himself emotionally isolated following
the breakup of his own unconventional romantic relationship and reflecting then,
“Nonjudgmental could be a learning process and that being trust---. Suspending judgment
and being trusting is also valuable, not just having standards.”
The central relational paradox is an integral part of the RCT framework, positing
a history of relational powerlessness as its antecedent (Miller, 1988), and there is also
much support for relational and attachment anxieties being rooted in early relational
experience. However, this research suggests some level of inherent intersubjective
tension or relational anxiety, manifesting in avoidance of addressing relational
disconnections for Jeff and rebuff of his unrelenting relationality for Ivan. Even for those
able to hold mindfulness of their own subjectivity, maintaining metaconsciousness or
conscientiousness is taxing. Evidence suggests that this psychological and neurological
function uses a great deal of energy in the form of blood glucose, metaconsciousness
effort being reduced when we are alone (Winklieman & Schooler, 2008).
Formulating Compassionate Affective Response
A final task of mutual empathy is the communicative action of compassionately
being-for-another with a relational awareness of the belongingness needs of another and,
ideally, with awareness of our own relational wants and needs (Jordan, Walker &
Hartling, eds., 2004). Participants expressed compassionate affective response in two
way, the first by being solicitous of others suffering, which was articulated by eight of the
participants. An equally common compassionate response participants’ exhibited was in
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their withholding judgments of their friends as people, forgiving or accepting others
whose actions were acknowledged as hurtful to the participant or deemed morally
reprehensible. Kyle describes using metaconsciousness process for controlling his
affective response and then for critically examining his culturally-informed judgments of
certain actions being worthy of another’s ostracization. He relates the story of being
engaged in a burgeoning friendship with a local poet he admired, when his friend made a
harrowing disclosure:
My new friend L., whose friendship I actively sought... made the shocking
revelation that many years before he had killed his only child during an
apparent - possibly exacerbated by drugs - psychotic break from
reality...Initially, I was very shocked and more than a bit repulsed, but also
somewhat flattered because he said he felt comfortable sharing this
information with me because I was a “trustworthy” person.
Kyle responded initially with mutual empathy, responding to his friend with
compassionate empathetic response in the moment. However, he relates the “shock wore
off” and he found himself using metaconsciousness again, now to mediate his cognitive
response and create a dialectic. He questioned, “whether I could be friends with someone
who was capable of such atrocity,” and maintained awareness that he affectively felt his
friend deserved mutual empathy and relationship. Mediating the visceral emotion of
repulsion and respect for human life proves a difficult dialectical task for the
metaconsciousness, seeking in Kyle’s case to reconcile his respect for his friend, with the
friend’s egregious deed.
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Neurological research shows individuals appear to have a tendency toward greater
reliance on either cognitive processing of relational information or affective empathy
(Mazzola et al., 2010). While variations in observed relational frames of reference have
been observed - generally inward and outward styles - explanations of their antecedents
vary, from object relations’ family pathology (Greenberg & Mitchell, 1983) to RCT’s
cultural marginalization (Miller & Stiver, 1997).
Kyle relates considering his friend’s disclosure from a variety of perspectives:
first he concluded that his friend had “paid whatever debt he owed society,” then he
observed his friend being surrounded by loving and respectful others, and finally, he did
not lose awareness of the kindness his friend had shown him. Kyle concludes, “My
attitude towards him shifted from seeing L. in a somewhat worshipful way, towards
seeing him as someone who had to carry a terrible burden [with] him through his life.
We are still friends to this day.”
Baron-Cohen’s empathizing-systemizing theory (2009) posits a tendency for
biological males to favor rules-based or systemized explanations others’ action, possibly
related to testosterone levels, wherein human behavior is conceived of as essentially
rational and predictable. At its extreme are the autistic spectrum disorders, where
systemized understanding encounters the subjective and irrational other, and “the domain
of mental states plays havoc with truth relations,” (Baron-Cohen, p. 77). Other
neurological explanations add additional voices to the discussion. In one study, subjects
were sorted by evaluated preference for affective, versus cognitive, empathetic style
(Mazzola et al., 2010). Subjects using the embodied empathy of evaluating others, by
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their own affective response, were more aware of those basic emotions thought to be
universal, including anger, fear and happiness (Mazzola et al.). Rules-based or
systemizing theories of mind seemed to require a larger vocabulary of relational
vocabulary, the lack of which leads to a poignant condition of alexithymia - the inability
to articulate conceptualization of one’s own mental state (Baron-Cohen).
Is Mutual Empowerment Fundamental to Intimate Friendships?
Relational-Cultural Theory defines mutual empowerment as related to a most
basic recognition in feminist theories, that interpersonal power dynamics exist within
relationships and that they tend to reflect cultural hierarchies of fixed relational identities
(Jordan, Walker & Hartling, eds., 2004). Mutual empowerment in friendship, then,
recognizes the necessity for confidence in our capacity to support others’ needs for
belongingness and allow others to support our own, understanding that these needs will
fluctuate over time (Jordan et al.). This requires a confidence in our own worth as a
friend, taking responsibility for meaningfully contributing to another’s life and the
assurance that others are willing to participate in supporting the shared relationship
(Cacciopo, 2008; Jordan et al.).
