1. Adolescence 9th edition
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Chapter Five:
Peer Groups
By Laurence Steinberg, Ph.D.

2. Chapter 5 Overview
What are the origins of adolescent peer groups in contemporary society?
Are adolescent peer groups a problem or a necessity?
How do peer groups change over time?
What are cliques? What are crowds?
What determines popularity and rejection in adolescence?
How do peers influence psychosocial development?

3. Peer Groups Groups of people who are roughly the same age
Modernization has led to more age segregation
schools
workplace
community
U.S. high school seniors < 15% of waking hours spent with family
This figure illustrates that teenagers’ moods become more positive over the course of the week, as the weekend approaches.

4. The Nature of Adolescent Peer Groups
During the transition into adolescence, there is a dramatic drop in the amount of time adolescents spend with parents

5. The Origins of Adolescent Peer Groups in Contemporary Society
Educational origins of adolescent peer groups
age grading in public schools
impact on social life has been staggering
organized activities outside of school contribute to age segregation
When students are free to mix with people of different ages while at school, they are more likely to do so, especially during early adolescence (Gray & Feldman, 1997), perhaps because there is such wide variability in physical development at this point in development.

6. The Origins of Adolescent Peer Groups in Contemporary Society
Changes in the size of the youth population
Baby Boom created an “adolescent boom” in the 1960s and early 1970s
adolescents comprised over 10% of U.S. population (1975)
Today, 1 in 7 individuals in the U.S. is an adolescent.

7. The Adolescent Peer Group: A Problem or a Necessity?
Some researchers believe age segregation has led to a separate youth culture that has negative effects on adolescents
young people maintain attitudes/values different from the rest of society
Some researchers believe that due to industrialization and modernization
adults no longer adequately prepare youth for the future
peer groups are vital socializing agents

8. The Adolescent Peer Group: A Problem or a Necessity?
Is There a Separate Youth Culture?
In most high schools, athletic and social success are more reliable routes to popularity than is academic success
Argument:
age segregation has strengthened the power of the peer group and caused adolescents to be alienated from and unfamiliar with the values of adults
rise in peer group power is directly linked to rise in adolescent problems; peer groups are a bad thing for adolescents
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According to this view, problems such as youth unemployment, teenage suicide, juvenile crime and delinquency, drug and alcohol use, and premarital pregnancy can be attributed to the rise of peer groups and the isolation of adolescents from adults.
However, as indicated by the research of Brown and colleagues, adolescents exert both positive and negative influences on each other, and it is simply incorrect to describe the peer group as a monolithic, negative influence.

9. The Adolescent Peer Group: A Problem or a Necessity?
Counterargument: We need peer groups in modern society
The family has become a less important political and economic institution
universalistic norms have come to replace particularistic ones
modernization has created age groups and also made them absolutely necessary
adolescents have come to play a valuable role in preparing one another for adulthood
The debate about whether peer groups are a good or bad thing may be dead. Peer groups are inevitable by-products of modernization. Some theorists have suggested that peers have become essential to the transmission of cultural information.
Universalistic norms: when all individuals are expected to learn the same set of norms, because the rules governing behavior apply equally to all members of the community. The norms that apply to you apply to everyone.
Particularistic norms: when norms for behavior vary from person to person.

10. The Nature of Adolescent Peer Groups
Changes in peer groups during adolescence
sharp increase during adolescence in the time spent with peers versus adults.
peer groups begin to function much more often without adult supervision.
increasingly more contact with peers is with opposite-sex friends.
adolescence marks the emergence of larger collectives of peers, or crowds.

11. Changes in Peer Groups

12. The Nature of Adolescent Peer Groups
Cliques and Crowds
cliques are small groups defined by common activities or simply by friendship (e.g., having known each other for a long time)
crowds are larger, more vaguely defined groups, based on reputation
jocks, brains, nerds, druggies, toughs, punks, populars, socies, and so on.
The importance of the clique, whatever its basis, is that it provides the main social context in which adolescents interact with each other.
In contrast to cliques, crowds are not settings for adolescents’ intimate interactions or friendships but instead serve three broad purposes: to locate adolescents within the social structure of the school, to channel adolescents into associations with some peers and away from others, and to provide contexts that reward certain lifestyles and disparage others.

