Introduction

Liking people, trust, social intimacy, and emotional reliance can relate to how well people get along with one another and can influence many social interactions within everyday life. For those who tend to like people less they are not as social-able, introverted, and anxious. (Filsinger, E.E.). These behaviors can be detrimental for those who are trying to get a job or maybe even some who are starting out as a freshman in college and are hoping for a good experience. This study examines the affect of Greek affiliation, number of close friends, and relationship status on liking people, trust, social intimacy, and emotional reliance as these are often variables that accompany individuals in college.

Research has been done on trust development and building new relationships. In college new students will build relationships with others and part of that relationship building process is creating trust among these new connections. Building relationships with potential employers is equally as important when coming to the end of one’s college years. Trust must also be built with these employers. I will examine the different variables of Greek affiliation, number of friends, and relationship status on trust. In an article about trust and romantic relationships Sylvia Durhem found that there was no significant correlation between number of romantic relationships and trust scores (Durhem).Students in college have an opportunity to date and for some they may have many dating relationships throughout college. I would like to examine the affect of being in a relationship on trust, for this could predict how well one is able to build trust with new students and potential employers as stated above.

Previous research examined the effect of friendships on social intimacy. In Brenda J. Piquet’s dissertation she states “The formation of friendships can provide a milieu in which individuals can discover the crucial elements that constitute a meaningful, and intimate relationship.” (Piquet). In the current study I would like to examine the affect of number of friends on how socially intimate someone is.

Emotional reliance is described as looking to others for emotional support. Life creates different scenarios where people sometimes seek others for emotional support. In this paper I will refer to emotional reliance in a positive way and that it is associated with positive behaviors. Richard Ryan and his colleagues found that emotional reliance was positively associated with well-being (Ryan et. al, 2005). Emotional reliance could be positively associated with better well being in college students, which could help those students build better relationships, which will maximize their college experience.

I hypothesize that independents will have higher socially beneficial behaviors (liking, trust, social intimacy, and emotional reliance) as their number of friends increases, except when comparing low to medium numbers of friends of those not in a relationship, while Greeks will only see increases in socially beneficial behaviors when comparing low to high friend numbers of those not in a current relationship.

Index Introduction Method Results Discussion Figures Table References