Temporary Friendship: A Study of the Emotional Compensation Mechanism of “Hitchhiking” Social Relationships
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: 在快节奏的生活背景下，传统深度友谊的维系面临着严峻的挑战。“搭子”社交作为一种新型社交模式，它兼具灵活性与低压力的特征，在这样一个情境之中应运而生。本文基于符号互动理论，研究通过对12位青年的深度访谈，分析了“搭子”社交关系是如何满足年轻人的即时情感需求，揭示其中的情感补偿运作逻辑和双重特性。研究发现，情感补偿机制呈现清晰的四阶段运作模式，包括输入层、符号层、功能层和输出层；“搭子”社交具有低承诺性与可替代性，凭借此特征，有效满足个体的即时情感需求。但利弊共存，同时也存在着一些情感联结浅表化等问题。“搭子”社交不仅是对现代社会高流动性的适应性策略，而且体现了青年群体重构人际联结的创造性实践，为理解当代青年社交行为提供了新的研究视角。Under the background of swift pace of life, the maintenance of traditional in-depth friendship is facing serious challenges, and “hitchhiking” social relationship has emerged as a new social model with both flexibility and low pressure. Based on the theory of symbolic interaction, this paper analyzes, through in-depth interviews with 12 young people, how the “hitchhikining” social relationship satisfies young people’s immediate emotional needs, revealing the logic of the operation of emotional compensation and its dual characteristics. It is found that the emotional compensation mechanism has a clear fourstage operation mode: input layer, symbolic layer, functional layer and output layer. By virtue of the low-commitment contractual relationship and replaceable functional modules, “hitchhiking” socialization can effectively satisfy the immediate emotional needs of individuals, but there are also problems such as the superficiality of the emotional connection. This new social model is not only an adaptive strategy to the high mobility of modern society, but also embodies the creative practice of youth groups to reconstruct interpersonal connections, which provides a new perspective for understanding the social behavior of contemporary youth.
Source: Advances in Social Sciences
Author: 家萍 何
Institution: Sichuan International Studies University
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W4412463723