13. The Nature of Adolescent Peer Groups
The structure of cliques and crowds changes over time during adolescence
structure of crowds becomes:
more differentiated
more permeable
less hierarchical
These changes allow adolescents more freedom to change crowds, enhance their status
By late adolescence, same-sex peer groups have mainly disintegrated. Adolescents are more likely to spend the leisure time as members of couples.
Food for Thought: Why do crowds and cliques change over the course of adolescence? How do these changes affect – and how are they affected by – the development of the individual adolescent?

14. Adolescents and Their Crowds
The Social Map of Adolescence
Involvement in institutions controlled by adults
Involvement in informal peer culture

15. Adolescents and Their Crowds
Crowds as Reference Groups
Crowds contribute to the definition of norms and standards for such things as clothing, leisure, and tastes in music
Adolescents’ crowds serve as reference groups. They provide their members with an identity in the eyes of other adolescents. Adolescents judge one another on the basis of the company they keep and they become branded on the basis of whom they hang out with.
Food for Thought: What does it mean to say that crowds serve as reference groups for adolescents? How might membership in one crowd as opposed to another, affect the individual adolescent’s development? What happens to someone who wants to change crowds?

16. Adolescents and Their Cliques: Similarity among Clique Members
Cliques typically are composed of people of:
same age
same race
same socioeconomic background
same sex – at least during early and middle adolescence

17. Adolescents and Their Cliques: Similarity among Clique Members
Sex segregation
Figure:
A study of adolescents’ social networks found that the proportion of opposite-sex friends more than doubles between 6th and 10th grades (Poulin & Pedersen, 2007). And, in keeping with the notion that this coincides with the onset of dating, the increase is especially notable among early-maturing girls, whose networks increasingly include somewhat older boys that they know outside of school. Even still, by 10th grade, most adolescents’ social networks are still dominated by same-sex friends, who make up about three-quarters of the average teenager’s network.

18. Adolescents and Their Cliques: Similarity among Clique Members
Ethnic segregation

19. Adolescents and Their Cliques: Common Interests among Friends
Three factors are important for determining clique membership
orientation toward school
orientation toward the teen culture
involvement in antisocial activity
McGraw-Hill Visual Assets DataBase has various video clips that would fit with this lecture. The title of this slide provides a hyperlink to that page. Make sure that you have opened the site with your password before the lecture begins.
Talking about Cliques at 15 Years of Age
TWO WHITE FEMALES, 15 YEARS & MULTICULTURAL FEMALE, 15 YEARS. Three high school girls describe the cliques in their school and what makes someone popular. They describe physical appearance as important but personality too.

20. Adolescents and Their Cliques: Common Interests Among Friends
Deviant peer groups
aggressive adolescents gravitate toward each other
Are gangs just deviant peer groups?
Process of antisocial peer group formation in adolescence begins in the home during childhood
Coercive and hostile parent-child relationships lead to:
development of an antisocial disposition in the child, and this disposition contributes, in elementary school, to both school failure and rejection by classmates.
Gangs are antisocial peer groups that can be identified by name (often denoting a neighborhood or part of the city) and common symbols.
Interestingly, improvements in parenting during adolescence reduce teenagers’ association with antisocial peers, which, in turn, reduces problematic behavior.

21. Adolescents and Their Cliques: Common Interests among Friends
Role of family in friendship choice
parents socialize certain traits
predispose teens toward certain crowds
crowds reward them for the traits that led them there in the first place
traits are strengthened
Antisocial peers reinforce antisocial traits
As psychologist Nina Mounts has pointed out, parents often manage their adolescent’s friendships by monitoring the individuals their child spends time with, guiding their child towards peers they like, prohibiting contact with peers they dislike, and supporting friendships they approve of. Parents also act as consultants, helping their teenagers work out problems with their friends. Adolescents whose parents act as consultants in this way are less likely to be involved in drug use and delinquent activity, and report more positive relationships with their friends.

22. Adolescents and Their Cliques: Common Interests among Friends
Can a group-based intervention help teens with conduct problems?
Iatrogenic effects – undesirable consequences of well-intentioned treatments
Examples: medicine making illness worse instead of better; group-based interventions allowing antisocial teens to get ideas about delinquency from other antisocial teens
Knowing that group-based intervention isn’t helpful for this group of adolescents allows researchers to design other, better interventions

23. Adolescents and Their Cliques: Common Interests among Friends
Selection
Socialization

24. Adolescents and Their Cliques: Common Interests among Friends
Similarity between friends: selection or socialization?
Which comes first: Joining a clique or becoming interested in a clique’s activities?
With regard to antisocial activities, such as delinquency or drug use, it appears as if “birds of a feather flock together” (selection)
Peer influence stronger for day-to-day preferences than for risky behaviors that worry parents
Although clique members influence each other’s behavior and values, research has also shown that adolescents select their friends to begin with on the basis of similarity.
Delinquency: Selection is the stronger factor.
Drug use: Selection and socialization are about equally forceful.
Depression: Selection.

