Peers

• Peer Groups


  • Modern society has promoted increasing age segregation, which has increased amount of time spend with peers and importance of peers in adolescence
  • Adolescents spend twice as much time with their peers as they do with adults
  • Almost half of waking hours are with peers compared to 15% of waking hours with adults
  • Time with peers increases steadily
  • Moods are more positive when with peers
• Peer Group


  • Groups of people who are about the same age
  • One of the most important contexts of adolescence
• As the weekend approaches and adolescents anticipate spending more time with their friends, their mood takes a marked turn for the better
• Origins of Adolescent Peer Groups

  • Compulsory education was a major factor in formation of contemporary peer groups
  • Age grading: students grouped by age
  • Impact on social lives of adolescents
• Population Size


  • Baby boom: postwar increase in child bearing led to a large population of adolescents during the 1960-70s
  • Size of population between 15-19 doubled from 1955 to 1975
  • Population of US citizens that were "adolescents" rose from 7% to 10%
  • 1 in every 6 Americans was a teen (1 in every 7 today)
• Changes in size of populations impacts society
• Baby boomer generation had a large impact on society because they were a crowded cohort
• Gen Z cohort (iGeneration) will likely have a great deal of influence because they are considerably larger than the Gen X (Millennials) population
• Some individuals argue that age segregation has led to a separate youth culture
• Negative effects on adolescents: Young people maintain attitudes/values different from the rest of society
• While age segregation has increased, adolescent problem behaviors have fluctuated
• There has been periods in which adolescent problem behavior has declined even when age segregation has remained high
• There is no evidence to suggest that adolescents today are at greater risk for problems or more susceptible to peer influence than previous generations
• Adolescents exert both positive and negative influences on each other
• Directions of influence are highly variable
• Peer-related characteristics of individuals

  • Two types of popularity (Socio-metric and perceived)
  • Perceived (Status) vs Socio-metric (degree of likeability)
  • Aggression increased status and decreased likeability
  • Prosocial ( Academically engaged, friendly, social, and helpful ) vs Populous (Arrogant, cocky, aggressive, and antisocial)
• Brown and Larson stated, "these studies suggest that relational aggression may be as salient, if not more so, than overt aggression in adolescents' peer interactions, perhaps because over the course of adolescence, relational aggression becomes more common (and more widely accepted) than physical aggression."
• Girls have been found to report experiences with relational aggression more frequently than boys, and also showed high levels of social anxiety and loneliness
• Friendship motives and expectations

  • Friendship dynamics begin to change
  • Romantic relationships begin to take priority
  • Friends are valued based on qualities like trust
  • Jealousy diminishes with age
  • Crowds are large, loosely organized groups, based on the identification of adolescents who share features and reputations. They are important contributors to adolescents' self-image and identity
  • Crowd Identification study: academic orientation, athletic competence, and physical appearance
  • Peer relationships greatly influenced by societal and cultural norms
  • Friends can be either a support system or bullies/ bystanders
• Features of Peer Relationships

  • Quality of communication
  • Instant messaging - high quality
  • Gaming - lower
  • Way information shared difference between gender
  • Girls - more disclosure
  • Boys - best friend
  • Bulling happens to peers that are outclassed by others
  • Peers group associates have a strong influence on peers
  • Good student hangs out with "stoner" can lead to becoming one
• Peer Relationship Processes


  • Importance of Peer influence
  • Driving game (more likely to make risks when playing with peers compared to playing alone)
  • Peer influences Can vary in timing, consistency and mode
  • Importance of status
  • Trying to fit in with members of group
  • If at the bottom or trying to get into a group, one is more willing to perform risky behaviors to try to get to the top or seem to fit in
  • If individual of lower status and higher status state the same thing, how will it be perceived? The outcome was that it was inappropriate for the unpopular student to say it, but acceptable for the popular student to say it
• Contextual Influences on Adolescent Peer Relationships

