Peer Pressure
Wikipedia
Quick Teen Reads
Peer pressure is the direct influence on people by peers, or the effect on an individual who is encouraged and wants to follow their peers by changing their attitudes, values or behaviors to conform to those of the influencing group or individual. For the individual, this can result in either a positive or negative effect, or both. Social groups affected include both membership groups - in which individuals are "formally" members (such as political parties, trade unions, schools) - and cliques - in which membership is not clearly defined.
However, a person does not need to be a member or be seeking membership of a group to be affected by peer pressure. Researchers have studied the effects of peer pressure on children and on adolescents, and in popular discourse the term "peer pressure" occurs mostly with reference to those age-groups. For children, the common themes for study regard their abilities for independent decision-making; for adolescents, peer pressure's relationship with sexual intercourse and substance abuse have been significantly researched. Peer pressure can affect individuals of all ethnicities, genders and ages, however. Peer pressure has expanded from strictly face-to-face interaction to digital interaction as well. Social media offers opportunities for adolescents and adults alike to instil and/or experience pressure every day. Research suggests that not just individuals but also organizations, such as large corporations, are susceptible to peer pressures, such as pressures from other firms in their industry or from headquarters.
Children and Adolescents
Children
Imitation plays a large role in children's lives; in order to pick up skills and techniques that they use in their own life, children are always searching for behaviors and attitudes around them that they can co-opt. In other words, children get influenced by people that are important in their lives such as friends, parents and even YouTubers, celebrities, singers, dancers, etc. Children are aware of their position in the social hierarchy from a young age: their instinct is to defer to adults' judgements and majority opinions. Similar to the Asch conformity experiments, a study done on groups of preschool children showed that they were influenced by groups of their peers to change their opinion to a demonstrably wrong one.
Each child was handed a book with two sets of images on each page, with a groups of differently sized animals on the left hand page and one animal on the right hand, and each child was asked to indicate the size of the lone animal. All the books appeared the same, but the last child would sometimes get a book that was different. The children reported their size judgements in turn, and the child being tested was asked last. Before him or her, however, were a group of children working in conjunction with the researchers. Sometimes, the children who answered before the test subject all gave an answer that was incorrect. When asked in the presence of the other children, the last child's response was often the same as his or her peers. However, when allowed to privately share their responses with a researcher the children proved much more resistant to their peers' pressure, illustrating the importance of the physical presence of their peers in shaping their opinions.
An insight is that children can monitor and intervene in their peers' behavior through pressure. A study conducted in a remedial kindergarten class in the Edna A. Hill Child Development Laboratory in the University of Kansas designed a program to measure how children could ease disruptive behavior in their peers through a two-part system. After describing a series of tasks to their classroom that included bathroom usage, cleaning up, and general classroom behavior, teachers and researchers would observe children's performance on the tasks. The study focused on three children who were clearly identified as being more disruptive than their peers, and looked at their responses to potential techniques.
The system utilized was a two-part one: first, each student would be given points by their teachers for correctly completing tasks with little disruption (e.g. sitting down on a mat for reading time), and if a student reached three points by the end of the day they would receive a prize. The second part brought in peer interaction, where students who reached three points were appointed "peer monitors" whose role was to lead their small groups and assign points at the end of the day. The results were clear-cut, showing that the monitored students' disruption dropped when teachers started the points system and monitored them, but when peer monitors were introduced the target students' disruption dropped to average rates of 1% for student C1, 8% for student C2, and 11% for student C3 (down from 36%, 62%, and 59%, respectively). Even small children, then, are susceptible to pressure from their peers, and that pressure can be used to effect positive change in academic and social environments.