General Definition of Empowerment
About friendship, Etta shared her understanding that “Being your friend’s
cheerleader is part of it,” and empowerment of others’ endeavors is cited as one of the
“five good things” resulting from participating in mutually growth-fostering relationship
(Miller & Stiver, 1997). However, the mutual empowerment examined in this particular
research relates specifically to participants’ capacity and methods of navigating relational
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situations that have the potential to cause the disempowerments of social and emotional
disconnection, but exhibiting a relational resilience that maintained belongingness.
Therefore, this research defines empowerment narrowly, as those relational activities that
support the intimate friendship itself. The communicative actions of mutual
empowerment have been identified here as: supporting others’ relational needs, allowing
others to meet one’s own needs and acting in support of the friendship itself.
Supporting Others’ Relational Needs
Participants in this research articulated and understanding of the potential for the
political to become personal, such as when they described encountering friendship
dilemmas and being explicitly aware of their capacity to participate in the
disempowerment of that friend, especially through participating in their relationalcultural marginalization. Contemporary friendship researchers speak to this relationship
as having the explicit value of fostering self-identities and exploring personal values
(McLeod, 2002; Rawlins, 2009). Tolerance and support of others’ diverse identities was
introduced by all 10 participants as exemplifying their friendship virtuosity. Doug
recounts having had a roommate and becoming friends over their common identity as
“Burners.” After few months living together, they were discussing the year’s Burning
Man theme: Rite of Passage, and his roommate used this segue to come out as female-tomale transgender - a transman. Doug relates:
Out of nowhere, he was like ‘I’m working on transitioning myself’... and it
just blew my mind so much that I kind of like took a step back and was
just like ‘Whoa.’ Alright, so like, now what?’ ...At that point, I just started
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kind of asking questions ...That might have been the alcohol or just the
fact that I’m really inquisitive, but it’s the first person I had a chance to
one-on-one talk to someone about it.
One strengths-based approach to relational competence is cultural curiosity that
“involves the elicitation instead of the assignment of meaning” (Bertolino, 2010, p. 89).
Doug’s response may indeed have been based on lowered inhibition from alcohol or his
apparent inquisitiveness, but he later relates more generally, “I like getting new
perspectives from other people.” Raised Mormon, Doug recalls being told queer people
were “abominations” and that he noticed his own feelings of antipathy toward a gay
classmate in high school. He shares this history: “I noticed that I was the only one who
stared at the guy, but after the open dialogue between us, it was very candid and mature.
I realized: it’s just another dude.” Client-centered approaches asserts cultural
competency includes being recognized, as also ascertaining when culturally marginalized
people may be relationally disempowered by the power-over expectation that they must
allow cross-examination of their “otherness” (Bertolino).
Doug relates his roommate seeming relieved to talk about his experience, “I don’t
know. People really trust me with shit and I don’t know why.” He also explicitly
recognized the validity of his friend’s concerns around wanting to disclose to his
roommates and his hesitation, “Like, he just thought maybe we would reject him, maybe
make him move out because some people are close-minded and narrowed-off enough to
do stuff like that.” Doug relates several more months went by and his friend did not
discuss transgender identity with him again, but their other roommates were making
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derogatory remark about their transman roommate wearing panties. “I shouldn’t be the
one to tell you this,” he relates telling them, “But just to put this in context for you...” He
shares being disturbed by “outing” his friend and also frustrated by these roommates’
indignation that their transgender roommate had not disclosed to them: “Maybe he
thought you’d make fun of him,” Doug recalls saying, “You know, like you were just
doing.” He relates the rest of their shared roommate situation was uneventful.
Allowing Others to Meet One’s Own Relational Needs
Research indicates that the decline in men’s emotionally intimate relationships is
occurring at a faster rate than women’s, even higher education ceasing to be a protective
factor for men’s belongingness (McPherson, Smith-Lovin & Brashears, 2006). In her
narrative analysis of youth friendships styles, feminist scholar Valerie Hey (2002) asserts,
“Girls and boys, young women and young men, in short, do different kinds of friendship
work,” and describes how girls engage collectively in the project of identity formation,
performatively and as an ongoing process. On the other hand, boys have a shorter
process and a dynamic of ‘signing-out’ periodically from empathetic awareness. Ivan
articulates an explicit understanding of male emotional disconnection himself. However,
he relates feeling empowered to continue pursuing intimate friendships, “The people that
I’ve always felt the most attracted to are the people who don’t really give a shit about,
um, following rules or meeting expectations or this kind of thing.”
