Speaking of Psychology - The good and bad of peer pressure (SOP2)

Episode Date: October 4, 2013

When a school year begins, students are dealing with new classes, sports and other school-related activities. Most students will also face the challenges of peer pressure. Psychologist Brett Laursen, PhD, talks about the science behind peer pressure and what parents can do to help their kids. APA is currently seeking proposals for APA 2020, click here to learn more https://convention.apa.org/proposals Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Choice Hotels get you more of what you value. Comfort in. It's calling your name. Save on the stay. Oh, and free waffles are yours to claim. Book direct at storesotails.com. When a new school year begins, students are dealing with classes, sports, and other extracurricular activities. Most students will also face an entirely different set of challenges with peer pressure.

Parents may notice a change in how their child dresses or behaves at home. home, how much of this is related to their friend's influence and how should parents address peer pressure with their children? In this podcast, we talk with a psychologist who looks at the science behind peer pressure, both the good and the bad. Brett Lowerson is a professor of psychology at Florida Atlantic University, where his research focuses on how children and teens interact with their peers and parents. Specifically, he studies how these relationships affect their social lives and academics. Dr. Lawerson is a fellow of the American Psychological Association. Welcome. Thanks. It's a pleasure to speak with you. When does peer pressure typically

begin to occur in children's lives? And what impact does it have on child and adolescent development? Before we tackle that question, I think it's important to define peer pressure. If we define peer pressure as essentially influence, then I think we can see that peer pressure begins very early on. But it's not often the way that parents and adults think of it. You have explicit peer pressure and you have implicit peer pressure. So let me give you an example. I know of a young man who just started middle school, and it started it with long hair,

and a couple of months into middle school, he got his haircut very short. This could have been because somebody made fun of his long hair, that would be the explicit form of peer pressure. But it could also be very implicit. He could have wanted to fit in. he could have been eager to make new friends. Other kids with short hair,

who didn't want them to be off put by his long hair. He could have thought this is some form of status, people with short hair, could have more status than people with long hair. We don't know in this particular instance, and we often don't really know exactly if it's one or the other, and typically it's probably a combination of things. So when we think about peer pressure,

we're really talking about influence to behave, differently. That's exerted by peers. So when does it begin? It begins as soon as children start to pay attention to what other children think about them. So we can see peer influence in the very early grade school years. We see it over behavior problems where one set of peers will influence another to act badly. We also see it over academic achievement where friends do better when they're paired with other kids who are doing better in school. And we've seen this as early as first grade. Our data in both Finland and in the U.S.

suggest that these influences happen with very young children. Why are some children and teens more susceptible to peer pressure than others? Because you see some kids that generally seem to just do their own thing and not care what other children think of them, but that's not always the case. and why are some of them so more susceptible to that? We're still working to disentangle the notion of susceptibility from the notion of being really influential. So on the one hand, there are some children who are susceptible to influence from anyone,

that is to say, that comes down the pike, they're likely to follow. But it's also the case that some people are more influential. And so if you hang around with people who tend to be particularly influential, You will look susceptible, even though you're not particularly susceptible. It just happens to be that you're hanging around with others who are highly influential. So I'll try to address that question, but I want to put that big caveat out there first because if you're hanging around with somebody who's very persuasive and who has a lot of social skills, you may look susceptible.

In fact, you're not particularly susceptible to other people. It just has to do with those that you spend your time with. So we know that susceptibility is greater for children who don't have a lot of friends. They want to protect the friendships that they have, and so they're more likely to do what their friends say because they're worried about losing their friends and have difficulty making others. Younger children who hang around with older children are susceptible to influence. Paradoxically, being popular may make you susceptible to influence. This one is a little bit up in the air, but it may be that popular kids in some don't.

domains worry about protecting their status. And so they're more likely to be influenced, to be seen doing things that they should be seen doing even if they don't want to do them because otherwise they fear their status will diminish in the eyes of their peers. What about any difference between boys and girls when it comes to peer pressure? We don't have firm evidence on this, but I can tell you this much is for sure. boys spend much more time in groups than girls, whereas girls spend their time, tend to spend their times in friendship diets. And so the influence that boys receive is much more likely to be concerned with fitting

into the group as a whole. And so boys need the approval of a larger group of peers, whereas girls are much more focused on getting along with one or another particular individual. And so we probably are going to see more. individual influence on girls, whereas boys are going to be more apt to be susceptible to forces from the group as a whole. And I'm sure there are some parents that are listening to this wondering what can they do

