Post on 26-Jun-2020
11/1/2013
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Adolescence and Emerging Adulthood:
A Cultural Approach
Chapter 8
Copyright © Pearson Education 2013
Friends and Peers
Chapter Overview
• Contrast between friendships and family relationships
• Friends as a source of emotional highs and lows
• Developmental changes in friendship and peer groups in
adolescence and emerging adulthood
• Family contexts in relation to friendship and peer groups
• Friends’ influence, popularity, and unpopularity
• Youth culture
• Friends and leisure activities in emerging adulthood
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Clarifying the Difference
• Peers
– People who are about the same age • Classmates, co-workers, community
• Friends
– People with whom you develop a
valued, mutual relationship • Not all peers are friends
• Tend to be same age and same gender during
grade school and high school Copyright © Pearson Education 2013
Family & Friends in Adolescence Time spent
with family
decreases
Time spent with
friends increases
28 minutes per
day with parents
103 minutes per
day with friends
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• Most dramatic change from grade 9-12
• School, leisure time, evenings, weekends, summer
Who do adolescents talk to?
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• Relationships with family and friends change in
quantity and QUALITY
– Depend on friends for companionship, intimacy,
happy experiences
• Youniss & Smoller (1985)
– Surveyed >1000 adolescents age 12-19
– Adolescents are more likely to talk to friends about
more personal issues, and to their parents about
education and future occupation
• “Personal issues” = secrets, sorrows, advice/info on social
relationships, leisure
Adolescents’ Discussion of
Topics Figure 8.1 – Youniss & Smollar (1985, p. 295)
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• Close relationships with parents are not
incompatible with having close
friendships
• Parents shape adolescent relationships
indirectly • Where to live, where to go to school
• Encouraging friendships vs. disapproval
• Personality and behaviour
• E.g., encourage academic
achievement; parental monitoring
Are parents important?
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Mood Changes Figure 8.2 – Larson & Richards (1998)
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More time with parents during school week
Feel less free, open, understood
Emotional low point of week
Emotional high, acceptance
Family & Friends in Traditional
Cultures • Pattern around world of increasing time spent
with peers, decreasing time spent with parents
• Substantial gender differences in terms of family
relationships
– Girls spend more time with same-sex adults; more
intimacy with mothers; more contact with female
extended family
• Even in cultures where most adolescents attend
school, the social and emotional balance tilts
toward family; WHY?
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Choosing friends: Similarities Selective association promotes smooth relations
• Age
• Gender
• Educational orientation
• Level of achievement, academic plans, attitudes
• Media and leisure preferences
• Music, dress style, sports activities etc
• Participation in risk behavior
• Ethnicity
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“When I was younger [my friends and I] just played.
Now we talk over things and discuss problems. Then it
was just a good time. Now you have to be open and
able to talk.” …15 year old boy (Youniss & Smollar, 1985)
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Intimacy
• Intimacy = degree to which 2 people share
personal knowledge, thoughts, feelings
• Higher intimacy with adolescent friend than child
– “close friend” around age 10; same-sex; honest
evaluation of faults/merits; mutual attachment
– Involves perspective taking and empathy
– Important for identity formation; accurate self-
evaluation
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Intimacy
• Thinking more abstract and complex
• Influences problem solving Thoughts about
abstract qualities (loyalty, affection)
• Awareness and understanding of complex
social relationships (alliances, rivalries, status)
• Involves perspective taking and empathy
• Talking about abstract and complex issues
promotes exchange of personal knowledge
and perspectives = = intimacy
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My friend is….
• Late adolescents and emerging adults describe their closest relationship:
1. Friendly (focus on shared activities) • High friendly, low intimacy
2. Intimate (focus on affection, emotional attachment) • High intimacy, low friendly
3. Integrated (combines friendly and intimate) • Median on both
4. Uninvolved (focus on neither shared activities nor intimacy) • Low on both
(Fischer, 1981)
College students more likely than high school students to be
rated as having an intimate or integrated friendship relationship.
Gender and Intimacy Females Males
Tend to have more intimate
friendships than boys
Tend to have less intimate
friendships than girls
More likely to place higher
value on talking together as
a friendship component
More likely to emphasize
shared activities as the basis
of friendship
What might be the origins of these differences from
a social roles perspective?