His insistence on seeking this relational ideal in a schizoid society may
paradoxically seem like quite an individualistic endeavor. However, intersubjectivity
theorist Julie McLeod (2002) calls it individualisation, framing it as male adoption of
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feminist and psychological ways of knowing the self, through “process of scrutinizing
relationships” and “project of ‘relating’ to oneself,” (p. 222). Although Ivan relates being
“baffled” today by individuals who seek the appearance of belongingness over wanting to
authentically engage in mutually growth-fostering relationships, he gives a history of
having developed awareness of his own relational needs over time:
Almost 15 years ago - sometime in my sobriety, I hit this point where I
really started to feel as if all the friendships I had, that didn’t involve the
ability to really talk about existential issues in a deep way, weren’t real...
And I want feedback, I want somebody to listen to me and talk to me
about that. And I want to be able to do that for them also.
Midcentury existential psychologist R.D. Laing posits this sort of collective
individualization Ivan describes is actually being the state of greatest ontological security
(Laing, 1969). “A firm sense of one’s own autonomous identity is required in order that
one may be related as a human being to another,” Laing explains, “Otherwise any and
every relationship threatens the individual with loss of identity,” (Gans, 1999, p. 177).
Like Doug, Ivan also exhibits a profound relational excitement or what RCT calls “zest”
for mutually empowering friendships (Miller & Stiver, 1997) that inspires him to
approach others in the spirit of friendship despite awareness of the strictures of men’s
culture:
It’s (sigh), there’s all kinds of gender norms and expectations that get in
the way of that. But it’s definitely a part of friendship for me, and most of
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my close male friendships have something to it that you could call the
bromance aspect or the homoerotic quality or whatever.
Acting In Support of the Friendship
Conceptualization of their friendship relationship as a dynamic entity, more than
the sum of two persons’ actions, was explicitly acknowledged by eight of the participants
and implied by the other two. This aspect of friendship was discussed by several
participants. In a couple stories of relational disconnection, the relationship was as
poignantly remembered as the friend, and helping maintain hopefulness of reconciliation.
In these cases, several participants cited Facebook as a means of keeping the spark alive,
Jeff relating initiating reconnection using this social networking site, “We’ve just
commented on each others’ posts since then... but I think that he knows that if he ever
needs to get in touch with me emotionally that I’m here for him.” For Nick, a Facebook
connection maintains a certain ontological security, “It is at least good and satisfying to
be at least in some kind of contact and just to kind of know that they are okay, breathing
and getting on with their lives.” For others, like Chad and Bree, the friendship itself is an
opportunity to explore self definition, Chad observing about being friends, “It’s the sort
of the thrill of being able to create for yourself a social relevance.” Bree recounts a story
about a friend who approached her as the most “relaxed” friend she knew and shared
wondering whether she was a lesbian. “I let her kiss me. It was not very exciting,” Bree
recalls, “She was uncomfortable too and felt it crossed a friendship boundary. But yeah,
I’m not worried about it in the scope of our friendship.”
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Etta and her “best friend” have tended their friendship when they have alternately
been in the throes of romantic infatuation. She acknowledges an intimate friendship
dynamic of looking out for each other’s interests and for their friendship itself. Now
married, Etta relates, “Oh, she hasn’t called me in a week; she must be seeing someone
new. We’ve been friends for two decades, so I know this. I don’t let it hurt my feelings,
even though it is irritating.” She also accepts some responsibility for her friend’s feeling
relational anxiety around sharing her new relationship with Etta, “Sometimes, I’m like:
No, that guy’s not going to work out.” She laughs when recalling this same friend’s
dubious assessment of Etta and her husband’s chances, “She said she didn’t expect it to
last more than two months.”
Etta characterizes their friendship as possessing a frankness borne of intimate
knowledge of their collective strengths and challenges, as well as an acceptance of each
others’ personal limitations. RCT scholar, Judith Jordan, relates how this confidence
differs from taking a relationship for granted, “The movement in and out of connection
becomes a journey of discovery about self, other, and relationship - about ‘being in
relation’.” (Jordan, Walker & Hartling, eds., 2004, p. 42). In fact, Etta’s narrative of her
and friend’s mutual empathetic failures and relational recoveries are thick with holistic
descriptions of tough romantic times they have weathered together. Today, she is able to
sagely reflect on the role their understanding of infatuation has played in their friendship:
So, yeah, she knows. So it’s kind of (sigh), I kind of realize that, so I just
kind of let it go even though it’s irritating... You know, you can be
perfectly happy together and miserable at the same time, especially in
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love. You certainly don’t think clearly a lot of the time, you know, I mean,
when you put emotion into it, your brain just doesn’t work the same way.
Etta’s shares taking action on behalf of their relationship, compensating for her
friend’s distraction, “Then, I will probably make more of an effort to try to contact her
and make plans with her, or try and get her to involve this new guy in something that we
are doing.” Jan Yager (1997), in Friendshifts, also recommends new couple’s make
room in their lives for friends, viewing it as adding to their own relational network and
recognizing that new romantic partners often bring into the relationship a “rich dowry” of
friends. Etta concludes by noting her friend is now almost as good of a friend to her
husband, as to her.
