Peers Friends
People about the same age = large network of same-age People you know, like, and with whom you develop a valued,
classmates mutual friendship
Adolescence: changing social contexts
Shift from spending time with parents spending time with peers
o Time spent with family decreases
o Time spent with friends increases especially other sex friends
o Parents are for career/education
o Friends are for romantic/sex issues
Transition from primary school to high school
Less adult supervision & monitoring
More enjoyment when spending time with peers
Friendship
Functions
o Maintaining/strengthening self-worth
o Experimenting with social roles
o Learning social skills, such as information management (sharing private information)
Support & nurturance Sullivan, 1953
o Informational support what should I do? Should I ask Jimi to go out with me?
o Instrumental support thanks for helping me with my math homework
o Companionship support let’s go to the game together, we can sit together
o Esteem support don’t worry about it, you’re the best guitar player here
Changes in friendship quality
o Late adolescents describe 4 main types of friendship
Friendly (shared activities)
Intimate (affection, sharing feelings)
Integrated (friendly + intimate)
Uninvolved (neither)
o Increase in the importance of intimacy
o Higher levels of self-disclosure
o Emphasis on trust, loyalty
o How can we explain this increase in intimacy? Changing cognitive abilities, identity is developing, learning about
intimacy in our friendships
How do adolescents choose their friends?
o Similar in media & leisure preference, school performance, academic orientation, risk behaviors and ethnicity
o Why do we see an increase in ethnic friendship segregation in adolescence? Developing our identity
Friends & psychosocial well-being
o Positive influences
Friendships provide different types of support
Help identity formation
Supportive friendships linked tot higher self-esteem, lower depressive symptoms & improved academic
perfomance
o Negative influences
Similar in delinquent behaviour
Similarity may be caused by selection and influence
Resistant to peer pressure increases during puberty
Selection or influence?
o Do they become more similar over time?
Experiments: adolescents take more risks when in peer groups than alone
Deviant peer affilation predicts delinquent behaviour better than family, school, and community characteristics
o Evidence for both selection and influence
What if parents forbid friendships? Effect mother is stronger
o If a mother prohibited certain friendships, that kid was more likely to
oriented to deviant peers across time and that deviant peer affilation
actuallu predicted adolescent delinquency one year later
o Conclusion forbidden friends as forbidden fruit get your kids hanging
out with the right kids before the puberty and going to middle school
o Signigicant indirect effects for moms
Research do all peers have a similar power of influence? Different effects
, Peer contagion Cohen & Prinstein, 2006
o 43 average-status males participated and interacted with 3 e-confederates in a internet chat room
o Participants did not conform equally to all peer
o More influenced by peers of high status than low status why? FOMO, afraid of not being popular
Prioritzing populariy in adolescence LaFontana & Cillissen, 2010
o How would you respond if given the choice between 2 actions (a party with popular kid or hanging out with your best
friend)?
o Enhancing or maintaining status?
o Maintaining a friendship, compassion for rejected peer, conforming to rules, achieving academic success or pursuing a
romance?
A little history
Sociometry Moreno, 1934
o Inquiry into the organization of groups and the position of individuals within them
Quantitative method for measuring social relationships & structures
Sociograms
In the 1980s: Coppotelli designed a standard socialmetric method for children
Participants were asked to nominate classmates they liked most, they liked least
Two dimensions lead to classification into Coie, Dodge, & Coppotelli, 1982
o Popular
o Rejected
o Neglected nothing wrong with it
o Controversial bully’s?
Popularity and status
Sociometric popularity
o Reflects
Likeability
Peer acceptance
Social preference
o Correlates in adolescence
Prosocial
Have friends
Not bullied by peers
Well-adjusted
Meanwhile in sociology
o Ethnograpig studies of adolescent cliques reveal that popularity is not that positive
o Hierarchy of cliques, determined by popularity
Popular cliques at the top
Wannabes
Social isolates
o The popular ones are far from nice
o Aggression
o Deviant behaviours
Peerstatus correlation 0.4
o Social preference peer acceptance, likeability, feelings of affection, who
do you like the most?
o Perceived popularity visibility, prominence, dominance, who is popular?
