Tara McManus (Communication Studies) and her co-author Jackson Scott (MA, Communication Studies, now a PhD student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln) published a paper in Communication Reports titled, "The effects of support providers' sex on the association between friendship standards and support provision." 

The study examines how people’s expectations for what friends should do for one another and their sex influence how they provide social support to friends experiencing stress. Based on the conversations between 102 friendship pairs, results indicate that females’ expectations that friends should be a source of enjoyment were negatively related to their provision of distraction support. Males, on the other hand, provided more distraction support to friends when they had higher expectations for enjoyment and similarity for friendships.