Are There Emergent Themes Arising in Participants’ Friendship Narratives?
Empathy and empowerment figured largely in participants’ stories of relational
resilience, as may have been expected, but all shared a third approach to being-foranother that was qualitatively distinct from the actions of empathy and empowerment.
Appreciation of a Common Humanity
Participants shared stories of friendships where there were moral disagreements
and empathetic failures. However, participants seemed to continually recognize others as
being worthy of intimate friendship and this supported them throughout the processes of
coping with their dilemmas. This third factor also seemed especially motivating in the
inspiring of initial overtures toward friendship, doing so even amongst participants who
related experiencing a great deal of relational anxiety. For example, Chad identifies as “a
little bit of a loner” and describes a “sort of recursive loop of doubting [his] ability to
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connect.” Yet, he still opines, “It’s beneficial to be able to learn and grow and experience
that kind of closeness... That kind of growing experience is central to what it means to be
human... the wonderment of finding new people.”
RCT posits it is participating in growth-fostering relationships generates
motivation for more (Jordan, Walker & Hartling, eds., 2004), but this does not seem
sufficient explanation for the observed behaviors. First, participants expressed an active
interest in others that transcended a search for mutually empathetic and empowering
relationships. Also, the social and emotional isolation of Americans (McPherson, SmithLovin & Brashears, 2006) suggests the relational risk-taking of initiating friendships and
the inevitable distresses of being-for-another are significant forces at work against
belongingness. Introducing his Theory of Intersubjective Motivation (2010), social
worker Robert Drozek also convincingly argues that empathetic understanding of others’
relational needs does not necessitate action and relational empowerment is insufficient to
explain motivation of social approach behaviors. He proposes unconditional value of
others as the motivating factor, explaining, “For our purposes here, “valuing” will be
operationally defined solely in motivational terms, meaning taking something to be a
source of meaning. Furthermore, to value “unconditionally” will simply mean to value
under all circumstances, (Drozek, p. 551).
Considering what it was that inspired him and other members of PRED toward
inclusive belongingness, Jeff vacillated between whether this factor is a spiritual or
ethical phenomenon and suggested, like Drozek, that it might arise from intersubjective
appreciation of our common humanity:
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I guess from a religious background you might call it agape, you know,
care about people... And, more ideologically, that you would
conceptualize of (stammer), it’s a social good for people... At the same
time, freedom is something we value as a community and you don’t
necessarily want to, you know, constrain other people to acting in unison.
Neither reflecting mutual empathy nor empowerment, the unconditional valuing
of others presupposes the possibility of relationships that are not predicated on the
expectation of mutuality and are instead based on recognition of others as fellow human
beings (Drozek, 2010). Drozek proposes a psychological process operating below
consciousness that motivates being-for-another, rather than dynamic within the
relationship, the individual’s implicit unconditional valuing of others as a source of
meaning akin to us and not necessarily for us. What comes across in all the narratives
collected for this research is a possibility of intimate friendship, supported by mutual
empathy and mutual empowerment, but also predicated on visceral excitement around the
possibility of knowing and being known. Ivan demonstrates this intersubjective
exuberance:
I’m in a rush for more intensity right now. More please. I want to really
get to know you. Tell me every fucking secret you have. Argue with me.
Tell me why I’m wrong. I’ll tell you why you’re wrong. Let’s have a
fight. Let’s get into a fist fight. Let’s get drunk and smash stuff. Let’s
burn a police car. Right?
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Summary
These interviews were qualitatively analyzed in this chapter using the methods:
content analysis, both latent and manifest, as well as through narrative analysis. They
were discussed in relation to the RCT (Miller, 1988) and other germane research on the
friendship relationship. Chapter 5 will describe some conclusions and recommendation
derived from this research, as well as its limitations. Implication for social work practice
and policy will also be discussed.
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Chapter 5
CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Introduction
This chapter will discuss the conclusions reached by this project: that the three
factors identified do form the basis of relational resilience in long-term intimate
friendships, how they relate to each other and how they relate to the problem of American
social and emotional isolation. The researcher will also offer recommendations for future
research on the relational dynamics of intimate friendship and discuss ways current
knowledge may be used to increase belongingness. The limitations of this research
project will then be addressed, and implications for social work of this and related
relational research will be explored. This researcher will conclude by placing this
intimate friendship research amongst the simultaneous interests of social work: the well
being of individuals, and the ongoing project of social justice.
