Conflict in Javanese Adolescents' Friendship and its Resolution Strategy

摘要

Friendship is a voluntary interpersonal relationship based on liking. Through friendship, someone learns how to know and understand others' behavior. However, friendships can be interrupted for some reasons. The aim of this preliminary research was to explore the adolescence experiences with friends, especially if they had ever had a conflict with friend and how to cope with it. Participants were 346 adolescents in high school who had a good friend and identified themselves as Javanese consisted of 187 girls and 159 boys (M 14.63, SD 1.66). The data were collected by an open-ended questionnaire. Participants were asked about their experiences of conflict with friends and how to cope it. Finally, there were 330 (95,38%) participants said that they had ever had a conflict with friends. Qualitative data were categorized, quantified, and then statistically analyzed. The results showed that the majority of the respondents have ever had conflicts with friends and mostly because of having a communication problem. Most of them were more likely to use avoidance or non-confrontational strategies when resolving conflict with friends. They choose to not talk to each other, keep silent and take a distance for a while. It was called jothakan or meneng-menengan in Javanese term. The existence of jothakan as a conflict resolution happened because Javanese culture doesn't give room for an individual to express conflict openly, all behavior must be managed to keep the harmony in the social relationship. The dynamic of jothakan will be explored in the further research.