How and Why Does Peer Influence Occur? Socialization Mechanisms from a Developmental

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How and Why Does Peer Influence Occur? Socialization Mechanisms From a Developmental Perspective

Discussant’s Comments

JosephP.Allen
University of Virginia

Society for Research on Adolescence Biennial Meeting, Chicago, IL

March 2008

a.First, my thanks to Diana Rancourt for organizing this symposium and to all of the presenters for the fantastic job they’ve done.

II.I think there’s a huge amount to learn from these papers and some very broad implications of the work that’s been presented.

A.Now I’m not a big fan of offering a bunch of picky critiques of outstanding research (of course there’s always more we can do), so what I really want to focus on today is on what can we learn from these studies and on trying to tie them together to help us grasp some of their larger implications.

1.I’d like to highlight three major advances and one question from this remarkable collection of studies:

B.First, the advances. These studies:

1.Move us beyond a preoccupation with WHETHER peer influence occurs to now letting us examine HOW it occurs

2.They show us that Peer Influence does not require Peer Pressure

3.And That Peer Influence is NOT necessarily just an adolescent thing (nor should it be).

C.But after looking at these advances in our thinking, I’d also like to step back today and ask a big picture question:

1.We think of peer influences in adolescence mainly in negative terms, but does that really make sense as we try to understand adolescent social development?

D.Before I even get to these conceptual advances, though I should note some of the many methodological advances of these studies.

1.They all move beyond cross-sectional correlations to longitudinal research in papers by Rancourt & prinstein, lamarch & sandstrom; and Cillessen, and to use of experimental methods by Engels is a HUGE advance. We’re no longer just wandering around in the dark not even knowing if there even is such a thing as peer influence over and above the effects of peer selection.

III.Overall, the single biggest finding is the move beyond our preoccupation with the question DOES peer influence occur to considering HOW it occurs?

A.I think we can best frame this move in terms of the kinds of questions kids might ask themselves (at least implicitly) around their peers

1.Typical peer pressure:

a.Will I be ridiculed or pressured if I don’t do this?

2.Alternative, equally important questions, and even this isn’t a complete list:

a.How will this look?

i.To whom?

b.How do I compare to others?

c.Does anyone care what I do?

d.How do these people make me feel?

e.What’s the easiest way to interact with this person?

B.The single biggest point to make here is that there are multiple Types of Peer Influence, half of which we’ve largely overlooked thus far…until today:

1.So let’s start with the first question about these additional types of influence (How will this look?)

a.This is really a question of Impression management, and may have nothing to do with peer pressure, or even with overt attempts at influence.

b.Engels paper shows that even something as basic, and internally driven as our food intake might depend on impression we want to make

i.If we’re concerned we’ll be looked down upon (by a slim confederate for example), our food intake can change significantly.

c.We all manage impressions and we get socialized in the process.

d.For example, most of us probably go to many meetings in a typical week…some start precisely on time, some always start late.

i.We learn over time what the norms are for these meetings, and what kind of impression we’ll make depending on what time we’ll show up.

e.The Key is that impression management doesn’t require any active efforts on part of other people (adults or teens).

i.Teaching teens to ‘resist peer pressure’ doesn’t begin to touch these processes.

ii.It’s not evil, pressuring teens out there necessarily that we have to worry about.

a)It’s simply the norms and behavior of the reference peer group.

2.Which brings up an additional but critical point: the effect of impression management depends to a huge extent on WHOSE impression we want to manage.

a.Some people have more influence than others.

b.Cillesen’s study, for example, didn’t find a lot of correlates of being a high status teen…

i.But perhaps that’s because thus far, they’ve looked mainly at direct attempts at influence.

ii.If we were to look simply at who is most likely to be emulated…or who teens’ would like to curry favor with…we might find these high status teens do in fact serve as potent sources of influence in their peer groups.

c.But this is an open question. Who are the teens that others’ most want to look good in front of?

a)Are they those who are most liked? Those most admired? Those most feared? We need to know.

