Chapter 8 Friends and Peers PDF

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Instructor: Stacey McHenry...

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Peers vs Friends ● Peers = people who are about the same age, larger network of same-age classmates and community members ● Friends = people with whom A develop a valued, mutual relationship 8.1 A Shift from Family to Friends ● From Family to Friends in Developed Countries ○ Time spent w/ family decreases: 28 min/day w/ parents ○ Time spent w/ friends increases: 103 min/day w/ friends, not only at school but their leisure time as well ○ Experience Sampling Method (ESM) Studies: Amount of Time w/ Friends ■ Developmental trends from 5-12th grade ● Time w/ family decreases by about half from 5th-9th grade, then declines more steeply from 9th-12th grade ● Time spent w/ same sex friends remain stable ● Time spent w/ other sex-friends increases ○ Social Media: WHO study (2012) ■ Across 42 developed countries: 52% of 15 y/o have daily social media contact w/ friends ○ Quality of relationships ■ A depend more on friends than parents or siblings for companionship and intimacy ■ 82% of A named spending time w/ friends as their fav activity ■ Youniss and Smollar (1985): over 90% of A indicated they had at least 1 close friend; A prefer parents for discussions of issues related to edu and future occupation, but prefer friends for more personal issues ■ Comparing source of emotional support ● 4th graders: parents are main source of support ● 7th graders: same-gender friends equal to parents for support ● 10th graders: same-gender friends surpassed parents ● College students: romantic partners main source of support ○ Parents influence A’s peer relationships ■ Parents’ choice of where to live, school, religious affiliations all influence A’s peer networks ■ Parents often engage in active management of their A’s friendship by encouraging or disapproving ■ Parenting practices influence A’s personalities and behaviour, which in turn affect their friendship choices ● Family and Friends in Traditional Cultures ○ Pattern that A entail less involvement w/ family and greater involvement w/ peers is typical in cultures worldwide ○ Significant gender differences in family r/ships ■ Boys tend to have greater involvement w/ peers and friends than girls do ■ Girls spend more time w/ same sex adults than boys do

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Girls have more contact and intimacy w/ mothers, and other adult females than boys do w/ other adult males ○ Even in cultures where most A attend school: social/emotional balance often tilts toward family ■ India: A choose to spend leisure time w/ family over friends, b/c of collectivistic cultural values and they enjoy it ■ Brazil: emotional support is higher from parents than friends ■ Indonesia: A rated their family members higher and friends lower on companionship & enjoyment compared to US ○ Traditional culture: A remain close to families while developing close r/ships w/ friends, whereas in the West closeness to family diminishes as closeness to friends grows Time with Friends: Higher Highs, Lower Lows ○ Experience Sampling Method (ESM) Studies: report happiest moments w/ friends ■ Generally happier when they are w/ friends than they are w/ family ■ 2 key reasons: ● Close friends tend to mirror emotions of e/o ○ Unlike w/ parents there’s a split in moods ● A feel free and open w/ friends: friends accept and value them for who they really are ○ Able to talk about deepest feelings, esp about their budding romantic r/ships ○ Sometimes adolescent exuberance ■ Shared enjoyment among friends lowest on Wednesday, highest on weekend nights - “the emotional high point of the week” ■ Also source of most negative emotions - anger, frustration, sadness, anxiety ● b/c of close attachment, more emotionally vulnerable ■ Overall, positive feelings much more common w/ friends than w/ family during A, enjoyment of friends increases steadily through A years

8.2 Development of Friendships in Adolescence: The Rising Importance of Intimacy ● Intimacy in A & EA Friendships ○ Intimacy = degree to which 2 ppl share personal knowledge, thoughts, and feelings; key difference in A friendships from children’s friendships ○ Harry Stack Sullivan (1953) ■ Age 10: ● Most children develop a special close friendship w/ same-sex ● Becomes capable of perspective taking and empathy that they didn’t have before ● Form friendships based on care for an individual, more than just someone to play w/ ■ Early A: intimate friendship enhances cognitive development ● Friendship enhances further development of perspective taking -