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“Friends’ Influence” ? • “Friends’ influence” a more accurate description
• Effect of entire peer group weak
• Peers more or less anonymous with less
emotional/social importance
• Friends’ influence is not always toward negative
behaviors
• Discouraging risk behaviour
• Emotional support and help coping
• When friendship is high quality, influence may
be magnified
Influence on Risk Behavior • Finding: A correlation exists between rates of
risk behavior self-reported and reported for
their friends
– Substance use, criminal behaviour
• Can we conclude that adolescents’ behavior is
influenced/caused by their friends? Why or why
not?
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Recall: Gardner & Steinberg Research Issue: Limitations 1. Self-report
• Adolescent egocentrism may be associated
with adolescents’ perceiving more similarity
between themselves and others than actually
exists
• Inflates the correlation
2. Selective Association
• People tend to choose friends that are similar
to themselves (not influence, just similarity in
risk tendency)
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Other Research • Selection and influence contribute to similarities in
risk behaviours
– Adolescents similar before they become friends; if they
stay friends they become more similar
– Becoming more similar can increase or decrease rates
of risk behaviour
• Adolescents rated pressure to take risks as
weakest area of influence
– Grooming, dress style, school activities rated higher
– Pressure against participation in risks more common
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Friends: Support & Nurturance • Informational Support – guidance in personal problems
“What should I do? Should I ask Jimi to go out with me?”
• Instrumental Support – help with tasks “Thanks for helping me with my math homework”
• Companionship Support – companions in social activities “Let’s go to the game together – that way we can sit together.”
• Esteem Support – giving congrats, encouragement
“Don’t worry about it, you’re the best guitar player here. You’ll win the songwriting contest next time.”
• Positively associated with psychological health; negatively associated with depression and disturbance
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Close friends, Cliques & Crowds • Cliques
– Small groups of friends who know each
other well, do things together, and form a
regular social group
• Crowds
– Larger, reputation-based groups of
adolescents who are not necessarily friends
and do not necessarily spend time together
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5 Types of School Crowds
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1. Elites (“the plastics”, preppies)
2. Athletes (jocks)
3. Academics (brains, nerds)
4. Deviants (burnouts)
5. Others (normals, nobodies)
• Within each are cliques and close friends
• Provide setting for social interactions and friendships; implications for identity
Sarcasm & Ridicule • As complex thinking increases so does
appreciation and use of sarcasm
• Ridicule a sharper form of sarcasm
• More common in early and mid-adolescence
• Critical evaluations of one another a typical part of social interactions (“antagonist interaction”)
• Directed at members within group and outside group
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Sarcasm & Ridicule
• Promotes dominance hierarchy (Regina George)
• Reduces non-conformity and increases group cohesion
• Directed at outsiders, clarifies group boundaries
• Eases anxiety by directing attention to others – Part of the process of sorting out who you are
• In other cultures also directed at adults, reinforces cultural standards of behaviour – Example
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Mean Girls: Relational Aggression
• Non-physical forms of aggression:
– Gossiping
– Spreading rumors
– Snubbing
– Excluding
• Covert, indirect form of aggression
common amongst girls
• Aggressors prone to depression and
eating disorders Copyright © Pearson Education 2013
Changes in Crowd Structure During Adolescence
What do you notice about these structures into the higher grades?
2 5
8+ Copyright © Pearson Education 2013
Figure 8.3 – Brown, Mory, & Kinney, 1994
Crowds: Developmental Changes
Age Group Crowd Characteristics
Middle School
(Grades 6–8)
-less differentiated (two main groups – the in-crowd and the out-crowd)
Early High School
(Grades 9–10)
-become more differentiated
-more influential
Later High School
(Grades 11–12)
-become yet more differentiated
-more niches for people to “fit into”
-less hierarchical and less influential
Crowds: Developmental Changes
• As crowds become more differentiated in mid-
adolescence = more central to thinking about
social world
• Make judgments (social, moral) about others in crowd
• Finding: Despite no evidence, it’s OK to punish the
entire group for a transgression if it was consistent
with stereotypical perceptions about the group
• By late adolescence crowds less important in
defining social status and social perception
• Less likely to accept crowd label
• Identities are better established
• Impediment to develop individualism, independence
and uniqueness
In Traditional Cultures…
• There is often only one adolescent peer crowd in the community
• The peer crowd is less strictly age-graded (variety of ages in the crowd)
• Dormitory Life: adolescents sleep and spend leisure time in a separate dwelling, and typically work and eat meals with parents during the day
• Men’s House Life: male adolescents live together with widowed or divorced men in a multi-age dormitory arrangement
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Adolescence to Emerging Adulthood
• End of formal education (late teens/early 20s) marks transition – Daily social interaction at school over
• Workplace – No age-grading
– Hierarchy of authority already exists; no anxiety about finding place in social hierarchy
• Dunphy: Transitions follow stages
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Adolescence to Emerging Adulthood
• Stage 1: Same-sex cliques – Spend little/no time with opposite sex
• Stage 2: Boys’ and girls’ cliques spend some time together – Spend leisure time “near each other”, watching each other
• Stage 3: Gender cliques break down as clique leaders form romantic relationships
• Stage 4: Other clique members follow suit – Mid-teens
• Stage 5: Males and females pair off in more serious relationships – Disintegration of cliques and crowds
(Dunphy, 1963)
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Adolescence to Emerging Adulthood
Stage model is 50 years old. Does it still apply?
