peer pressure

Examples of peer pressure in the following topics:

• Peer Groups

  • Teenagers encouraging their friends to smoke, drink, or engage in other risky behavior is an example of peer pressure.
  • Peer pressure can also work in positive ways by encouraging teenagers to practice, study, or engage in other positive behaviors.
  • Among peers, children learn to form relationships on their own.
  • The term "peer pressure" is often used to describe instances where an individual feels indirectly pressured into changing their behavior to match that of their peers.
  • In spite of the often negative connotations of the term, peer pressure can be used positively.

• The Asch Experiment: The Power of Peer Pressure

  • In a control group, with no pressure to conform to an erroneous answer, only one subject out of 35 ever gave an incorrect answer.
  • This demonstrates the importance of privacy in answering important and life-changing questions, so that people do not feel pressured to conform.

• Informal Means of Control

  • Informal social control—the reactions of individuals and groups that bring about conformity to norms and laws—includes peer and community pressure, bystander intervention in a crime, and collective responses such as citizen patrol groups.
  • A peer group is a social group whose members have interests, social positions, and age in common.
  • The influence of the peer group typically peaks during adolescence.
  • However, peer groups generally only affect short-term interests, unlike the long-term influence exerted by the family.
  • Informal social control—the reactions of individuals and groups that bring about conformity to norms and laws—includes peer and community pressure, bystander intervention in a crime, and collective responses such as citizen patrol groups.

• Adolescence

  • Adolescence is a period of significant cognitive, physical and social development, including changes in family and peer relationships.
  • Peer groups are especially important during adolescence, a period of development characterized by a dramatic increase in time spent with peers and a decrease in adult supervision.
  • Peer groups offer members the opportunity to develop various social skills like empathy, sharing and leadership.
  • Susceptibility to peer pressure increases during early adolescence, peaks around age 14, and declines thereafter.
  • Emotional autonomy is the development of more adult-like close relationship with adults and peers

• Homeschooling

  • ., safety, drugs, or negative peer pressure), a desire to provide religious or moral instruction, and dissatisfaction with academic instruction at other schools.

• Gender Messages from Peers

  • Peer groups can serve as a venue for teaching members gender roles.
  • Peer groups can consist of all males, all females, or both males and females.
  • Peer groups can have great influence on each other's gender role behavior depending on the amount of pressure applied.
  • If a peer group strongly holds to a conventional gender social norm, members will behave in ways predicted by their gender roles, but if there is not a unanimous peer agreement, gender roles do not correlate with behavior.
  • One thing that is an influence on peer groups is student behavior.

• English as a Second Language

  • Supporters of ESL programs claim they play an important role in the formation of peer networks and adjustment to school and society in their new homes.
  • Having class among other students learning English as a second language relieves the pressure of making mistakes when speaking in class or to peers.

• The Hidden Curriculum

  • Students may judge themselves harshly, and those judgments may be reinforced by peers and professors.
  • The professors, too, are distracted and pressured, whether by the need to maintain institutional prestige or by the sheer frenzy of activity interrupting their creative cycles.

• Conformity and Obedience

  • The tendency to conform occurs in small groups and in society as a whole, and may result from subtle unconscious influences or direct and overt social pressure.
  • Obedience differs from compliance, which is behavior influenced by peers, and from conformity, which is behavior intended to match that of the majority.

• Adolescent Socialization

  • Bullying is an example of the negative influence that peer groups can have on adolescents.
  • Peer groups are especially important during adolescence, a period of development characterized by a dramatic increase in time spent with peers and a decrease in adult supervision.
  • Adolescents also associate with friends of the opposite sex much more than in childhood and tend to identify with larger groups of peers based on shared characteristics.
  • Peer groups offer members the opportunity to develop various social skills like empathy, sharing and leadership.