1. Peers Peers & Youth Culture Friends Cliques Crowds
Peer Popularity and Social Competence
Peer Acceptance
Characteristics of Popular and Unpopular Adolescents
Social Cognition and Social Competence

2. Peers Peers & Youth Culture Friends Cliques Crowds
Peer Popularity and Social Competence
Peer Acceptance
Characteristics of Popular and Unpopular Adolescents
Social Cognition and Social Competence

3. Peer Group Structure
Peers
Crowds
Page 174
Cliques
Friends

4. Why study peer groups?
Adolescents spend a lot of time with their peers
Hierarchically unique relationship (equal status)
Piaget thought peers were essential to moral development
Realm of negotiation
Creative co-establishment of rules
Issues of distributive justice

5. Four major changes Increased time spent with peers
Functioning with less adult supervision
Increasing contact with members of opposite-sex
Emergence of crowds
Q: Is this an artifact of the school system?

6. The Nature of Adolescent Peer Groups
Page 174

7. Causes of Peer Culture Factor # 1: Educational system Age Grouping
Isolating children from adult population
Putting large numbers of children together
Exposure to diversity
Different ethnicities, different backgrounds

8. Percentage of 14- to 17-year-olds enrolled in school

9. Causes of Peer Culture Factor # 1: Educational system
Age Grouping
Isolating children from adult population
Putting large numbers of children together
Exposure to diversity
Different ethnicities, different backgrounds
Factor #2: Work/Family life
Tougher child labor laws
Both parents working
Longer hours
Factor #3: Population shifts
1 to 7 ratio of adolescents to adults

10. The Origins of Adolescent Peer Groups in Contemporary Society
Changes in the Population
Baby Boom created an “adolescent boom” in the 1960s and early 1970s
Adolescents comprised over 10% of U.S. population
Teenage population is now about 7% of U.S. population
The size of the teenage population has been increasing once again, although in relative terms it has remained, and will continue to remain, at around 7 percent of the U.S. population.

11. Youth Culture Is there a separate youth culture?
Many have same values as parents rather than with those of same age
Young people maintain attitudes/values different from the rest of society
Individuality, learning, knowledge
Consumer behavior
Music, movies/TV, technology

12. Problem of youth culture
Development of counter values
Coleman: The Adolescent Society (1961)
Do adolescents (de)value academic achievement?
Why or why not?
Should we be concerned?
Increase in counter-culture activities
Why would increased peer/decreased adult contact promote this?

13. Benefit of youth culture
Cultivation of universalistic norms
Technological advancements
Postfigurative cultures
Cofigurative cultures
Prefigurative cultures

14. Technological Change & Youth Culture
(Mead, 1928)
Postfigurative Culture
Youth learn from their elders (e.g., traditional methods of farming)
Cofigurative Culture
Learning from both elders and peers
Prefigurative Culture
Jody teaches her father how to use the Internet

15. Peers Peers & Youth Culture Friends discuss later with Intimacy
Cliques
Crowds
Peer Popularity and Social Competence
Peer Acceptance
Characteristics of Popular and Unpopular Adolescents
Social Cognition and Social Competence

16. The Nature of Adolescent Peer Groups
Cliques and Crowds
Cliques are small groups defined by common activities/friendship and form a regular social group
Crowds are larger, more vaguely defined groups, based on reputation
Jocks, brains, nerds, druggies, toughs, punks, populars, socies, and so on
not necessarily friends and do not necessarily spend time together
The importance of the clique, whatever its basis, is that it provides the main social context in which adolescents interact with each other. Page 175

17. 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

18. Adolescents and Their Cliques: Similarity among Clique Members
Selection or Socialization?
Antisocial activities, such as delinquency?
Aggression?
Alcohol, tobacco, depression?
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.
“Birds of a feather flock together” is discussed on page 190.
Delinquency: Selection is the stronger factor.
Drug use: Selection and socialization are about equally forceful.