  • Culture and ethnicity is one of the most important ways in considering peer relation research
  • Family influences - It was found that the level of intimacy with same-sex freinds correlated to the type of paretning styles their parent use. Authoritative is the most positive type of parenting style when it comes to adolescents. Authoritative parents have high expectations while being supportive at the same time
  • Permissive parenting style seems to work better for girls rather than boys in the adolescence stage. Permissive parents have low expectations and low support
  • Families, may also, launch a child on a path toward a certain pattern of behavior, which can then be continued or deflected through their relationships with their peers
  • New social contexts for Peer interactions: internet studies: This form of communication is best for anxious or insecure youth who find it difficult to make friends in person or ones who engage in bullying & don't want to worry about getting caught & punished, they can remain anonymous
  • They can adopt fictitious personalities and pursue relationships with others on a basis of a completely false identity (catfishing)
  • When researchers surveyed 10-16 yr old Dutch youth: They found an association between Internet use & closeness to peers when they used social media to communicate
  • Canadian High school students: improvements over 1 year in the quality of close friendships & romantic relationships among adolescents who used the Internet to communicate with their friends but declines among those who joined chat rooms or gaming sites, where they interact with strangers
  • Bullying: most respondents have experienced bullying at school & through electronic media. 2/3 of adolescents reported online bullying & knew the perpetrator. Few adolescents didn't report the bullying to adults. Both in school & online victimization contributed to social anxiety levels
• Peer relationships become more salient
• Peer relationships grow more complex
• New types of relationships
• Friendships and friend-groups are formed on basis of similarity (work of selection and peer influence)
• Status is an important part of relationships with peers
• Social skills are predictors of adjustment
• Social acceptance is also a predictor of adjustment
• Self-perceptions of peer relationships are not reliable
• Peer affiliations and reputations are moderately stable
• Peer influence is reciprocal
• Nature of Peer Groups

  • During adolescence the significance and structure of the peer group changes
  • Drastic increase in the amount of time spent with peers
  • Peer groups have less adult supervision then they did during childhood
  • Opposite sex peer contacts occur more frequently
  • Until adolescence, peer groups remain very sex-segregated
  • While childhood peer relationships are limited to small groups of children, adolescents spend more time with the larger peer group (crowds)
• Cliques and Crowds


  • Cliques: Small groups of around 2 to 12 individuals (average about 5-6) defined by common activities or friendships. Provides the main social context in which adolescents interact with each other
  • Clique members: Liaisons, Isolates
  • Not all adolescents are a member of a "clique"
  • Girls tend to be more likely to join a clique than boys
  • There is stability in adolescents tendency to join or be a part of a clique but not in clique membership
  • Crowds: Larger, loosely organized groups of adolescents, composed of several cliques and typically share a common activity or feature. Membership is not based on friendship, but on reputation (i.e., Jocks, Brains, Nerds, Punks, etc). Crowds are not settings for interactions- serve three purposes: Locate adolescents within the social structure/context, Channel adolescents towards peers or away from peers, Provide contexts that rewards some lifestyles/choices and avoids others
• Differences among the two

  • Cliques are based on activities and friendship, serve as the foundation on which social skills are built
  • Crowds are based on reputation and stereotype rather than interaction, contribute more to identity development and self-conception (for better or worse) than social development
• Changes in Structure


  • Romanic Partners
  • Mixed-sex cliques
  • During middle adolescence: Mixed sex cliques before more prevalent and increase. Transition from same sex cliques to mixed sex cliques is linked with increases in drug and alcohol use for girls (alcohol use for boys), likely because these are the activities that draw males and females together involve socializing
  • By late adolescence: Peer crowds start to disintegrate. Larger peer group is replaced by loosely associated sets of couples. Couple becomes the focus of social activity- persists into adulthood
• Changes in Structure


  • Many changes in crowds are the result of cognitive advancements
  • The structures of crowds change over time, with crowd becoming: more differentiated, more permeable, less hierarchical
  • These changes allow adolescents more freedom to change crowds, enhance their status
• Waxing and Waning of Crowds

  • In 9th grade: Universal agreement on the social crowd structure, Peer influence is very high
  • Between 9th and 12th grade: Significance of the crowd structure declines and influence of peer pressure declines
  • Changes in importance of the peer crowd and susceptibility to peer pressure is likely reciprocal
  • During this time, adolescence play around with identity and try different things out
  • As adolescents become more secure in their identity, the need for affiliation with a crowd decreases
• Adolescents and Crowds


  • Social Map of Adolescence: Classifies crowds along two dimensions: Involvement in adult institutions, Involvement in peer culture
  • Recent work has found that the organization structure of "dominant" groups varies
• Crowd affiliation tells us a lot about a person's values and behavior