Peer pressure in adolescence

In the social world of adolescents, friends play an integral role in shaping adjustment. Little is known about what differentiates those who influence from those who are influenced. The current study examined the role of relationship alternatives to determine whether a relative lack of friends increases susceptibility to influence over adjustment outcomes in a sample of adolescents (N=794). Findings suggest that partners with relatively fewer friends were susceptible to influence from partners with relatively more friends over social anxiety and prosocial behavior. Both partners influenced each other’s academic engagement over time. Multiple group analyses indicated that patterns of susceptibility to influence did not differ between partners with fewer relationship alternatives who had no other friends and those who had one or two other friends. The findings of the current study highlight the role of a relative lack of relationship alternatives in susceptibility to friend influence.

As children enter adolescence, social status within the peer hierarchy gains
importance. Variable-oriented research has linked adolescent popularity with both
positive and negative adjustment outcomes. Popularity may be better understood with
reference to types or subgroups of similar individuals, identified through person-oriented
approaches. Resource Control Theory (RCT: Hawley, 1999) posits three distinct types of
popular adolescents: coercive, prosocial, and bistrategic. The existence and adjustment
correlates of the prosocial and coercive groups have been well-established, but little
evidence supports the existence of a bistrategic popular group of adolescents, and even
less is known about their adjustment correlates. The present study aims to confirm the
existence of the popularity groups hypothesized by RCT and to identify group differences
in social adjustment and problem behaviors.
A sample of 568 adolescents (n = 288 girls, 280 boys; M age = 12.50) completed
peer nomination procedures and self-report questionnaires in the Fall and Spring of the
7th and 8th grades. Longitudinal latent profile analyses classified adolescents into profile groups on the basis of initial physical aggression, relational aggression, and prosocial
behavior, and four time points of popularity spanning the 7th and 8th grades. Repeated
measures ANOVAs examined profile group differences in social adjustment (peer
acceptance, peer rejection, physical victimization, relational victimization, and preference
for solitude) and problem behaviors (disruptiveness and delinquency) across the 7th and
8th grades.
Results indicate that adolescents fall into one of four distinct groups: aggressive
popular, prosocial popular, bistrategic popular, and average. Bistrategic popular
adolescents evinced positive social adjustment, exhibiting the highest levels of popularity
and peer acceptance and the lowest levels of peer rejection, victimization, and preference
for solitude. Despite their social skill advantages, bistrategic popular adolescents were
also at risk for problem behaviors. Bistrategic popular adolescents scored above average
on problem behaviors, including physical and relational aggression, disruptiveness, and
delinquency. Bistrategic popular adolescents successfully navigate the social world in a
manner that both offers hope for positive long-term adjustment and concern for the same.

Close friends have been shown to influence adolescent problem behaviors,
especially alcohol abuse (Urberg, Degirmencioglu, and Pilgrim, 1997). The degree of
influence, however varies as a function of individual characteristics such as peer
acceptance (Laursen, Hafen, Kerr, and Stattin, 2012) and age (Popp et al., 2008). The
present study examines whether differences in influence extend to perceptions of
friendship quality. Using a sample of 764 Swedish adolescents involved in stable samesex reciprocal best friend relationships that lasted at least one year, analyses used
distinguishable dyad actor-partner interdependence model (APIM) analyses (Kenny,
Kashy, & Cook, 2006) to track influence over two years of the friendship. More
satisfied friends were more influential than less satisfied friends on intoxication
frequency and truancy. The findings of this study indicate that influence accompanies perceptions of quality. Those with higher perceptions of quality exhibit more influence
on friends who perceive relatively lower quality.

During a period of increased independence from parents, youth turn to peers for support, and consequently become more vulnerable to peer pressure (Steinberg & Silverberg, 1986). During middle adolescence, vulnerability to peer influence begins to decline (Steinberg & Monahan, 2007). Empirical research has documented this trend in vulnerability to peer pressure across adolescence, but less attention has been afforded to the age-related changes in similarity. To address this, age-related changes in peer similarity in delinquency across the adolescent years were examinded using intraclass correlations. Moderating variables, including gender, reciprocity, and closeness, and control variables, including friendship stability and romantic partner status, were examined. Results indicated an increase in friend similarity in delinquency from 5th to 7th grade and a decrease in similarity from 7th to 9th grade. Implications of this study are discussed in terms of contribution to the field and implementation of the findings.