motivates them to see things from one another’s pov Friends provide honest evaluations - contributes to identity formation b/c A develop a more accurate self-evaluation of their strengths and weaknesses ○ Contemporary Research ■ More likely to disclose personal information w/ friends, esp relating to romantic and sexual issues ■ A describe friends w/ intimate features of the r/ship such as understanding each other, listening to you, sharing problems w/ ● Younger children emphasize shared activity ■ A also describe friends as the ones who help them work through problems by providing emotional support and advice ■ A rate trust and loyalty more important in friendships than children do ■ End of a friendship often involve breaking of trust of some sort ○ Late childhood vs early A ■ Late childhood best friends knew as much as the early A best friends about e/o’s background characteristics (birthdate, phone number, etc) ■ But early A friends knew more about e/o’s preferences, thoughts, and feelings (what they are mad about, their fav food, etc) ○ Early A vs EA ■ EA’s accounts for a time when they felt esp close to a friend contained more self-disclosure and fewer shared activities, compared to ealy A ■ Self disclosure promoted emotional closeness for young women, whereas shared activities were basis of emotional closeness for young men Explaining the Importance of Intimacy: Cognition and Gender ○ Cognitive Changes ■ More abstract and complex => social cognition ● Understanding of different social r/ships ● Able to talk about more abstract qualities in r/ships such as trust, loyalty, affection ● Understand complex web of alliances and rivalries, able to talk about this w/ friends ● Promotes intimacy in terms of exchange of personal knowledge and perspectives ○ Puberty and Sexual maturity ■ Sexual issues more difficult to talk about w/ parents than w/ friends ■ Talking about these issues promote intimacy b/w friends ○ Gender ■ Girls ● Tend to have more intimate friendships than boys ● Place higher value on talking together as a component of friendship ● Rate their friendships as higher in affection, helpfulness, and nurturance than boys do ●

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More likely than boys to say they trust and feel close to their friends

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Tend to have less intimate friendships More likely to emphasize shared activities as basis of friendship Intimacy does become more impt to friendships, just not the same extent as for girls ■ Reasons for gender differences ● Girls more encouraged to express their feelings openly ● Boys discouraged ● A becoming more conscious of what it means to be a female or male ● Girls cultivate their abilities for engaging in intimate conversations ● Boys more cautious of it Friendships in EA ○ Friendships esp impt because: ■ EA typically leave the family home - more attachment & activities w/ friends ■ Most are unmarried, no romantic partner as source of support - seek support from friends ○ Friendship differ from A ■ Intimacy is a key component: importance rises from A to EA ■ More likely to have other-gender friendships, interact more w/ them ● “Friends w/ benefits:: often take place b/w 2 former romantic partners or when one person is interested in a romantic rship and the other is not ○ Misunderstandings common - only 25% discuss the ground rules for the r/ship ■ Importance of friendships tend to decline as romantic rships develop ● w/o romantic r/ship: EA rely on friends for support and social activities ● Develop serious romantic r/ship: invest more time and emotions, less available for friends ● Result: friends more important during early EA when an enduring romantic r/ship not yet developed, less impt later in EA as develop long term commitments to romantic partners

8.3 Becoming Friends and Becoming Like Friends ● Choosing Friends ○ Based on similarity ■ Age, gender ■ Educational orientation (attitudes towards school, plans for future edu, edu achievement) applies to EA too; prefer friends who would make the same choices

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Preferences for media and leisure activity: helps make relations smoother and avoid conflict ■ Participation in risk behaviour: A tend to choose friends who resemble themselves in willingness to participate ■ Ethnicity: ethnic boundaries in A becomes sharper, A friendships become less interethnic, by late A generally ethnically segregated ● A become increasingly aware of ethnic tensions and conflicts in society - forster suspicion and mistrust ● Part of forming an ethnic identity is rejecting association w/ ppl of other ethnicities ● Reflects ethnic segregation around them, in school and neighbourhoods ● Reflects the patterns of the society they live in Friends’ Influence: Risk Behaviour ○ Peer Pressure vs Friends’ Influence ■ Peer (more anonymous group of ppl who happen to be the same age), friends (emotionally and socially important) ■ Friend’s influence a more accurate term for the social effects A experience ○ Friends’ influence can both encourage and discourage risk behaviours, as well as support in coping w/ life events ■ Both types follow a similar developmental pattern: rise in early A, peak in mid-teens, decline in late A ○ Correlations exist b/w rates of risk behaviour A report for themselves and their friends ■ Alcohol, smoking, risky driving, criminal activity, drug use ■ Doesnt mean that A’s participation in these behaviours is influenced by their friends ■ Reasons to question whether correlations actually reflect causation ● Self report ○ Perhaps due to egocentrism, A tend to perceive more similarities bw themselves and their friends than reality ○ Inflated correlation of risk behaviours of individual report for themselves and their friends ● Selective association ○ = most ppl tend to choose friends who are already similar to themselves ○ Correlation might exist partly or even entirely b/c A have selected friends on the basis of similarities ○ Longitudinal studies: both selection and influence contribute to similarities in risk behaviour among A friends ■ A are similar in risk behaviours before they become friends ■ But if they stay friends they tend to become even more similar, increasing or decreasing their rates of participation in risk behaviours