Conclusions
This research project explored two questions around relational resilience in the
intimate friendship relationship: 1. Are the relational factors of mutual empathy and
mutual empowerment (Miller, 1988) the basis of growth-fostering relationships, in this
case intimate friendships, as shown by these participants’ stories about their emotional
responses and related behaviors in difficult friendship situations? 2. Are there some
other factors, implicit assumptions or particular perspectives that emerge from these
participants’ generalizations around their relational experiences that are supportive of
intimate friendships? This solution-focused research was undertaken in response to the
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well-described problem of increasing American social and emotional isolation (Hampton,
Sessions, & Her, 2009; McPherson, Smith-Lovin, & Brashears, 2006), and the relative
scarcity of research around the dynamics of the more rapidly dwindling intimacy of
friendships among Americans. Qualitative analysis of these friends’ stories provides
significant support for the assertion of RCT (Miller, 1988): that the two factors
supporting relational resilience in adults’ intimate friendships are mutual empathy and
mutual empowerment (Jordan, Walker & Hartling, eds., 2004). RCT posits mutuality in
relationships as dynamically informed by, and informing, sociopolitical power dynamics
(Jordan et al.). It is simultaneously appreciative of the cultural forces at work against
belongingness, and acknowledges the responsibility for individuals to participate in the
cultural narrative of reconnection (Habermas, 1984). This personal-political assertion
was also supported by this research, in the participants’ use of empathy and
empowerment to engage in friendships notable for their emotional awareness and support
of agency for marginalized others (Jordan et al.). This research supports RCT as an
invaluable tool in efforts to address Americans’ increasingly unmet need for
belongingness. It is especially helpful in its provision of concrete, bottom-up guidelines
for practices that instill relationships with mutual empathy and mutual empowerment
(Bergman, 1996; Jordan et al.; Miller & Stiver, 1997).
A third factor emerged that from this research was participants’ unconditional
appreciation of the common humanity they share with others. This was specifically
exhibited in participants’ assumption that others were deserving of belongingness, as well
as their persistence in being-for-another in spite of their self-described relational anxieties
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and moral judgments. This appeared to be a top-down factor, a perspective or worldview
that inspired initiation of friendship and promoted relational resiliency in distressing
dilemmas, rather than a relational skill of mutual empathy or empowerment. The Theory
of Intersubjective Motivation (Drozek, 2010) identifies this third factor as the
unconditional valuing of ourselves and other people. This provides additional insight
into developing Americans’ capacity for social approach, which is necessary for
increasing tolerance of relational distresses and our capacity to remain engaged in
growth-fostering friendships.
The latter factor required participants to directly confront what RCT calls the
central relational paradox, a relational anxiety borne of feeling unworthy or incapable of
relationship and the paradoxical desire to pull emotionally retreat from desired
friendships in order to maintain a facsimile of belongingness (Miller & Stiver, 1997).
Every participant in this research freely acknowledged confronting the relational anxiety
of being rejected or judged for authentically representing themselves, facing it in a
variety of ways. Participants Etta and Doug paradoxically disclosed controversial aspects
of themselves early as a way to “weed out” those who would reject them; both Chad and
Nick proceeded cautiously toward intimacy, while Ruth and Nemo allowed themselves
periods of solitude away from the strains of empathy that intimacy requires. Existential
therapist, Irvin Yalom, affirms participation in growth-fostering relationship requires a
great deal of self-acceptance and appreciation of the subjective experience of others:
“One must respect the uniqueness of the other, to see him as he is, and to help him grow
and unfold in his own ways, for his own sake and not for the purpose of serving oneself,”
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(Yalom, 1980, p. 371-372). He suggests that the experiential practice of group therapy
develops this perspective of unconditional value (Drozek, 2010; Yalom & Leszcz, 2005).
RCT is a feminist theory, and this research is part of the wider discussion around
increasing the political efficacy of marginalized people, especially its interest in the
development of relational efficacy that empowers diverse identities for the purposes of
engaging in the democratic process (Hey, 2002; McNay, 2010). Putnam (2000) and other
chroniclers of the anomic American (Olds & Schwartz, 2009) cite disengagement from
civic life as the ultimate price our disconnected citizenry pays; some feminist scholars
even acknowledge that the feminist personal-as-political stance unwittingly contributes to
this effect (McLeod, 2002; McNay). Feminist theorist, Lois McNay, describes a dynamic
in which the feminist concerns with empowering and celebrating marginalized identities
has developed into a general cultural self-reflexivity, mistaking individualization and the
celebration of identity as the end goal of feminist politics. Paradoxically, she suggests
that a first step toward civic and political re-engagement may be the creation of
“deliberative enclaves” where similar individuals gather for exploration of their collective
identities, identifying their interests and needs (McNay).
As a solution for American social and emotional isolation, participating in these
enclaves too may seem an end unto itself; therefore McNay (2010) advises that an
increasing outward orientation must be sustained if social justice is sought in the larger
sphere. Drozek (2010) posits that the development of intersubjective motivation and the
active desire to engage unknown or unlike others requires that the individual has had the
experience of being unconditionally valued by someone unconditionally in a “formative
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relationship.” Praxis of unconditional value would be necessary in these enclaves, in
order to assist the development of an ontological security based on self-compassion, as
proposed by human development scholar Kristin Neff (2003), and not based on the
essential self-other comparisons of self-esteem that increase defensiveness and
devaluation of others (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007). In this case, the People’s Republic of
East Davis’ early development of The Virtues of PRED, begun as a tongue-in-cheek
exercise in Medievalism, has come to serve as an explicit ethic of inclusiveness as
practiced by this enclave.
