Compelling evidence demonstrates that peer influence is a pervasive force during adolescence, one that shapes adaptive and maladaptive attitudes and behaviors. This literature review focuses on ...factors that make adolescence a period of special vulnerability to peer influence. Herein, we advance the Influence‐Compatibility Model, which integrates converging views about early adolescence as a period of increased conformity with evidence that peer influence functions to increase affiliate similarity. Together, these developmental forces smooth the establishment of friendships and integration into the peer group, promote interpersonal and intragroup compatibility, and eliminate differences that might result in social exclusion.
This introduction outlines the goals for the special section on social norms and behavioral development. The study of social norms has attracted much interest in peer relations research, and has ...turned attention to group-level processes, often defined based on the classroom, which create and sustain shared meanings that impact adolescent behavioral and social adjustment. Norms can be differentiated in three ways. First, prescriptive or injunctive norms can be distinguished from descriptive norms. Second, a distinction can be made between what is salient for all classmates or for a subgroup of norm setters, in particular popular peers. Third, social norms can be distinguished from perceived norms. The contributions to this special section invite debate on the future of research on norms, and suggest numerous avenues for further research, with hopes that an understanding of how social norms affect social development will better inform peer relations research as well as norm-based interventions.
•Results have implications for interpersonal models of developmental psychopathology.•There is mixed evidence of peer selection.•There is more consistent evidence of peer influence.•Substantive and ...methodological considerations for further research are provided.
In interpersonal models of developmental psychopathology, friendships and affiliations with peers have been considered as both consequences and determinants of children’s and adolescents’ internalizing behaviors and peer victimization. Longitudinal stochastic actor-oriented models (SAOMs) allow developmental researchers to disentangle peer selection processes where children or adolescents choose friends who are similar to themselves in internalizing behaviors or peer victimization from peer influence processes where children or adolescents become more similar to their friends over time in internalizing behaviors or peer victimization. This paper highlights the methods and results from a systematic review that screened 1447 empirical articles and located 28 using SAOMs to understand the interplay between peer social networks and internalizing behaviors or peer victimization. The results provide some evidence for both peer selection and influence related to depression, social anxiety, and peer victimization. Additionally, the results provide insight into directions for additional substantive and methodological research. Based on the findings of this review, future research is recommended that considers specific tests of peer selection and influence mechanisms, developmental and gender differences, individual and contextual moderators, multiplex relationships, methodological quality, and direct replication of prior studies.
Bullying is a serious problem that affects millions of individuals worldwide each year. In response to this, thousands of research articles have been published on bullying. Unfortunately, much of ...bullying research remains largely atheoretical in its approach to defining bullying as a unique form of aggression. Another key problem in bullying research is the proliferation of heterogeneity of bullying measures whose validity is sometimes questionable. Combined, these two problems have made progress difficult as comparisons between studies and results are impeded by a lack of commonality. As a solution to these problems a discussion of the issues surrounding defining and measuring bullying is offered. This paper aims to promote thoughts and insights about the critical issues and concepts facing those who seek to define and measure bullying for research, intervention, or policy work. Although suggestions for best practices are offered, the overriding goal is to promote all practices that enhance the validity, transparency, and compatibility of bullying research. The time seems right for a general call to action for researchers to individually produce data that are both theoretically and empirically more communicable to the broader bullying community.
•Bullying research is increasingly heterogeneous in its definitions & methodologies.•We make recommendations about how to define and measure bullying.•We promote bullying research practices that enhance validity and compatibility.
Peer influence is an instrument of change, with outcomes that are not preordained: The same processes that make influence a source of harm also make it a valuable interpersonal resource. Yet the ...benefits of peer influence are insufficiently appreciated. Knowing when and how much to conform to the wishes of others is an important skill that children must acquire to adjust to and thrive in a social world dominated by peers. Peer influence can be an adaptive strategy whose benefits outweigh the costs that sometimes arise in its application. To overlook the adaptive consequences of peer influence is to miss the main point of conformity, which is to foster harmony between individuals and secure their interpersonal, physical, and mental well‐being.
•Younger children punished bullying by a refusal to attribute status to bullies.•Older children reward bullying with peer status.•High-status bullies seemed to avoid continual bullying of the same ...victims.
This study addresses the puzzle how high-status bullies in elementary school are able to maintain high status among their classmates despite bullying (some of) them. The dynamic interplay between bullying and status was studied, focusing on how relational bullying affects the creation, dissolution, and maintenance of status attributions, and vice versa. Longitudinal round-robin peer nomination data were obtained from 82 school classes in 15 Dutch elementary schools (2055 students; 50% boys) followed over three yearly measurements, starting out in grades 2–5 when students were aged 8-11. An age-dependent effect of bullying on the creation of new status attributions was found. Whereas the youngest group punished bullying by a refusal to attribute status to the bully, this turned into a reward of bullying in the oldest groups. Unexpectedly, high-status bullies seemed to avoid continual bullying of the same victims, pointing to explanations of why their status can persist.
This study investigates the dynamic interplay between bullying relationships and friendships in a sample of 481 students in 19 elementary school classrooms (age 8–12 years; 50% boys). Based on a ...relational framework, it is to be expected that friendships would be formed when two children bullied the same person and that children would start to bully the victims of their friends. Similarly, it is to be expected that friendships would be formed when two children were victimized by the same bully and that children would become victimized by the bullies of their friends. Longitudinal bivariate social network analysis supported the first two hypotheses but not the latter two. This study provides evidence for group processes in bullying networks in childhood.
Previous studies investigating to what extent students in elementary schools defend their victimized classmates typically treated defending as an individual characteristic. Defending should, however, ...be seen as a directed dyadic relationship between a victim and a defender, who are embedded multiple positive and negative relationships with each other and their classmates. Accordingly, in the present study defending was investigated using social network analysis. More specifically, it was investigated to what extent defending relationships co-occurred with friendship and dislike relationships involving not only the victim and the defender but also other classmates. Bivariate Exponential Random Graph Models (ERGMs) were used to analyze the defending-friendship and defending-dislike relationships in seven grade-three classrooms. As hypothesized, the results indicated that victimized students were likely to be defended by students who they perceive as friends or who perceive them as friends. Moreover, defending was likely to occur when the victim and (potential) defender had the same friends. Victimized students were unlikely to be defended by classmates whom they disliked or who had indicated to dislike them. Finally, defending was likely to occur between students who disliked the same classmates.
This study concerns peer selection and influence dynamics in early adolescents' friendships regarding academic achievement. Using longitudinal social network analysis (RSiena), both selection and ...influence processes were investigated for students' average grades and their cluster-specific grades (i.e., language, exact, and social cluster). Data were derived from the SNARE (Social Network Analysis of Risk behavior in Early adolescence) study, using 6 waves (N = 601; Mage = 12.66, 48.9% boys at first wave). Results showed developmental differences between the first and second year of secondary school (seventh and eighth grade). Whereas selection processes were found in the first year on students' cluster-specific grades, influence processes were found in the second year, on both students' average and cluster-specific grades. These results suggest that students initially tend to select friends on the basis of similar cluster-based grades (first year), showing that similarity in achievement is attractive for friendships. Especially for low-achieving students, similar-achieving students were highly attractive as friends, whereas they were mostly avoided by high-achieving students. Influence processes on academic achievement take place later on (second year), when students know each other better, indicating that students' grades become more similar over time in response to their connectedness. Concluding, this study shows the importance of developmental differences and specific school subjects for understanding peer selection and influence processes in adolescents' academic achievement.
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