Adolescence
Adolescence is the time when a person is most susceptible to peer pressure because peers become an important influence on behavior during adolescence, and peer pressure has been called a hallmark of adolescent experience. Children entering this period in life become aware for the first time of the other people around them and realize the importance of perception in their interactions. Peer conformity in young people is most pronounced with respect to style, taste, appearance, ideology, and values. Peer pressure is commonly associated with episodes of adolescent risk taking because these activities commonly occur in the company of peers. Affiliation with friends who engage in risk behaviors has been shown to be a strong predictor of an adolescent's own behavior. Peer pressure can also have positive effects when youth are pressured by their peers toward positive behavior, such as volunteering for charity or excelling in academics. The importance of peers declines upon entering adulthood.
Even though socially accepted children often have the most opportunities and the most positive experiences, research shows that social acceptance (being in the popular crowd) may increase the likelihood of engaging in risky behavior, depending on the norms in the group. Groups of popular children showed a propensity to increase risky, drug-related and delinquent behavior when this behavior was likely to receive approval in their groups. Peer pressure was greatest among more popular children because they were the children most attuned to the judgments of their peers, making them more susceptible to group pressures. Gender also has a clear effect on the amount of peer pressure an adolescent experiences: girls report significantly higher pressures to conform to their groups in the form of clothing choices or speech patterns. Additionally, girls and boys reported facing differing amounts of pressures in different areas of their lives, perhaps reflecting a different set of values and priorities for each Gender.
Peer pressure is widely recognized as a major contributor to the initiation of drug use, particularly in adolescence. This has been shown for a variety of substances, including nicotine and alcohol. While this link is well established, moderating factors do exist. For example, parental monitoring is negatively associated with substance use; yet when there is little monitoring, adolescents are more likely to succumb to peer coercion during initiation to substance use, but not during the transition from experimental to regular use. Caldwell and colleagues extended this work by finding that peer pressure was a factor leading to heightened risk in the context of social gatherings with little parental monitoring, and if the individual reported themselves as vulnerable to peer pressure. Conversely, some research has observed that peer pressure can be a protective factor against substance use.
Peer pressure produces a wide array of negative outcomes. Allen and colleagues showed that susceptibility to peer pressure in 13- and 14-year-olds was predictive of not only future response to peer pressure, but also a wider array of functioning. For example, greater depression symptomatology, decreasing popularity, more sexual behavior, and externalizing behavior were greater for more susceptible teens. Of note, substance use was also predicted by peer pressure susceptibility such that greater susceptibility was predictive of greater alcohol and drug use.
However, a person does not need to be a member or be seeking membership of a group to be affected by peer pressure. Researchers have studied the effects of peer pressure on children and on adolescents, and in popular discourse the term "peer pressure" occurs mostly with reference to those age-groups. For children, the common themes for study regard their abilities for independent decision-making; for adolescents, peer pressure's relationship with sexual intercourse and substance abuse have been significantly researched. Peer pressure can affect individuals of all ethnicities, genders and ages, however. Peer pressure has expanded from strictly face-to-face interaction to digital interaction as well. Social media offers opportunities for adolescents and adults alike to instil and/or experience pressure every day. Research suggests that not just individuals but also organizations, such as large corporations, are susceptible to peer pressures, such as pressures from other firms in their industry or from headquarters.
Children and Adolescents
Children
Imitation plays a large role in children's lives; in order to pick up skills and techniques that they use in their own life, children are always searching for behaviors and attitudes around them that they can co-opt. In other words, children get influenced by people that are important in their lives such as friends, parents and even YouTubers, celebrities, singers, dancers, etc. Children are aware of their position in the social hierarchy from a young age: their instinct is to defer to adults' judgements and majority opinions. Similar to the Asch conformity experiments, a study done on groups of preschool children showed that they were influenced by groups of their peers to change their opinion to a demonstrably wrong one.
Each child was handed a book with two sets of images on each page, with a groups of differently sized animals on the left hand page and one animal on the right hand, and each child was asked to indicate the size of the lone animal. All the books appeared the same, but the last child would sometimes get a book that was different. The children reported their size judgements in turn, and the child being tested was asked last. Before him or her, however, were a group of children working in conjunction with the researchers. Sometimes, the children who answered before the test subject all gave an answer that was incorrect. When asked in the presence of the other children, the last child's response was often the same as his or her peers. However, when allowed to privately share their responses with a researcher the children proved much more resistant to their peers' pressure, illustrating the importance of the physical presence of their peers in shaping their opinions.
