Author(s)

Georgia Stephanou

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This research aimed to examine a) children’s attributions and emotions for their subjectively perceived friendships with their best friends as positive or negative, b) the role of children’s hope (pathways thinking, agency thinking) in the generation of their perception of their friendships as positive or negative, in the formulation of the subsequent attributions and emotions, and in the impact of attributions on emotions, and c) the effects of hope in the interactive impact of attributions and emotions on friendship expectations. The participants were 322 children, both gender, 5th and 6th grades, representing various parental socioeconomic levels. The results showed that the perceived satisfactory friendships were mainly attributed to internal, and self-friend interactive internal and controllable factors, while the estimated as non satisfactory friendships were predominately attributed to stable, friend’s controllable and internal, and self-friend interactive internal factors. The children experienced intense positive and negative emotions for their perceived satisfactory and non satisfactory friendships, respectively. Hope (mostly, agency thinking) positively influenced the generation of the perceived quality of the friendship, the subsequent attributions (particularly, stability) and emotions, and the impact of attributions on emotions, mainly in the negative friendships group. Also, in the positive friendship group, high-pathway thinking children had higher expectations of positive friendship, whereas, in the non satisfactory friendship group, low-agency thinking children had low expectations of positive friendship. Finally, hope proved formulator of the interactive effect of attributions (mainly, locus of causality) and emotions on friendship expectations. The findings from this study suggest the significant role of good friendship in children’s life, and indicate the importance of examining children friendship along the role of hope in evaluating, attributing causes, experiencing emotions and forming expectations.

Attributions, Emotions, Expectations, Hope, Perceived friendship

Stephanou, G. (2011). Children Friendship: The Role of Hope in Attributions, Emotions and Expectations. Psychology, 2, 875-888. doi: 10.4236/psych.2011.28133.