3.This leads to our next question teens ask themselves: How do I compare to others? Which is really a form of Social Comparison (Rancourt & P’s term)

a.Said simply, Teens pay attention to what other people do in situations

b.There are Several versions of this question:

i.One is, Am I OK or do I need to change?

ii.A second is Do I want to be like them? (not even same question as do I want to behave like them)

c.This kind of social comparison process seems to be a key part of what’s operating with Diana Rancourt and Mitch Prinstein’s findings:

i.Your own pubertal development matters and is associated with you dieting more…but particularly if you’re development is proceeding faster than that of your best friend.

ii.It’s a social comparison process operating.

iii.Said differently: Pubertal development affects you less if your best friend is ahead of you (because you’re not abnormal)

iv.Multi-level multiple group models are outstanding for getting at these phenomena

v.Has potential for explaining dieting, but also is far more broad: Also helps explain why early pubertal development is a risk factor for girls.

a)Shows how much social norming/comparison factors into this.

d.There’s also some evidence that kids who are high in BMI are giving up over time and dieting less.

i.For all concern about eating disorders; obesity is actually a far more prevalent health risk societally (although somehow it just doesn’t seem as interesting)…these investigators have data to study this and might consider their data from this vantage point as well.

e.I’ll circle back in a minute to suggest some ways that perhaps we can USE this comparison process in our favor.

4.The third question: Does anyone care what I do? (maybe they do). Refers to the process of Social Norming

a.Is what I’m doing OK?

b.Engels data suggests that a heavier confederate in their study seems almost to ‘release’ junk food eating behavior whereas a slim person doesn’t.

i.Without saying a word, these confederates give people a sense of whether their behavior is likely to be disapproved of or not, and this influences that behavior.

c.Remarkable finding: people aren’t copying Behaviors, they’re trying to be thought well of by others they’re with. It suggests that teens may be influenced by one’s peer in ways that don’t even have that much to do w/ that peers’ behaviors. It’s not copying behavior, it’s doing what they think the peers would want them to do.

i.A mode of influence that’s probably FAR more important than we’ve thought previously.

ii.Relevance to many other issues:

a)Person who hasn’t established their bravery or toughness in a peer group may have to engage in different behaviors around others who have.

b)Even more seriously, Kids who engage in acts of violence, or hate crimes, thinking other kids will see them as heroic…or attempted suicides, thinking others may see them as grand tragic figures…even though those others would never engage in those behaviors.

d.Does anyone care what I do? The answer clearly matters.

5.Leads to our next question: How do these people make me feel?

a.Striking findings from Lamarche and colleagues that Others can alter our mood

b.A Major source of influence is not that we want to copy them or they push us to, but that their behavior and affect has a direct impact on us.

c.LAMarche: we tend to become like peers to some extent even when we wouldn’t really WANT to.

d.In some respect, this is presenting yet more ways peers can hurt us! (enough to make you want your kids to be recluses!)…but we’ll suggest that’s not the case in a minute.

e.There are several possible mechanisms worth exploring to understand this effect:

f.One is

i.Adverse interactions (i.e., being irritable) that leave one depressed…other people are simply depressing to be around

ii.Creating adverse cognitions—others’ get us thinking about our lives in ways that aren’t helpful (for example, thinking, “We’re both losers.”).

6.Finally, What’s the easiest way to interact with this person?

a.Another explanation is some sort of pathological process of interaction.

b.Lamarche: If the most comfortable interaction is to complain about how we each feel and bemoan how miserable life is…to sit around and think depressing thoughts…then people tend to do that and it has an impact on their mood.

i.No doubt they are reinforced in a moment-by-moment way for this, but its experienced as “this is just the way it feels most natural to act around so-and-so.”

c.How would we find out which of these explanations is operating?

i.Could assess interactional qualities; or awareness of friend’s depression.

d.An interesting side note while we’re on the topic of this sample: boys were MORE depressed than girls in this sample. This is NOT such a huge surprise.

IV.Together, I think all these findings make one point loud and clear: Influence does NOT at all require pressure.

A.Examples:

1.Lamarche’s findings tell us that No one thinks depressed kids tell others: be depressed or else

2.Rancourt & Prinstein’s findings show that influence is partly based on how much your peers weigh!

3.Engels experimental paradigm shows that influence can happen without any verbal interaction at all.

B.As a field, we get too caught up in pressure.

1.Wanting/needing to fit in, learning about social norms from others, copying others, comparing oneself to others doesn’t require any overt pressure from other group.

C.If we want to understand peer influence, we need to move WAY WAY beyond simply studying peer pressure.

D.This broader approach may seem complicated at first, but it can help us explain much more of the variance in outcomes we care about.

V.So, our first overarching lesson from these studies is that peer influence can occur via numerous mechanisms.

VI.The second overarching point I want to make is that: Peer influence is not solely an adolescent thing

A.Though may be more salient in adolescence

B.Engels: Participants had a mean age of 23 !! But they were strongly influenced by a very subtle intervention. They were a successful independent group, developmentally, yet that seemed to matter little.

