Relation between perceived friendship and self-consciousness among contemporary college students

The purpose of the present study is to explore how adolescents perceive their friendships and the characteristics of contemporary adolescents. The following were examined :friendship, self-consciousness, and characteristics of contemporary adolescents. On the friendship scale, 3 indices were adopted : 1) the friendship that they currently have (current-self rating), 2) the friendship that they perceive to be ideal (ideal-self rating), 3) the friendship that they perceive their friends to have (friend rating). On the other scales, current-self rating and friend rating were adopted. The results showed that the ideal-self rating on "emotionally close friendship" and "crowd friendship" subscales in the friendship scale was higher than the current-self and the friend rating. Among high self-consciousness students, the current-self rating on the "emotionally close friendship" subscale correlated with the ideal-self rating. Unlike these adolescents, a correlation between current-self rating and friend rating was found among low self-consciousness students. The adolescents tended to perceive themselves as more self-conscious than their friends, and to show low scores on the "activeness" and "dependency on parents" subscales in the characteristics of contemporary adolescents scale.