19. Cliques (cont’d) Shared interests and activities Deviant peer groups
Orientation toward school
Orientation toward the teen culture
Involvement in antisocial activity
Deviant peer groups
Aggressive adolescents gravitate toward each other
Page 187 of textbook
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
Three factors are important for determining clique membership
Orientation toward school
Orientation toward the teen culture
Involvement in antisocial activity
Page 187 of textbook
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.

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

22. 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
Parent-child relationships that are coercive and hostile

23. 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

24. Who Do Adolescents Talk To About?
Adolescents are more likely to talk to their friends about opposite sex relationships, and to their parents about career goals. How do you interpret these data?
Youniss & Smollar (1985)

25. Preadolescent Cliques
Friendship Choices Among Fourth Graders (from Moreno, 1934, p. 38). Triangles represent males, circles represent females.

26. Opposite sex transitions
Adolescent interaction with the opposite sex:
Same-sex cliques (fairly isolated non-clique interaction)
Mixed-sex cliques
Cliques divide off into dating pairs
Disintegration of cliques, replaced with sets of couples

27. From Adolescence to Emerging Adulthood…
(Dunphy, 1963)
Stage 1: Same-sex cliques (Gender Segregation)
Stage 2: Boys’ and Girls’ cliques spend some time together
Stage 3: Gender cliques break down as clique leaders form romantic relationships
Stage 4: Other clique members follow suit
Stage 5: Males and females pair off in more serious relationships

28. Time Spent in Other-Sex Groups or Pairs

29. Mixed-sex Cliques ♂ ♀

30. Crowds Larger, more vaguely defined groups, based on reputation
Jocks, brains, nerds, druggies
May or may not spend time together
Peak in importance in middle adolescence
Vary according to involvement in adult institutions vs. peer activities
The importance of the clique, whatever its basis, is that it provides the main social context in which adolescents interact with each other. Page 175

31. Crowds as reference groups
What are crowds?
Lenses through which adolescents see the world
Lenses through which adolescents are seen by the world
Crowds as Reference Groups
Crowds contribute to the definition of norms and standards for such things as clothing, leisure, and tastes in music

32. The importance of cues External cues provide stereotypical information
Short vs. long hair
Clothing style
Mannerisms
Q: why are these cues reliable sources of information?
Correlational or causal relationship

33. Dimensions of cliques Dimensions of segregation: common interests
Orientation towards adult culture
Orientation towards youth culture
Selection vs. socialization

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

35. Conformity, conformity, conformity
The primary message of peer groups: Conformity
Why do you think this is?
When is it (and in what way is it) a good thing?
When is it (and in what way is it) a bad thing?

36. Developmental Changes in Crowds
Age Group
Crowd Characteristics
Middle School
(Grades 6-8)
-less differentiated (two main groups – the in-crowd and the out-crowd)
Early High School
(Grades 9-10)
-become more differentiated
-more influential
Later High School
(Grades 11-12)
-become yet more differentiated
-more niches for people to “fit into”
-less hierarchical and less influential
Keep in Mind…
Adolescents do not always accept the crowd label attributed to them by peers. They may see themselves as too distinctly individual to be categorized.

37. Developmental Changes in Crowds
Brown, Mory, & Kinney (1994)

38. Importance of crowd affiliation
Crowd Importance Score
Age

39. Popularity
Popularity (Status): The degree to which children are liked or disliked by their peers as a group.
Measuring popularity: Sociometric techniques
Nomination technique: “Tell me the names of 3 kids in class that you like…”
Rating scale technique: The child is asked to rate each child in the class on a 5 point scale
Paired comparison technique: The child is presented with the names of 2 children at a time and asked which they like more

40. Status in the Peer Group
Sociometric systems classify children into five groups:
Popular
Rejected
Neglected
Average
Controversial.

