Abstract

Intimate friendships and a sense of belonging have positive effects on adolescent’s psychological adaptation. Belongingness orientation is the motivation to belong. It is divided into growth orientation and deficit-reduction orientation, both of which have different effects on psychological adaptation and interpersonal characteristics. This study was conducted to determine how adolescents’ belongingness orientation affected their psychological adaptation and friend networks. Students in their second year of middle school were surveyed both at the beginning and end of the spring semester. Friend networks were measured through network centrality analysis. Multilevel regression analysis produced three major results. The first major result was that the correlations between growth orientation and loneliness and between growth orientation and stress at the beginning of the spring semester was statistically significant even when friend network centrality was included in the analysis model, but the correlation between deficit-reduction orientation and loneliness and between deficit-reduction orientation and stress were not statistically significant. The second major result was that growth orientation significantly predicted friend network centrality at the end of the spring semester. This effect was significant even when friend network centrality at the beginning of the semester and psychological adaptation level at the end of the spring semester were added to the analysis model. The third major result was that the correlation between friend network centrality at the end of the semester and psychological adaptation level was statistically significant even when psychological adaptation levels at the beginning and the end of the semester were included in the analysis model. This study is meaningful in that it had a short-term longitudinal design and empirically demonstrated the relationship between belongingness orientation and psychological adaptation level of adolescents and between belongingness orientation and the development of friend networks. Lastly, we discussed limitations of this study and provided suggestions for future research.