Where is your best friend from? Implications of intragroup and intergroup friendships for adolescents’ identity and well-being

Abstract

Nowadays, adolescents have increasing opportunities to interact with peers of their same and other ethnic groups. Yet, little is known about the implications of having an intragroup or intergroup best friend for the development of interpersonal identity processes (i.e., commitment, in-depth exploration, and reconsideration) and its interplay with subjective, psychological, and social well-being. The current study aims to fill this gap. A total of 984 adolescents (Mage = 14.66; 62.70% females; 24.80% ethnic minority) living in the North-East part of Italy completed questionnaires at three time points reporting on their best friend’s ethnic group, interpersonal identity, and well-being. Results of chi-square test comparisons highlighted that ethnic majority youth had more intragroup while their ethnic minority peers had more intergroup best friendship ties. Further, results of latent growth curve analyses showed that ethnic majority and minority adolescents with intragroup and intergroup best friends displayed unique developmental trajectories of interpersonal identity commitment, in-depth exploration, and reconsideration of commitment, as well as their interplay with subjective, psychological, and social well-being. Overall, these findings provide crucial insight into the type and implications of youth friendship patterns highlighting the protective role of a consolidated sense of identity for the well-being of youth in multicultural societies.