Recommendations
In the interests of decreasing American social and emotional isolation, further
solution-focused research should be undertaken toward better understanding the
phenomenological experience of voluntary social relationships, such as intimate
friendships. This research should especially address coping with relational anxieties
specific to these relationships (unanchored as they are by the legal and cultural
obligations of marriage and family). Additionally, relational scholars also observe the
brutally paradoxical effects of this longing for connection on chronically lonely
individuals, specifically their avoidance of relational anxiety (Cacioppo & Patrick; Miller
& Stiver, 1997) and other difficult affective states that inevitably result from engagement
in relationships (Baumeister & Leary). Therefore, solutions to the American problem of
social and emotional isolation must specifically involve increased scholarship around
better understanding the emotional dynamics of relational anxiety and relational
resilience in the development of friendships. A small amount of research has been
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undertaken, and it does indicate that prosocial perspectives and interpersonal skills can be
developed and strengthened in adulthood (Garfield, 2010; Kotsou, 2011), which should
inspire further research.
To increase Americans’ capacity for belongingness, social work should
immediately begin implementing interventions that support social and emotional
connection, after the manner of McNay’s deliberative enclaves, using existing tools such
as RCT to inform these interventions. Also, extant tools for increasing relational
competence in a clinical setting may be adapted for general use. The practice of group
therapy has been standard treatment for working with adults with severe relational
difficulties (many of whom have been diagnosed with personality disorders), and is
recognized as an invaluable experiential context to put into those insights made in
individual therapy or self-psychology (Yalom & Leszcz, 2005). Social workers may
adopt this formal psychological practice among clients to increase the interpersonal
efficacy of those who suffer severe relational anxiety. Additionally, social work has used
psychoeducational groups for social rehabilitation with people suffering from mental
illness. Curriculums around initiation and maintenance of friendship, such as Sacramento
County’s SacPort program, already exist, and were developed to teach learners how to
become moderators of subsequent groups on their own. These curriculums and their
empowerment model may be adapted and used to reengage Americans with one another,
as well as to reengage our interest in our communities, our democracy and our global
responsibilities.
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On an individual level, therapists and other human services workers have an
obligation to develop growth-fostering relationships with their individual clients.
Relational-cultural therapy, as it is developed by RCT scholars, posits that the
relationship between worker and client itself may have the potential to be that formative
relationship necessary for the client’s development of unconditional self-other value and
relational competence (Drozek, 2010; Jordan, Walker & Hartling, eds., 2004). Unlike
many therapeutic approaches, relational approaches to therapeutic intervention
necessitate that the social worker be authentically engaged in interactions with clients,
rather than assuming a hierarchical role of an expert exerting power over the client in a
relationship that mimics their historical relationships, which may have been epitomized
by lack of mutual empathy and empowerment (Jordan et al.). “Authenticity, then, means
that the therapist tries to be with the thoughts and feelings occurring in the relationship,”
Jordan asserts, “...with the movement towards connection, the fears of that movement,
and the strategies of disconnection” (Jordan et al.).
A final concern of social work, with the goal of increasing belongingness through
friendship, is the depathologizing of loneliness, as well as avoidant and anxious
attachment styles, in favor of the diversity model of belongingness proposed by Cacioppo
(2008). He relates the feeling of loneliness ought to be reconceptualized as a
phenomenological awareness of an unmet physiological need, more akin to hunger or
thirst, wherein some individuals need a higher degree of socialization for mental health
and well being than others. This conceptualization is far more likely to encourage
participation in development of friendship skills, rather than an individual's
83
understanding of their subjective experience of too much or too little socialization, which
an individual might frame as a failure of autonomy, or a developmental or
characterological disorder (Brennan & Shaver, 1998). While reflecting that some lonely
people may need mental health treatment, through medication or therapy, for symptoms
resulting from loneliness, Cacioppo asserts, “It is part of being human. The trick is to
heed these signals in ways that bring long term satisfaction,” (Cacioppo and Patrick, p.
228).
Limitations
The limitations of this study relate to the limited sample size, as well as the bias
of the researcher as a participant-observer in the sample population and engaged in
qualitative analysis of the interview data. The small size of the sample (n=10) make
these findings not generalizeable to the general population (Rubin & Babbie, 2008).
