Social influence

During the transition into adolescence, peer relations become increasingly important and peer influence grows, commensurate with changes in the child’s social world. Previous findings indicate that youth with relatively fewer reciprocated friendships are particularly susceptible to influence in dyadic settings, raising the possibility that friendedness may also heighten susceptibility to group influence. The current study examined the hypothesis that a lack of reciprocated friendships increases susceptibility to academic and behavioral peer group norms because youth with few friends are eager to increase affiliative opportunities and minimize the risk of being perceived as social misfits.
Participants were 419 (204 girls, 215 boys) middle school (5th-7th; M=12.01 years old) Lithuanian students in 23 classes. Students identified up to five friends from a class roster. Adolescents were classified into two groups based on friendedness: few (i.e., 0-1; n=169) over several (i.e., 2 or more; n=250) reciprocated friendships. Self-reports of conduct problems, school burnout, and school grades were collected twice during an academic year (M=12.3 weeks apart). Academic achievement, disruptiveness, physical aggression, and popularity were assessed through peer nominations. Status-based norms were calculated as within-classroom correlations between peer reports of popularity and each target outcome. Descriptive norms (means and medians) were calculated as classroom averages and medians of each target outcome. Multilevel models examined whether friendedness moderated associations between norms (status-based and descriptive) and changes in target outcomes.

Social influence is sought to distribute information processing for decision-making when data is limited. Undergraduate students selected information with normative or informational wording to supplement a fabricated academic integrity appeal from their university and decided whether to affirm the charge. A novel measure, the Adaptive Scale of Preference for Normative Versus Informational Social Influence (ASPNVISI), was piloted in comparison with a Polish scale of influence preference, individual difference measures in motivation (e.g., Need for Closure), and behavioral measures of influence-seeking. Results did not support the hypotheses that psychological needs would predict behavioral social influence preferences, though Need for Cognition and Need to Belong predicted self-reported preferences. The ASPNVISI was correlated with the existing scale of influence preference, providing support for its continued development. Contrary to the hypothesis, confidence in the decision on a charge of academic dishonesty was not related to selected influence; race and conservatism were related to confidence, and gender to the selections. Next steps include further pilot testing of the ASPNVISI and expansion of the behavioral task.

It is well documented that friends influence adaptive behaviors (Brechwald & Prinstein, 2011). However, it remains unclear how influence manifests itself. The current study investigated the role of likeability and popularity in determining the relative influence that a child exercises on his or her friend’s prosocial behavior and academic achievement in a sample of elementary schooled children (N=679). The results suggest that more liked friends have more influence over their less liked friends’ prosocial behavior and academic achievement. Both more- and less-popular friends influenced each other’s academic achievement. Residualized analyses, however, which take into account the shared overlap between likeability and popularity, suggest that the more-liked friend continued to influence the prosocial behavior and academic achievement of the less-liked friend, whereas more-popular children had no influence over their less-popular counterparts.

This study examined associations between friends, perceptions of conflict and friendship qualities. Early adolescent participants and their same-sex friends (N = 199 dyads) separately completed measures describing actual disagreements, friendship positivity, and negativity. Similar patterns of associations emerged for participant and friend reports of conflict and relationship qualities. Actor and partner associations were estimated with two statistical methods, the APIM (Kashy & Kenny, 2000) and the IDM (Griffin & Gonzalez, 1995). Actor associations suggested perceptions of conflict were linked to self-perceptions of friendship negativity and positivity. Partner associations suggested perceptions of conflict were linked to partner perceptions of friendship negativity, but not to partner perceptions of friendship positivity.