Birds of a Feather Want to Talk Together: The Impact of Depressive Symptoms on Initial Stages of Friendship Formation in Older Adolescence

Introduction : Peer relationships play a vital role in adolescents’ lives and are considered to be especially critical for youth who experience elevated depressive symptoms. Unfortunately, depressed youth tend to have difficulties with existing friendships (e.g., fewer and lower quality friendships), which may exacerbate their symptoms. Little is known, however, about how depressed youth approach the initial stages of friendship formation, which may have implications for the types of social support they can access.

Method: Using a conversation task designed to build intimacy, older adolescents (N = 228, M age = 19.54 years) with and without elevated depressive symptoms interacted with a previously unknown, same-gender partner.

Results: Results suggested that adolescents with elevated symptoms experienced interactions differently (e.g., speculated more about their conversation partner and thought their partner was speculating more about them, experienced more negative affect) than nondepressed peers. The depression status of the potential friend also mattered, as participants paired with partners of similar emotional adjustment status wanted to talk more and felt closer to one another than did mismatched partners.

Discussion : Findings underscore that depressive symptoms impact even the earliest stages of friendship formation. From the perspective of interpersonal theories of depression, implications for bolstering depressed adolescents’ relationships are discussed.