Distinction between two types of status Sandstrom & Cillessen, 2006
o The two types of status share much variance
o Popular kids dominant and very aggressive
o Likeable kids prosocial
o Being liked in grade 5 is negatively associated with externalizing behaviours
in grade 8
o Being popular in grade 5 is positively associated with externalizing
behaviours in grade 8
Perceived popularity in adolescence
o Popularity is prioritized over other domains LaFontana & Cillissen, 2010
o Popularity is decreasingly associated with likeability
Correlation between popularity and likeability is higher in childhood than
adolescence
Meaning = children tend to find popular the peers they like
Adolescents are more likely to make the disctinction
o Popularity is contagious = basking in reflected glory Marks & Cillissen, 2012
Hanging out with popular peers leads to increases in popularity over time
Characteristics and development of cliques
o Small homogeneous and cohesive group, 3-12 members
o Members are similar, know each other well, do things together, regular social
group
o Fluid
< 10% no changes over 3-year period
From same-sex, to mixed sex
Friendships within cliques also change
, Characteristics, function and development of crowds
o Homogeneous categories of youngsters, reputation-based
o Not necessarily friends or spend much time together
o Function locate individuals in complex social structures & help define own identity
o Number of crowds increase over time and labels of crowds change over time more specific
o Development
With age more differentiated, most influential in mid-adolescence & less hierarchial
But by end of adolescence/emerging adulthood your identity is developed, contact is shifting, more romantic
relationships
Using sarcasm & redicule in crowds & cliques
o Promotes dominance hierarchy
o Reduces non-conformity and increases group cohesion
o Directed at outsiders, clarifies group boundaries
o Eases anxiety by directing attention to others
Bullying
A litte bit of history
o Scientific work on school bullying started in Norway in 1973 with a book by Dan Olweus
o The Olweus bullying prevention program was implemented between 1983-1985
Bullying is a form of aggression
o Intentional, repeated over time & involves an imbalance of power between perpetrator and target
Physical Relational Verbal Electronic
Hitting, pushing, biting Rumor spreading, social Name calling, threats, Cyber: online social
exclusion, friendship manipulation shouting networks & tekst messages
Individual risk factors for victimization
o Gender non-conformity, disabilities, obesity, having a food allergy
o Internalizing problems, physical weakness, social isolation, maltreatment by parents
Individual risk factors for bullying
o Psychological characteristics, hostile attribution bias (explains general aggression more than bullying)
o Lach of affective empathy, agentic or dominance goals, self-esteem (inconsistent findings, high or low)
o Narcissism & threatened egotism
Bullying and perceived popularity
o Bullies tend to be disliked but high in popularity
o Wanting to be popular bullying high perceived popularity bullying
o A position of power facilitates aggression
A sense of entitlement
Reduces distress in response to others’ suffering and ability to take others’ perpective
Network centrality enables relational aggression
o Bystanders less likely to intervene
Bullying and the peer group
o Engagement in bullying does not depend only on personal factors
o Rates of bullying vary from one classroom to another
Participant roles in bullying Pouwels et al., 2015
o Gender differences (male bullies), differences from childhood (females
defenders), differences in status and social behaviours
o In adolescence
Defenders is the same
Assistants and reinforces increases
Victims decrease
Bully is more specific and few people are targeted more and is more strategic
Conclusion
Popularity does not = likeability
Victims hold a weak position in the peer group
Bullying is a social phenomenon in the peer group
HC 6 Agressie, pesten. H12 17-12-2020
Agressief kind = bedreigt anderen, verstoort de les, frustreert ouders en leerkrachten
Kans op afwijzing door anderen, slechte schoolprestaties, depressie
Leidt tot spijbelen, delinquentie, tienermoederschap, problemen in werk en relaties
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