An insight is that children can monitor and intervene in their peers' behavior through pressure. A study conducted in a remedial kindergarten class in the Edna A. Hill Child Development Laboratory in the University of Kansas designed a program to measure how children could ease disruptive behavior in their peers through a two-part system. After describing a series of tasks to their classroom that included bathroom usage, cleaning up, and general classroom behavior, teachers and researchers would observe children's performance on the tasks. The study focused on three children who were clearly identified as being more disruptive than their peers, and looked at their responses to potential techniques.
The system utilized was a two-part one: first, each student would be given points by their teachers for correctly completing tasks with little disruption (e.g. sitting down on a mat for reading time), and if a student reached three points by the end of the day they would receive a prize. The second part brought in peer interaction, where students who reached three points were appointed "peer monitors" whose role was to lead their small groups and assign points at the end of the day. The results were clear-cut, showing that the monitored students' disruption dropped when teachers started the points system and monitored them, but when peer monitors were introduced the target students' disruption dropped to average rates of 1% for student C1, 8% for student C2, and 11% for student C3 (down from 36%, 62%, and 59%, respectively). Even small children, then, are susceptible to pressure from their peers, and that pressure can be used to effect positive change in academic and social environments.
Adolescence
Adolescence is the time when a person is most susceptible to peer pressure because peers become an important influence on behavior during adolescence, and peer pressure has been called a hallmark of adolescent experience. Children entering this period in life become aware for the first time of the other people around them and realize the importance of perception in their interactions. Peer conformity in young people is most pronounced with respect to style, taste, appearance, ideology, and values. Peer pressure is commonly associated with episodes of adolescent risk taking because these activities commonly occur in the company of peers. Affiliation with friends who engage in risk behaviors has been shown to be a strong predictor of an adolescent's own behavior. Peer pressure can also have positive effects when youth are pressured by their peers toward positive behavior, such as volunteering for charity or excelling in academics. The importance of peers declines upon entering adulthood.
Even though socially accepted children often have the most opportunities and the most positive experiences, research shows that social acceptance (being in the popular crowd) may increase the likelihood of engaging in risky behavior, depending on the norms in the group. Groups of popular children showed a propensity to increase risky, drug-related and delinquent behavior when this behavior was likely to receive approval in their groups. Peer pressure was greatest among more popular children because they were the children most attuned to the judgments of their peers, making them more susceptible to group pressures. Gender also has a clear effect on the amount of peer pressure an adolescent experiences: girls report significantly higher pressures to conform to their groups in the form of clothing choices or speech patterns. Additionally, girls and boys reported facing differing amounts of pressures in different areas of their lives, perhaps reflecting a different set of values and priorities for each Gender.
Peer pressure is widely recognized as a major contributor to the initiation of drug use, particularly in adolescence. This has been shown for a variety of substances, including nicotine and alcohol. While this link is well established, moderating factors do exist. For example, parental monitoring is negatively associated with substance use; yet when there is little monitoring, adolescents are more likely to succumb to peer coercion during initiation to substance use, but not during the transition from experimental to regular use. Caldwell and colleagues extended this work by finding that peer pressure was a factor leading to heightened risk in the context of social gatherings with little parental monitoring, and if the individual reported themselves as vulnerable to peer pressure. Conversely, some research has observed that peer pressure can be a protective factor against substance use.
Peer pressure produces a wide array of negative outcomes. Allen and colleagues showed that susceptibility to peer pressure in 13- and 14-year-olds was predictive of not only future response to peer pressure, but also a wider array of functioning. For example, greater depression symptomatology, decreasing popularity, more sexual behavior, and externalizing behavior were greater for more susceptible teens. Of note, substance use was also predicted by peer pressure susceptibility such that greater susceptibility was predictive of greater alcohol and drug use.