This study investigated friend influence on school engagement in a sample of 160 stable same-sex friendship dyads (94 female dyads and 66 male dyads) from five senior high schools and four vocational schools in a small city in central Finland. Longitudinal data were collected during the first and second years of upper secondary school, approximately one year apart, and self-reports were available from both members of each friendship dyad. The framework of the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model (APIM; Kenny, Kashy & Cook, 2006) was used to estimate friend influence on school engagement in a model that did not distinguish same-sex friends, in a direct-effects model that distinguished friends based on relative levels of school burnout, and in a multiple-group model for distinguishable friends that investigated perceptions of maternal affection as a moderator of friend influence. Results suggest that the higher burnout partner in a friendship dyad influenced a decline in the lower burnout partner's school engagement only when the lower burnout partner perceived low maternal affection. When the lower burnout partner perceived high maternal affection, there was no evidence of negative influence by a higher burnout partner. Patterns of influence did not vary as a function of sex or school track. The importance of distinguishing friends on a theoretically and statistically meaningful basis to learn who influences whom, and of investigating indirect effects models when studying friend influence is also discussed.

Friends have been implicated in the acquisition of adolescent substance use, but little attention has been given to how the origins of substance use similarity vary across groups. The first aim of this study is to examine whether friend selection, de-selection, and socialization differ as a function of friendship group's substance use. The second aim of this study is to extend Simulation Investigation for Empirical Network Analyses (SIENA) by demonstrating how group-level interactions can be included in the mode, and to demonstrate a new method to follow-up statistically significant group-level interactions in SIENA. Participants include 1419 Finnish students (729 females, 690 males) from upper secondary schools in Finland. Two waves of data were collected, starting when most participants were between 15 and 17 years of age. Waves of data collection were separated by one year. Results indicate that friends are selected, deselected, and socialized for substance use. Follow-up illustrations indicate that the magnitude of these processes vary as a function of substance use in the friendship group.

The current study examined the process by which adolescents choose who to dislike in a sample of Finnish 10th graders. Information was available for the adolescents on their victimization, bullying behavior, problem behavior, school burnout, school grades, and their depressive symptoms. The initial analysis consisted of assessing which characteristics made individuals more likely to dislike someone, after taking into account the characteristics of the individual being nominated. This analysis found that individuals form antipathy for dissimilar others. This process is hypothesized to be a result of mechanisms of threat. The secondary analysis compared the characteristics of unilateral and mutual antipathies. This analysis found that mutual antipathies are characterized by elevated differences between individuals on victimization. These results identify and describe important aspects of the adolescent peer environment.

Self-injury behavior is identified as the non-suicidal, deliberate infliction of a wound to oneself in an attempt to seek expression. Self-injury is becoming more prevalent in the adolescent population; however, many nursing professionals are unaware of this phenomenon and the implications it holds for nursing. Approximately 12 to 17 percent of adolescents deliberately injure themselves although accurate statistics are difficult to obtain due to the secret and private nature of the behavior. Nurses, especially those who care for adolescents, could benefit from an understanding of the implications of self-injury, the characteristics of adolescents who self-injure, the expressivity of the behavior, and the repetitive patterns of the emotions experienced by adolescents who self-injure. Six adolescent females were interviewed for this study. Their stories were shared in rich, descriptive narratives. Common themes emerged from the words of the participants and these themes described the essence of self-injury by cutting for adolescent females. The themes which emerged were living with childhood trauma, feeling abandoned, being an outsider, loathing self, silently screaming, releasing the pressure, feeling alive, being ashamed, and being hopeful for self and others. The general structure that emerged from a synthesis of the themes was that the experience of self-injury by cutting for adolescent females is one where they are struggling for well-being and hoping for more being by using their skin as a canvas upon which internal pain is expressed as tangible and real.