• Some new research confirms stage 1 and 2
• Marriage is later – 1960’s age 20-22 versus today 26-28
– Intimate pairings by stage 5 end of high school not likely
• Still an increase in time spent with other-sex groups from grade 9-12
• Likely to maintain membership in same-sex or mixed-sex group well into emerging adulthood
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Time Spent in Other-Sex Groups or Pairs
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Figure
8.4
From Csikszenthmilalyi & Larson (1984): Being Adolescent: Conflict & Growth in the Teenage Years, p. 183. Copyright © 1983 by Basic Books, Inc., a member of Perseus Books, LLC
Popularity in Adolescence: Sociometry
What makes some adolescents popular and others not?
• Sociometry: a research method in which students rate the social status of other students
Copyright © Pearson Education 2013
Who is popular?
Who is unpopular?
Who do you like best?
Who would you like to be paired
with on a class project?
Popularity in Adolescence • Unpopular adolescents lack social skills, deficit in
social information processing
1. Rejected – actively disliked by peers Teen ignores what others want, selfish, belligerent,
*interpret others’ actions incorrectly (e.g., as hostile) and respond inappropriately (e.g., with aggression)
2. Neglected – have few friends (not enemies); the nobodies
Teens is shy, avoids group activities
• Aggression is NOT always associated with unpopularity – Controversial students, high in aggressiveness, may be
strongly liked AND strongly disliked by different people Copyright © Pearson Education 2013
Interventions for Unpopularity
Adolescent Intervention Focus
Neglected learning the social skills needed for making
friends; how to enter, attract positive
attention
-instruction, modeling, role play
Rejected learning how to control and manage anger
and aggressiveness
- stop, go over problem, set positive goal,
identify possible solutions, anticipate, choose
• Popularity tends to be consistent from childhood through
adolescence
• Being unpopular reduces chances of inclusion in the kinds of
social interaction that would help them develop social skills
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Bullying
• Extreme form of peer rejection
1. Aggression (e.g., physical or verbal)
2. Repetition (e.g., patterns over time)
3. Power imbalance (e.g., the bully has higher
peer status than the victim)
What is the negative impact of bullying on the
bullies and the bullied?
• A new variation of bullying is cyberbullying
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Youth Culture: Values – Young people constitute a group as a whole,
separate form children & adults with distinct culture
– Youth culture created and spread by young people
themselves
– Parsons: distinguishing values are hedonism,
irresponsibility (opposite of adults);
• Temporary “rite of passage”; ends with marriage
• *Proposed in 1964 so the period lasts longer and mainly
experienced by emerging adults
– Matza: subterranean values of hedonism,
excitement, adventure (shared with adults but
expressed differently)
Youth Culture: Style 3 essential components of the style of youth culturel
symbolizes certain values and beliefs
1. Image –dress, hairstyle, tattoos, jewelry, other
aspects of appearance
2. Demeanor – distinctive forms of gesture, gait,
posture
3. Argot – certain vocabulary and way of speaking (includes profanity)
• Examples from today and past generations???
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Why do Youth Cultures Exist?
– A way of constructing a coherent and meaningful
worldview in a society that fails to provide one
– Parsons: arise in societies that allow young people
extended period between independence from
parents and adult responsibilities
– Brake: experimentation with different identities
– Argued different youth subcultures exist (e.g.,
jocks, geeks) and participate to different degrees
• geeks/normals are conventional and do not participate
in pursuit of pleasure that defines the culture
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Tech Change & Youth Culture
1. Postfigurative Culture
• Youth learn from their elders (e.g., traditional farming)
2. Cofigurative Culture
• Learning from both elders and peers
3. Prefigurative Culture
• Learning is full circle
• Chanté teaches her grandmother how to use the
Internet
(Mead, 1928)
Rate of technological change in a culture influences the
degree to which adolescents receive teachings from adults or
from each other