UC Santa Cruz

Decision-making processes were examined in conversations between same-gender and cross-gender friends. Participants were university students (mean age = 19 years) from mostly middle-class, European-American backgrounds. Each pair of friends was asked to participate in two decision-making topics for 5 minutes each. Transcripts of the taped conversations were coded for suggestions, agreement, disagreement, and abstentions (i.e., neither agreement nor disagreement). There were no significant differences between either the women or the men friendship pairs or between the women and men partners within the mixed-gender pairs in any of the observed behaviors. However, when speaker gender and partner gender interaction effects were analyzed, it was found that women with a woman friend were more likely to receive supportive responses and less likely to receive negative responses to their suggestions than were women with a man friend. There were no partner gender effects on responses to men 's suggestions. The results highlight ways in which women and men may handle joint decision-making with friends depending on both the speaker's gender and the partner's gender.