to help children recognize and deal appropriately with peer pressure? It's a good question. The first thing I think that parents can do is that they can help children recognize that attempts to influence them are everywhere. You can't turn around without somebody attempting to influence you. They want you to eat this or buy that or watch this or listen to that. So one of the first things we can do is we can help children understand that our culture is full of influence attempts. And peers are just another set of forces that are vying for our attention

and are vying to shape our behavior. So once children start to see that there are these influences everywhere, that's really the first step in the process. So you recognize when there are influence attempts going on, and you start to label them and recognize them and label them and recognize them, and as children become more adept at recognizing and labeling them, and identifying them, then you can start to talk with them about, you know, is that the kind of influence that you want to be shaped by? Is that something that you want to be susceptible to?

and if not, then we start to talk about how we might resist that influence. But it's much easier to resist influence if you've thought about your strategies beforehand. If it's a teen going to a party and there's going to be somebody drinking there, is that something that you want to resist or not? Certainly you want to tell your team, what are your strategies for if the person who was driving decides to drink? What are your strategies for not getting in the car? What is your strategy for finding a way home? that won't involve driving with somebody who's been drinking.

So recognizing that there's influence out there, and it's not necessarily overt influence. There's going to be a lot of covert, of implicit influence, and that influence is just the same as all the other influence, and children need to be sensitive to that. Parents can serve as a buffer against peer influence. We know that children have good relations with their parents feel that they have less of a need to please their friends.

So I'll give you an example of one set of research findings that we have from work that we've done in Sweden. Children who have friends who are really burned out on school who report that they are tired of school, if your friend is a high burnout on school, then you are much more likely to feel less interested in school. School engagement is going to drop over the course of a year. unless you report really strong relations with your parents. And so having a good relationship with your parents is going to buffer you against this adverse peer influence. Some of what you're talking about, a lot of what you're talking about is a negative peer influence, but some of your research has looked at how peer influence can be a positive factor in a child's life.

What are some examples of that and what can children and teenagers do to develop these kinds of relationships? Well, if we think about it logically, it can't possibly the case that all peer influence is bad or else children would all inevitably end up as juvenile delinquents because the influence would be negative and more negative and more negative and everyone would be susceptible to it. So there has to be some area of pushback. There has to be some area where peers are good. We know that kids are going to be influenced for better or for worse

by whoever is the more influential partner. So if we take two friends and we know that one is particularly influential, let's say the one who has more friend options or the one who is older, or the one who's doing better in school, or the one who's more attractive, whatever, the one who is more influential is going to set the tone for the influence. So if the one who is more influential doesn't like to drink, then we have data that suggests that actually teens desist from alcohol consumption, but the less influential member of the group is going to desist from drink,

because they want to be more like the more influential one. We see the same thing that levels of delinquency will go down as well. So it all depends on the characteristics of the more influential partner. And the same is true in a group, the group leaders. So the more that the group leaders have a positive agenda, the more that other children are more actually to be influenced by that positive agenda. So if you belong to a group where everybody's physically active, you're going to be physically active. There's a big except for this, except for if you don't want to really, really don't want to do this,

then you're likely to drop out of that group or not be friends with those particular individuals anymore. And you're going to go and select people who are more like you. And under those circumstances when children are deselected from groups or drop out of friendships, then they go and look for kids who are, have more similar levels of perhaps drinking or deviance, and then they may be inclined to be influenced in a different direction. Does peer pressure follow people into adulthood, or is there a point in life when it becomes less of a factor?

For sure, peer pressure follows people across their whole life course, but you're going to receive it in different ways from different people. So do adults are adults susceptible to peer pressure? I think the answer is, of course. Last night I went to back to school night for my children, and I was very impressed by the whole string of SUVs that arrived, and out of the SUVs got moms with very similar haircuts and very similar length of heels and dads who all looked like

they had gone shopping at the same place, who differed only in terms of whether or not they were. wore a tie. All had the smartphones in the things. Exactly. So there's no question that we're susceptible to peer influence and that this proceeds across the course of our life. As we get older, we form romantic relationships and we get married, then different peers

influence us, but it's still peer influence, nevertheless. Yeah. Well, great. Thank you so much for joining us, Dr. Lowerson. Pleasure with mine. Thank you. For more information, please visit our website at APA.org slash speaking of psychology. Thank you for joining us. I'm Audrey Hamilton with the American Psychological Association's Speaking of Psychology.