42. Peer Acceptance Positive nominations Negative nominations Few Many
2/3 can be placed in one of these categories

43. Peer Acceptance Positive nominations Negative nominations Few Many
Popular
2/3 can be placed in one of these categories

44. Popular Children
Popular children are liked by many peers and disliked by few peers.
They are skilled at initiating social interaction with peers and maintaining positive relationships with others.
They tend to be cooperative, friendly, sociable, and sensitive to others, and are perceived this way by teachers and parents as well as by other children.
They tend to be more assertive than aggressive, getting what they want without fighting with or hurting others.

45. Peer Acceptance Positive nominations Negative nominations Few Many
Popular
Controversial
2/3 can be placed in one of these categories

46. Controversial Children
“Controversial” children are those who are liked by some peers and disliked by others.
They have characteristics of both popular and rejected children.
They may be aggressive, disruptive, and prone to anger, but also cooperative, social, and good at sports.
They may be viewed by peers as arrogant and snobbish.
They may be socially active and good group leaders.

47. Peer Acceptance Positive nominations Negative nominations Few Many
Neglected
Popular
Controversial
2/3 can be placed in one of these categories

48. Neglected Children
Some withdrawn children are categorized as “neglected” because they are neither liked nor disliked.
They tend to back away from peer interactions that involve aggression.
They tend to be neglected primarily because they are not noticed by their peers.

49. Peer Acceptance Positive nominations Negative nominations Few Many
Neglected
Popular
Rejected
Controversial
2/3 can be placed in one of these categories

50. Rejected Children There are two categories of rejected children:
Aggressive-rejected children are prone to hostile and threatening behavior, physical aggression, disruptive behavior, and delinquency.They engage in “relational aggression,” spreading rumors about others, withholding friendship, and ignoring and excluding other children.
Withdrawn-rejected children (10% to 20% of those in the rejected category) are socially withdrawn, wary, and timid. However, not all withdrawn children are rejected.

51. Popularity and Rejection in Adolescent Peer Groups
Three types of unpopular adolescents
Aggressive
fights with other students, bullies others
Withdrawn
exceedingly shy, timid, and inhibited
victims of bullying
Aggressive-Withdrawn
hostile, but nervous about initiating friendships

52. Social Rejection and Self-Evaluations
Withdrawn-rejected children have less confidence in their social skills and are more anxious in peer contexts.
Aggressive-rejected children lack social skills and overestimate their social competence.

53. SOCIAL STATUS Rejected Controversial Average Neglected Popular
Negative
Nominations
Rejected
Controversial
Positive
Nominations
Average
Neglected
Popular

54. SOCIAL STATUS

55. Popularity and Rejection in Adolescent Peer Groups
Both boys and girls can be aggressive and popular at the same time
Aggression coupled with poor emotion regulation creates peer problems
Page 191

56. 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

57. Relational Aggression
Non-physical forms of aggression:
Gossiping
Spreading rumors
Snubbing
Excluding
Covert, indirect form of aggression common among girls

58. Rejected Children: Social Cognition and Social Rejection
Hostile attributional bias
Plays central role in aggressive behavior of rejected adolescent
Rejected children are more likely than their better-liked peers to be motivated by “getting even” with others or showing them up.
They are more likely to attribute malicious intent to others.
They have more difficulty finding constructive solutions, such as taking turns.

59. Victimization and Harassment
Unpopular youngsters 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
Page 194
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?
Page 196

60. Victimization and Harassment
Peer harassment can be experienced
Directly (as a victim)
Indirectly (witnessing someone else be victimized)
Different experiences of victimization have different effects

61. Peer Status as a Predictor of Risk: Academic Performance
Rejected children (especially if they are aggressive) are more likely than others to have lower grade-point averages and be viewed as poor students.
The tendency of rejected children to do more poorly in school worsens over time.
Rejected children are more likely than popular children to be suspended, repeat a grade, or drop out of school.
They are more likely to get in trouble with the law.