C.We could go back through the list of questions above, and apply all of them to adults almost equally well.

D.Now, having said that, it Makes sense that peer influences might be strongest in adolescence

1.Adolescence is time when there’s first full cognitive capacity and perspective taking ability and there’s a TON to learn about social behavior

a.It only makes sense that the human organism would be maximally primed to learn from others under these circumstances.

b.That adolescence would be almost a critical period for learning from one’s peers. Which leads us to our next big point about these studies:

VII.Peer influence is NOT necessarily a bad thing.

A.Cillessen’s study makes clear that we can look at both negative peer influence and positive influence, and the two are distinct, and not even really correlated with one another.

B.Yet this study is a rare exception as we primarily study negative peer influences. I think we need to revisit this and ask whether it makes sense?

1.When we even use the term peer influence, we often assume we mean peer influence in ways we’re not comfortable with.

a.But what if instead of “influence” we substituted the word “socialization?” Things might not change very much in terms of what we were studying, but we might start to think about them differently.

i.Socialization, even socialization of our teens seems like a good thing…yet it often happens in interactions with peers.

b.We don’t object when peers tell our teen, for example, “don’t be rude.” Or, aren’t you wearing the same shirt 3 days in a row?” or “it would be nice if you showed up on time.” Or “you’re not doing your fair share.” Or “Stop bossing everyone around.”

i.These are all instances of peer influence—they may be among the most important instances—yet we largely in our research have ignored them.

C.So, I’d like to suggest that we can go back through some of the processes we’ve heard about today, and ask about ways they could be turned away from the dark side and toward more positive kinds of socialization.

1.Can we start thinking about studying things like socialization away from aggression, toward prosocial behavior, empathy, etc.?

2.Can we USE social comparison process for example?

a.People want to behave in more healthy ways around a confederate who looks healthy

3.Is this part of what happens in mixed-ability classrooms…?

a.Chad’s story about how the low-end kids stop fooling around, start trying…don’t want to look dumb or out of it.

4.That’s just one example: We could be studying ways that peers lead others to be less depressed over time, or ways that peers encourage one another to get in shape or to participate in after school activities.

5.Meta-analyses in the epidemiological field have shown that by adulthood, social isolation creates a bigger risk for future mortality than does cigarette smoking!

a.Something about the impact others have on us helps us survive!

b.Let’s study more of that process.

VIII.Finally, to the extent that peers ARE socializing one another in negative ways…We need to ask, Why?

A.Where do these peers get their values?

1.I’ve often said that if you got together a bunch of parents and teens who were delinquent and put them in a room in a circle and asked who the negative influences were, they’d all be pointing across the circle at one another?

a.But the larger question is just how does this negativity get into the room in the first place?

2.Cillessen reported today that across Grades 10-12, discouragement of antisocial behavior (by others and self) decreased.

a.Is part of the problem that we adults are not doing enough to have an impact on the social norms among teenagers?

b.Affecting teen peer groups’ norms seems like its somewhere between hard and impossible…but that may be because we’ve largely allowed these peer groups to become isolated from the adult world.

B.A look at relatively recent history tells us things used to be quite different just a few generations back.

1.The typical teen today spends about 60 hours/week interacting with peers and about 6 interacting with parents and other adults in one-on-one type interactions

a.Just a few generations ago, these #’s were almost exactly reversed.

b.What it means when teens spend less time with adults and more with their peers then there is less opportunity for adults to influence the norms that exist within those peer groups.

c.And it means that peer groups are going to be the prime socializing influence at this critical period of the lifespan.

2.Who’s doing the socializing may be more of a problem than that kids are getting socialized.

a.Kids are at an age where they are primed (no doubt by evolution, over thousands of years) to be socialized…but in this critical period, we put them primarily around others who are in the worst position to socialize them well…

3.Being well socialized is a good thing, being socialized primarily by a bunch of 13-year olds is not so great.

a.if at a period in life when teens are PRIMED to be socialized, the best we can offer are the stumbling values of other 13-year olds…we set ourselves up.

b.Programs that create more natural contact with adults…volunteer service to mentoring programs can create huge effects surprisingly easily.

C.The papers we’ve heard today offer a remarkably rich, thoughtful range of ways of understanding the processes of adolescent socialization. And in so doing, they offer us some ways of improving that process going forward.

1.Society gets the teenagers it deserves. J. B. Priestly has observed.

2.With some conscious effort, along the lines suggested by these studies, maybe we can manage to deserve better.