25. Adolescents and Their Cliques: Common Interests among Friends
How stable are friendships over time?
moderate stability over the school year
more stable during later years of high school
actual composition of teens’ cliques may shift; defining characteristics of the clique, however, do not

26. Popularity and Rejection in Adolescent Peer Groups
Chief determinant of popularity during adolescence: social skills
act appropriately in eyes of peers
meet needs of others
confident but not conceited
Both boys and girls can be aggressive and popular at the same time
Aggression coupled with poor emotion regulation creates peer problems

27. Popularity and Rejection in Adolescent Peer Groups
Determinants of popularity and rejection
widely agreed that popular adolescents are generally more socially skilled than their unpopular peers
however, there is surprising variability among popular teenagers in other characteristics
Two forms of popularity
sociometric popularity refers to how well-liked someone is
perceived popularity refers to how much status, or prestige, someone has

28. Popularity and Rejection in Adolescent Peer Groups
Three types of unpopular adolescents
aggressive
fights with other students, bullies others
withdrawn
exceedingly shy, anxious, and inhibited
victims of bullying
aggressive and withdrawn
hostile, but nervous about initiating friendships
The origins of peer rejection in adolescence can often be traced to earlier periods of development. In one study, adolescents who were rejected by their peers also had experienced peer rejection during middle childhood and that this rejection, in turn, was the consequence of behavioral and emotional difficulties in early elementary school.

29. Popularity and Rejection in Adolescent Peer Groups
Boys are more physically aggressive than girls
Girls also act aggressively toward peers, but often engage in relational aggression
ruin a reputation
disrupt a friendship
Hostile attributional bias
plays central role in aggressive behavior of rejected adolescent

30. Popularity and Rejection in Adolescent Peer Groups
Consequences of rejection
Being unpopular has negative consequences for adolescents’ mental health and psychological development
depression
behavior problems
academic difficulties
Consequences might differ for rejected youth who are aggressive versus those who are withdrawn
Aggressive individuals who are rejected are at risk for conduct problems and involvement in antisocial activity as adolescents, not just as a direct result of their rejection, but because the underlying causes of their aggression also contribute to later conduct problems.
Withdrawn children who are rejected are likely to feel exceedingly lonely and are at risk for low self-esteem, depression, and diminished social competence– both as a result of being rejected and in part because the underlying causes of their timidity also contribute to later emotional problems.

31. Victimization and Harassment
Unpopular youths may lack the social skills and social understanding necessary to be popular with peers
easy targets for bullying
creates a cycle of teasing, feeling less socially adept, leading to more bullying
blame themselves for their victimization
Victimization can lead to lower earnings as an adult because of the cyclical nature of bullying
Food for Thought: Do you think it is possible to turn unpopular adolescents into popular ones? If so, what sorts of interventions would you design to help unpopular teenagers?

32. Victimization and Harassment
Peer harassment can be experienced
directly (as a victim)
indirectly (witnessing someone else be victimized)
These two different experiences of victimization can have similar and dissimilar effects

33. Victimization and Harassment
One of the most pernicious effects of victimization is that it undermines feelings of academic competence, academic performance and school engagement, which has cascading effects well beyond adolescence (even after taking into account background factors).

34. Victimization and Harassment
Rates of victimization vary considerably from country.

35. The Peer Group and Psychosocial Development
Teens with poor peer relationships are more likely to
be low achievers in school
drop out of high school
show higher rates of delinquent behavior
suffer from emotional and mental health problems as adults
Although it is likely that poorly adjusted individuals have difficulty making friends, good evidence also suggests that psychological problems result from– as well as cause– problems with peers.

36. The Peer Group and Psychosocial Development
In promoting normal development, peers …
provide models and feedback in regard to identity
influence self-image
assist the development of autonomy
provide a context for decision-making skills
interact in intimate and sexual relationships
influence one another regarding achievement