Making, keeping, and influencing friends – fear of negative evaluation

Davila & Kornienko (2022) published “Making, Keeping, and Influencing Friends: The role of fear of negative evaluation and gender in adolescent networks in School Psychology. I find this work intriguing due to its methodology, focus on fear of negative evaluation (FNE) and gender differences. Here’s the abstract with my underlines of where I find the results most interesting:

Drawing on a developmental psychopathology perspective and research documenting gender differences in social tasks and structures of friendships, this study uses longitudinal social network analysis (SNA) methods to (a) examine how fear of negative evaluation (FNE) and gender interact to shape friendship dynamics and (b) characterize their distinct roles in how adolescents make new friends, keep existing friends, and become similar to one another over time. Participants were 1,034 sixth through eighth grade students from an ethnically diverse middle school who were assessed in the Fall and Spring of the same academic year. Results showed that girls were more likely to make new friends and maintain existing friendships when they had lower levels of FNE. Conversely, boys were more likely to make new friends and keep existing friends when they had higher levels of FNE. Additionally, girls with low levels of FNE were more likely to maintain friendships with others who also had low FNE levels, whereas boys with high levels of FNE were more likely to maintain friendships with friends who had low levels of FNE. Results also showed significant peer influence effects on FNE such that over time friends became similar to one another on their FNE levels, with no significant gender differences in these processes. The study underscored that FNE appeared to amplify gender differences in how adolescents tend to make and maintain their friendship networks, yet peer influence on FNE levels remained of the same strength for boys and girls. 

It makes sense to me that teens with high levels of FNE struggle in relationships. As a result, it seems reasonable that boys high in FNE are drawn to peers with lower FNE. There is a Brief Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale published by Leary in 1983. It seems to have demonstrated reasonable reliability and validity. Since it is obviously important for teens to develop and keep friends, inclusion of FNE in assessment may be helpful.