62. Relation of Sociometric Status to Academic and Behavioral Problems

63. Peer Status as a Predictor of Risk: Adjustment Problems
Rejected-aggressive children are more at risk for:
Aggression, delinquency, hyperactivity, ADHD, conduct disorder, and substance abuse (externalizing symptoms)
Loneliness, depression, obsessive-compulsive behavior (internalizing symptoms)
Non–aggressive-withdrawn children are also at risk for internalizing symptoms.

64. Externalizing Symptoms Reported by Parents: Rejected and Aggressive 3rd Grade Boys

65. Externalizing Symptoms Reported by Rejected and Aggressive 3rd Grade Boys

66. Internalizing Symptoms Reported by Rejected and Aggressive 3rd Grade Boys

67. Percentages of children rejected by peers as a function of gender and family income
As can be seen in these data from a longitudinal study, elementary school children from families with low incomes are considerably more likely to be rejected than are children from middleclass families. (Adapted from Patterson, Griesler, Vaden, & Kupersmidt, 1992)

68. Predictors of Children’s Sociometric Status
Cognitive factors
Emotion regulation
Birth order: Last-born children are more popular than firstborn children
Intellectual ability: Academic performance correlates with sociometric measures of popularity
Physical attractiveness: Relatively attractive children are more popular
Unattractive children may be unpopular in part because of their negative behaviors
Motor skills

69. Predictors of Children’s Sociometric Status
Chief determinant of popularity during adolescence: Social skills
Act appropriately in eyes of peers
Meet needs of others
Confident but not conceited

70. Cognitive Factors for Peer Relations
Perspective taking refers to the ability to adopt the view of another person
Social cognition refers to the level of thought used by a child in reference to others
Social problem-solving skills refer to the skills needed to resolve social dilemmas

71. Predictors of Children’s Sociometric Status
Unpopular youngsters may lack the social skills and social understanding necessary to be popular with peers
Hostile attributional bias
Plays central role in aggressive behavior
Withdrawn kids
Peer group entry, poor self-esteem, lack of confidence
Cycle of victimization
Page 194
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?
Page 196

72. Predictors of Children’s Sociometric Status
Mean of social-cognitive factor
Page 194
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?
Page 196

73. Predictors of Children’s Sociometric Status
Predictors of popularity do not seem to change substantially with age.
Overt aggression has a less important role in peer rejection in adolescence than in childhood.
Withdrawn behavior seems to become a more important predictor of peer rejection with increasing age in childhood.
Social isolation may be forced on some children as they progress through school, either through their own disruptive or aggressive behavior or through self-isolation.

74. Stability of Sociometric Status
Over short periods of time (weeks or a few months), children who are popular or rejected tend to remain so. Children who are neglected or controversial are more likely to change status.
Over longer periods of time, sociometric status is more likely to change. Stability is higher for rejected children than for popular, neglected, or controversial children.

75. Interventions for Unpopularity
Adolescent
Intervention Focus
Neglected
-learning the social skills needed for making friends
Rejected
-learning how to control and manage anger and aggressiveness

76. Constructing Ideas: Peer Pressure or Friends’ Influence?
Why might friends’ influence be a more accurate description?
Is friends’ influence largely toward negative behaviors? Explain your answer.
From your experience, recall positive and negative
influences your friends have had on you.

77. Adolescent Conformity
Percent Conformity
Age
Costanzo (1970)

78. Mean Scores for Peer Conformity on Different Types of Behavior

79. Activity Questionnaire Results
Activity Yourself Your Best The Average
Friend Student
Number of alcoholic
Drinks per week
Number of times
per month drunk

80. Activity Questionnaire Results
Activity Yourself Your Best The Average
Friend Student
Number of alcoholic
Drinks per week
Number of times
per month drunk

81. Peer Pressure

82. Peer Pressure
National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth (NLSCY)

83. Eder (1978, 1995): Perceived Polularity
Hard to understand what students defined as being popular, but clear that students were not all equal
Visibility was most important
Strong influence of social class
Low end of hierarchy
Unattractiveness, atypical gender behavior, lower intelligence, unusual behavior