Additionally, participants were generally of European ancestry, which was specifically
identified as a demographic factor significantly protective against emotional isolation in
the larger quantitative studies (McPherson, Smith-Lovin, & Brashears, 2006). This
researcher was identified as a participant-observer in the population this sample was
drawn from, an informal social milieu, and so first identifies this inherent bias. While
this position facilitated access to the population, this researcher acknowledges another
inevitable bias engendered by the gathering of data by face-to-face interviews and yet
another in qualitative analysis of the resulting interviews. By its nature, qualitative
analysis is subjective and non-reproducible, as the participants provided subjective
material and interpretations of events to the researcher (Rubin & Babbie). In this case,
84
the researcher read the transcribed interviews, subjectively extrapolating anecdotes and
quotes in support of a theoretical framework, and ascribed meaning frames to the stories
in their totalities.
Implications for Social Work Practice and Policy
There are implications of this research into relational resilience on micro, mezzo
and macro levels of social work practice. On a micro level, narrative analysis recognizes
that the very undertaking of this research has reified the value and validity of intimate
friendships for both research participants and this participant observer. This
understanding will affect the day-to-day practice of this researcher as a practicing social
worker. Additionally, other social workers aspiring to work in relational modalities may
benefit from participants’ discussions of maintaining mutuality in relational dilemmas. A
social worker’s capacity to maintain metaconscious awareness, as opposed to
disconnecting from clients through assumption of emotional distance and authority,
facilitates an emotionally authentic and relationally empowered worker-client
relationship (Jordan, Walker & Hartling, eds., 2004). Relational cultural therapy’s clientcentered approach develops our capacity to be part of the solution, and not participate in
the empathetic isolation of our often socially-marginalized clients.
On a mezzo level, this research supports the use of groups as relational
interventions by social workers, especially conducive to increasing the understanding and
practice of mutual empathy and mutual empowerment, as well as development
intersubjective motivation. Participants’ stories suggest that relational resilience in
intimate friendship is learned, and those stories illustrate what that resilience looks like in
85
practice. This research also supports participation in social groups as an activity that
allows individuals to know and appreciate diverse others.
On a macro level, it is hoped that this research into the dynamics of intimate
friendship proves useful to social workers seeking to develop interventions that
specifically address the problem of American social and emotional isolation. It may be
especially useful in illustrating relational anxiety, to varying degrees, as a common and
psychologically tolerable feature of intimate friendship. Illustrations of these
participants’ sensitive and effective strategies for addressing relational anxiety (while
remaining mutually empathetic and empowering), may benefit clients coping with
loneliness and ameliorate the consequences of long-term relational disconnection.
Conclusion
The research into the physical and psychological, social and political
ramifications of the changing nature of friendship has sweepingly identified American
social and emotional isolation as one of the major problems faced by our post-industrial
consumer society. However, lack of belongingness cannot be acknowledged as
problematic solely on an intellectual level. Efforts toward increasing social and
emotional engagement must be conceptualized as necessary, felt with a visceral sense of
urgency, and should inspire personal and political action. This research was undertaken
as a direct result of such a visceral reaction, to a news story articulating Duke University
researchers’ findings that the average American sustained only two relationships within
which important matters could be discussed. This solution-focused research rests on
post-structuralist theoretical understandings, which acknowledge that individuals have
86
the power to affect radical change within our culture. Indeed, those individuals make
their culture. Increasing our belongingness, through navigating the messiness of intimate
friendships, participating in social networks like the People’s Republic of East Davis, and
engaging in sociopolitical movements are necessary both for our individual well-being
and affecting prosocial changes in American culture.
The focus of this year’s California Budget Project’s annual conference was the
consequences of the widening economic divide between the few ultra-wealthy Americans
and what we have come to know as the 99%, the majority disenfranchised by our nations’
structural inequalities. Former White House economist Jared Bernstein discussed the
crushing level of socioeconomic inequality we are experiencing - income disparities not
seen in the U.S. since the year preceding the 1929 stock market crash. Then, he iterated
the self-evident truth that a democracy is only as effective as the politicization and
participation of its citizens. The effectiveness of media obfuscation and political
disempowerment have been the inevitable result of individual interpersonal
disconnections and vitriolic partisanship, Bernstein asserts, and what we have lost is our
basic recognition of “common sense” and our interest in fairness. It is time now time for
social workers to take an active interest in addressing American social and emotional
isolation, developing interventions that increase our capacity for mutual empathy, mutual
empowerment and recognition of the unconditional value of others. This must be
undertaken for the well-being of individuals and to ameliorate the effects of cultural
marginalization, but also to actively engage in the larger project of directly addressing
structural inequalities and building social justice.
87
Appendix A
Request for Participants
88
Request for Participants
Americans Have Fewer Friends Outside the Family, Duke Study Shows. Wait!
What? That’s what Pew said. So, Pew Research Center replicated the study and came up
with the same thing. The Average American has only two people in their lives they
would feel comfortable discussing important matters with, seemingly Mom and the
sweetie-pie. All good - but perspective? Seems PREDsters might know a little
something about being friends. So please, Above Average Americans, contact me at:
holly_calderone@yahoo.com and tell me what you know. Research will be by one hour,
one-on-one, face-to-face interviews, taking place between Thanksgiving weekend and
mid-January. Cappuccino’s on me.
