Close friends may influence school-aged children's fear of danger, reports a recent study conducted by a team of researchers from University of East Anglia.
The current study was aimed at finding whether best friends' fear responses have impact on each other when issues like beliefs and attitude towards avoidance of potential danger are concerned.
Children's Fear Responses
It is observed for the first time in the study that close friends exhibit similar patterns of fear-related thoughts and their fear responses are influenced by each other when they discuss on such issues. Experiencing fear over some issues are common in children and it usually vanishes with time as they age.
In contrast, some children carry the problem for lifetime that could affect their daily life adversely. Such fear-related issues that contribute to problems like childhood anxiety may continue even after their transition into adulthood.
The phobias experienced by children are attributed to their genes, direct learning, and information got from others on fear-related issues, especially their parents.
Fear Could Be Transmitted To Children From Friends
However, the study published in the journal Behaviour Research and Therapy found that other than the above possible means, fear can also be transmitted to children from their close friends. In addition, their peers could also influence the way the children deal and respond to such scare-related issues.
Dr Jinnie Ooi, the lead author of the study noted that understanding whether close friends influence phobias in children could help professionals in the intervention of anxiety disorders and other related issues in children.
"Our findings indicate that close friends may share negative thoughts and to some extent may maintain these thoughts," said Dr. Ooi, a senior research associate, in a press release.
Ooi added that cracking how friends impact children's fear issues would help in designing therapies that would enable healthy children change their affected peers during the treatment process. Children under therapy may also be asked if their friends influence them in a negative way in relation to their fear since it would be helpful providing them with strategies to deal their peers in an "adaptive way."
Study On Children's Fear In Relation To Friends
For the purpose of the study, the researchers involved 242 school children aged between seven and 10 years. Children were asked to complete questionnaires on fear beliefs and anxiety. The children were shown images of Australian marsupials — the Cuscus and the Quoll and were told frightening and ambiguous information about the creatures.
Initially the fear responses with individual children were analyzed and later their responses after discussion with their close friend were studied. The children were also involved in another task to test their behavior related to avoidance of potential danger.
It was found that children influenced each other's fear beliefs after the discussion task, where boys' pair had significant increase in fear and girls' pair exhibited decrease in fear following the discussion task.
