According to Erikson’s 8 stages of development, adolescence is the time when identities are actively formed. (Luyckx, K., & Robitschek, C., 2014; Erikson, E. H. , 1968) Adolescents would engage in various kind of relationship to find their value and roles, so to develop a sense of self. Romantic relationship and friendship are two of these important relationships. It is commonly recognized that these two have pivotal roles on the process of identity formation and the attachment style of the adolescents in their adulthood. (Sorensen, 2007) Therefore, these areas of research have been very popular amongst developmental psychologists.
To bring the discussion further, two psychologists, Morgan E. M. and Korobov N., are curious on how the two relationships interrelate and impact the identity formation processes of adolescents. To narrow down the scope of research, they chose to conduct a one-way research on how same-sex friend co-construct their interpersonal
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Despite revealing how same-sex friends affect each others’ interpersonal identity processes, the strength and the direction of peer influence is unknown. For example, even if the challenging role of friend is known, does it predict that friends would act actively or passively to the challenged issue? To complete the archetype, the behavioral and cognitive changes of friends after peer discussion should be recorded as well.
In conclusion, the experiment provides a general picture of the influence of same-sex close friends on the development of interpersonal romantic identities. This is an interesting finding, though one suspect that, including the authors themselves, that the conclusion need to be more specific in order to bring actual breakthroughs to adolescents’ interpersonal identity development. For that to happen, there should be closer examination to specific influences of