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Pattern found to be true for cigarette use, alcohol use, other drug use, delinquency, aggressive behaviour ○ Key: not to exaggerate friends’ influence on risk behaviour,interpret research findings on these topics carefully Friends’ Influence: Support and Nurturance: 4 types ○ Sullivan: emphasize positives of A friendships - impt for building self-esteem, help develop social understanding ○ Berndt: 4 types of support that friends may provide e/o in A 1) Informational Support a) = advice & guidance in solving personal problems involving friends/relationships/parents/school b) Similar age, often go through similar experiences c) friends are able to talk about most personal thoughts and feelings w/ someone they trust will understand & accept 2) Instrumental Support a) = help e/o on various tasks such as homework, chores, lending money, etc 3) Companionship Support a) = being able to rely on e/o as reliable companions in social activities, as well as routine everyday events 4) Esteem Support a) = congratulating friends when they succeed, encouraging them or consoling them when they fail, by being “on their side” ○ Developmental Impact of Supportive Friendships ■ Positive: Longitudinal studies found supportive friendships associated w positive factors like self-esteem, lower depressive symptoms, improvements in academic performance ■ Mixed associations w/ risk behaviours, sometimes increases if engaging in risk behaviours is an activity friends enjoy to do together ○ Platonic friendships may be of special impt as sources of support in some cultures ■ Mexican immigrants in US: A boys benefited from having a girl as source of emotional support, perhaps b/c they can express their feelings more freely w/ a girl ■ Platonic friendships becoming more common in many cultures as gender roles become less rigid

8.4 Adolescents’ Social Groups ● Cliques and Crowds ○ Cliques = small groups of friends who know e/o well, have shared interests & activities, think themselves as a cohesive group ○ Crowds = larger, reputation-based groups of A who are not necessarily friends and do not necessarily spend much time together; 5 major types: ■ 5 Major types of crowds:

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● Elites / populars / preppies ● Athletes / jocks ● Academics / brains / nerds geeks ● Deviants / druggies / burnouts ● Others / normals / nobodies ■ main function is not social interactions, but to locate A a particular crowd in the social structure to establish define their own identity and others’ ○ Similarities: ppl in both are usually similar in age, gender, activity, educational attitudes, preferences ○ Differences: Crowds are not friends, but socially constructed categories, their characteristics differ from friendships and cliques Sarcasm and Ridicule in Cliques ○ Sarcasm & ridicule (a more harsh form of sarcasm) play a part in A friendships and clique interactions ○ Research: young ppl in 5th through 12th grades (Gavin and Furman, 1989) ■ Critical evaluations of one another were typical part of social interactions ■ Sarcasm and ridicule called “antagonistic interactions”, common ■ Directed both at members within the group and outside the group ■ More common in early and middle A than in late A ■ Function: ● promote establishment of a dominance hierarchy - higher-status members gives more sarcasm & ridicule than they take ● Reinforce clique conformity, enhance group cohesion ○ Research: sarcasm and age (Glenwright & Pexman, 2010) ■ Middle childhood (5-6): understand sarcasm was not meant literally, but have difficulty discerning the speaker’s intentions ■ 10: understand sarcasm intended to be aggressive and often “mean” ○ Research: sarcasm in traditional cultures (Schlegel and Barry, 1991) ■ A boys use sarcasm and ridicule to enforce conformity to cultural standards of behaviour and punish those who violate them ■ Directed not just toward other A but also adults who deviates from norm ● Eg. In the Mbuti pygmies of Africa, people who violate social prohibition on being argumentatives will be harrassed by group of A boys ● Eg. among the Hopi in the American Southwest, men who commits adultery will be publicized and punished by A boys who leave a trail of ashes from his house to his mistress’s ○ Sarcasm in history ■ In parts of Europe in 16-17th c, young men had an unwritten responsibility for enforcing social norms; they would publicly mock violators of social norms Relational Aggression ○ Relational aggression = behaviours that include not only sarcasm and ridicule, but also gossiping, spreading rumor, snubbing, and excluding others from the

