Research Essay on Cross Sex Friendships

Men and women typically carry very different expectations and predispositions into their cross-signature of friendship. Getting emotional closeness in both sexual orientations (Heterogenous) involved trust and intimacy (Felmlee, Diane et.al 2012). Men and women can be friends, but one source stated that it's somehow inappropriate because it can incite jealousy in a romance (O’Meara, 1989; Rawlins, 1982). A wide generalization is that men and women both have assortative friend preferential treatment – they tend to befriend individuals with characteristics like their own (McPherson, Smith-Lovin, and Cook, 2001; Vigil, 2007). However, men's and women's friendships differ in important ways. Some people involve in sexual magnetism toward their opposite-sex friends (Kaplan & Keys, 1997; O’Meara, 1989; Rose, 1985), and a considerable number of cross-sex friendships end because of physical distance or failed attempts at romance (Werking, 1994). Previous studies propose that friends do not publicly talk about dating and sexual issues with their cross-sex friends (Afifi & Guerrero,1998; Afifi & Burgoon, 1998). Some men and women even report that talks about how they actively take in their friends about their romantic relationship involvement with their partners (Bleske-Rechek, Matteson, Gragg, & Stocco, 2006). The goal of this study is to know how attitude affects the friendship of both men and women.

According to Kalmjin (2002), the chance of having opposite-sex friend escalate gender role attitude and a high degree of isolation, when it comes to women opportunity structure has the biggest effect followed by the life course and individual characteristic, while for men the characteristic for them is the most important followed by their life course and opportunity, thus this differentiates the attitude of both cross-gender friendships. Based on Godwin et.al (2002), both men and women prefer friendships that are characterized by emotional expressiveness, trust, and unconditional support. Interaction between cross-gender might aid both males and females to share essential qualities and preferences of their gender with the other (Bronkema,2014). The finest friendships are cleared by the sense of increased knowledge, self-respect, faith, and self-disclosure of both company (Frey, et al. 2016) female friendship vary slightly from male friendship, women tends to close only self-disclosure, while men achieve close to both self-disclosure and participating in activities (Fehr, 2004) that can change their attitude towards each other. The major challenges that cross-gender friendship to consult together are the type of emotional bonds they experience in their relationship, the challenge of the issue of sexuality towards them, handling the difficulty of gender inequality and the public relation as well, this is the nature of having cross-gender norms facing the judgment of society (O’meara, 1989). Cross-gender friendships can be defined as a “non-romantic, non-familial, personal relationship between man and woman.” Differences between men and women in friendship focus on the social and cultural context of gender. Friendship represents an important social-relational arena for the enactment of cultural messages and beliefs regarding gender. People do gender while engaging with their friends (West and Zimmerman 1987), and friendship represents a place where gender and inequality are enacted regularly.

Save your time!
We can take care of your essay

• Proper editing and formatting
• Free revision, title page, and bibliography
• Flexible prices and money-back guarantee

Place an order

​According to Helgeson et.al (1992), it is necessary to recognize first that men and women hold very similar ideas about what it means to be close to someone or to have a best friend that is opposite to their gender. Both men and women prefer friendship that can help them grow, express their emotions, and can support them in their career or any situation especially when they need someone to be there for them. Gondwe (2018) stated that friendship between men and women is a great development but it has boundaries, unlike friendship with the same gender. There have been several findings that women who keep male companies instead of their same-gender company are happier. Women feel comfortable with men as their close buddies suffer little stress from their friendship compared to those whose close friends are female. The preference of cross-gender friendship closeness for females were more strongly tied to their positive attitudes toward enacting and receiving more touch, enacting and receiving caretaking touch, and perceiving touch as more, when compared to males. Females were more motivated not to touch their cross-gender friends in public regardless of intimacy perceptions and did not positively perceive haven touch if they did not have a romantic partner. It is pursued that men's and women's attitudes toward touch in cross-gender friendships separate due to evolved differences related to how they are socialized to perceive their roles in cross-gender friendships, this is stated by Ranjit (2014).

​Other researchers tend to centralize the gender rules and roles towards same and cross-sex friendships. This manuscript aims to know the correlational analysis of attitude towards sexual orientation. How their minds and the sex of the person affect their attitude and how they behave towards each other. This span of knowledge helps people to know the difference in attitudes and what attitudes will change when they socialize with the opposite gender.

​This study can be served as useful information and a guide for future researchers to determine how and why gender can change the attitude of a person and affects the flow of their friendship. The researcher’s purpose in knowing the correlational analysis of attitude towards sexual orientation by using the Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient or the Pearson R is to know the connection between sex and attitude, to minimize the misconception of the society, to change the perception of friendship between men and women, to have a better understanding between same-sex and cross-sex friendship.