89
Appendix B
End of Recruitment Notification
90
Recruitment Has Ended
No Spectators! Thank you so very much for your support and solidarity. I now
have a full complement of research subjects and will spend next spring locked up in my
office, transcribing your interviews and sharing the collective wisdom of 15 years of
PRED. Come summer, now, we are gonna put the social back in Social Work…
91
Appendix C
Survey Questionnaire
92
Making and Maintaining Intimate Friendships in Adulthood
Recent research indicates American adults have fewer, if any, friends that they can
discuss important matters with. You, on the other hand, belong to a friendship
network that seems to have a knack for camaraderie, for weathering the joys and
catastrophes of life together. The purpose of this interview is to better comprehend
how some people are able to navigate friendship dynamics that might lead others
to disconnection. To get started, the researcher will use prompts that encourage you
to recall a specific situation you have encountered when making and maintaining
adult friendships:
Please check one box in each of these sections, indicating you have experienced
this friendship situation
1. Initiating Friendship
An acquaintance is very enthusiastic about making plans, but keeps canceling
or not showing up
A newer friend tells you very personal information right away and this makes
you uncomfortable
You feel compelled to share something in a deepening friendship and are not
sure they will approve
93
2. Maintaining Friendship
Your friend does not want to spend as much time with you as you would like to
spend with him or her
Your friend now has child(ren) and no longer accepts invitations to go out or
come over to your place
Your friend seems to disappear whenever becoming involved in a new
romantic relationship
3. Reconnecting in Friendship
You had a quarrel with a friend and do not feel you were in the wrong, but you
still value the friendship
You want to resume a friendship after a friend has either moved away or just
seemingly drifted apart
An ex romantic partner approaches you and is interested in establishing a
friendship
Then the researcher will ask you discuss three ways you experienced the situation.
1) First, you will be asked to recall the specific circumstances where you have
experienced the situation you chose and describe the emotions you recall feeling at
the time.
2) Next, the researcher will ask you how that relationship was affected by the
emotions you experienced as a result of the situation. So, this includes both how
94
you dealt with your emotions, as well as actions you did or did not take that were
related to your emotions.
3) Finally, you will be asked to reflect on how your experience in that particular
situation has been incorporated into your broader understanding of friendship, say,
by developing a friendship skill or helping you more easily recognize the situation as
being challenging for you.
Remember, there are no right answers. The experiences you share, whether positive
or negative or ambivalent, are equally helpful in understanding the complexities of
being and having friends.
Thank you so much for participating in this research
Holly Calderone 2011-2012
95
Appendix D
Consent to Participate in Research
96
Consent to Participate in Research
You are being asked to participate in research which will be conducted by
Holly Calderone, a student in the Masters of Social Work Program at California
State University, Sacramento.
The study will investigate factors related to making and maintaining nonromantic intimate friendships in adulthood.
The research consists of your participation in a single semi-structured
interview. You’ll be asked to talk about your personal experience of these common
periods friendships may have: making new friends, keeping satisfactory friendships,
and getting back in touch following a disconnection. You may choose the specific
situations you prefer to talk about from a list that will be provided. You’ll be asked
how you felt about the situation, what – if anything – those feelings led you to do,
and what effect that situation had on your ideas about friendship as a whole.
Some of the interview situation may seem more personal than others and
you don’t have to talk about anything you don’t want to. Even if you chose the
situation as one you wanted to talk about, you can tell the researcher you no longer
want to talk about it and you are free to end the interview at any time.
If you need additional emotional support, please contact the Sacramento Co.
Mental Health Access line, which is available 24-hours every day.
You may gain additional insight into relational dynamics that affect your
individual and interpersonal well-being, or you may not personally benefit from
participating in this research. It is hoped that the results of this study will be
97
beneficial for therapy and programs designed to help people who experience a
greater amount of social isolation and wish to increase their socialization.
The contents of this interview will remain confidential and you will be
assigned an alias to be used within the write-up of the research findings. No other
identifying information - such as occupation or cultural background - will be
discussed in the writing, possibly with the exception of your preferred gender
pronoun. With your permission, this interview will be digitally recorded. It will be
transcribed and erased from the recorder, the recorder being unable to transfer
permanent voice files.
You will not receive any compensation for participating in this study, other
than beverages or food appropriate to an informal interview setting.
If you have any questions about this research, you may contact Holly
Calderone at holly_calderone@yahoo.com or her research advisor, Maria Dinis,
Ph.D., MSW at dinis@csus.edu
Your participation in this research is entirely voluntary. Your signature below
indicates that you have read this page and agree to participate in the research.
Signature of Participant: _____________________________________ Date: ________
I, ________________________________________________ (please print name),
agree to be audio taped.
Signature of Participant: _____________________________________ Date: ________
98
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