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clique ■ Non-physical aggression, meant to damage social relationships ○ More common among girls ■ b/c their gender role prohibits more direct expression of disagreement and conflict ● They experience anger, but cannot express it openly like boys are allowed to do ● So they take more covert and indirect form ■ Also can be a way of asserting dominance ● high-status girls more likely to be high in RA ○ Negative outcomes ■ For the target: depression, loneliness ■ For the aggressor: depression, eating disorders Developmental Changes in Crowds ○ Crowd definition and membership seem to become more impt in A, not before ■ Reason 1: cognitive changes of A - ability to think abstractly ● Crowds involves abstract categories w/ abstract defining characteristics ■ Reason 2: identity issues become important ● A become more concerned about their identity and others’ id ● Crowds help them ascribe definite characteristics to themselves and others in process of id formation ○ Cultural basis of crowds ■ Developed countries: A have to remain in age-graded school until late teens, spend a lot of time w/ peers daily, elevates importance of peers as social reference groups (= influences how A think of themselves and compare to others) ● More likely to occur in larger high school where crowds structure is present, social context more complex ■ Traditional culture: A tend to spend more time w/ family and ppl of other ages, crowds have less significance and relevance to their lives ○ Changes in crowd structure during A ■ Early A: Middle School (grades 6-8): less differentiated crowds (2 main groups: the in-crowd and the out-crowd) ■ Mid A: Early High School (grades 9-10): more differentiated, more influential, more central to A’s thinking about their social world ■ Late A: Late High School (grades 11-12): even more differentiated, more niches for ppl to “fit into”, less hierarchical and less influential (A see them as less impt in defining social status and social perceptions) ○ Pattern reflects the course of identity development ■ Early to mid A: identity issues esp prominent, crowd structures help define themselves & declare their ID ■ Late A: id better established, no longer rely on crowds for self-definition, impt of crowds diminishes

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Crowd memberships and other characteristics ■ Deviants: highest in risk behaviours, lowest in school performance and social acceptance ■ Academics: lowest in risk behaviours, highest in school performance ■ Elites: highest in social acceptance, in-between on risk behaviours and school performance ○ Crowds and judgements ■ A’s crowd beliefs influence their social and moral judgements regarding the ppl they perceive to be part of certain groups ○ Developmental changes in the structure of A cliques and crowds (Dunphy’s model, 1963) ■ Stage 1 (early A): same-gender cliques separate from the other gender ■ Stage 2 (1-2 yr later): other-gender spend more time near e/o but not much interacting ■ Stage 3: gender division of cliques begin to break down as clique leaders form romantic r/ships ■ Stage 4 (mid-teens): other clique members follow suit, soon all cliques and crowds are mixed-gender groups ■ Stage 5 (late teens). all pair off in more serious r/ships, structure of cliques break down and disintegrate ○ Contemporary views on Dunphy’s model ■ Early stages more applicable to today, late stage not so much ■ Reason: marriage age has risen since Dunphy’s time ● In 1960s: median marriage age = 20 for f, 22 for m ● Now: median marriage age = close to 30 ■ Theory that most ppl are in committed romantic r/ships by the end of high school applies more to Dunphy’s time, but not today when ppl tend to marry much later ■ Most ppl likely to maintain membership in a variety of same-gender and mix-gender groups well into EA Cultural Variations in Crowds ○ Crowds in Western minority cultures ■ Similarities to crowds in majority cultures: ● In high school, same kinds of crowds exist (elites, athletes, academics, so on), serve as reference groups and a way to establish status hierarchy ■ Differences: ● In multiethnic high schools, A tend to see fewer crowd distinctions in other ethnic groups than they do in their own ○ Eg. other might see all Asian students as one crowd, but within the ethnic group, Asians distinguish themselves as different Asian Elites, Asian athletes, so on ● Tend to be little crossing of ethnic boundaries in crowd membership

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Exception: Athletes are more likely than other A to form a multiethnic crowd Crowds across cultures ■ Crowds in western HS do not really exist in traditional cultures, but they do have a distinct social group for young ppl ■ One adolescent peer crowd in the community ● Contrast w/ diverse crowds in Western schools ● Less strictly age graded, variety of ages w/i A age range ■ Dormitory = a ...