16—Peers

1. 16—Peers • Peer Relations • Play • Friendship • Adolescence, Peers, and Romantic Relationships • Summary

2. Peer Relations • Peer Group Functions • Peers: Children of about the same age or maturity level. • One of the most important functions of the peer group is to provide a source of information and comparison about the world outside the family. • Peer interactions also fill socioemotional needs.

3. Peer Relations • The Developmental Course of Peer Relations in Childhood • Some researchers believe that the quality of peer interaction in infancy provides valuable information about social development (Vandell, 1985). • The preference for spending time with same-sex playmates begins around age 3 and increases in early childhood, with reciprocity becoming important as children enter the elementary school years. • Children spend an increasing amount of time in peer interaction during middle and late childhood and adolescence.

4. Peer Relations • The Developmental Course of Peer Relations in Childhood • Gender influences the composition and size of children’s interactions, with girls’ groups being smaller and more intimate. • Boys are more likely to engage in rough-and-tumble play, competition, conflict, ego displays, risk taking, and dominance seeking, while girls are more likely to engage in collaborative discourse.

5. Peer Relations • The Distinct but Coordinated Worlds of Parent-Child and Peer Relations • Parental Influence •Affects children’s peer relations directly and indirectly. • Parents coach their children in ways of relating to peers, and those who frequently initiate peer contacts for preschool children are more accepted by their peers and have more prosocial behavior. • Parents manage their children’s lives and opportunities for interacting with peers.

6. Peer Relations • Parental Influence (continued) • Parent-child relationships serve as emotional bases for exploring and enjoying peer relations. • Bullies’ parents are rejecting, authoritarian, and permissive about aggression. • Whipping boys’ parents are anxious and overprotective. • Well-adjusted boys’ parents do not sanction aggression and are responsively involved.

7. Peer Relations Peer Aggression and Parent-Child Relationship Histories • Refer to Figure 16.1

8. Peer Relations • Social Cognition and Emotion • PerspectiveTaking: Taking another’s point of view. • Perspective-taking skills have been linked with the quality of peer relations, especially in the elementary school years. • Social Information-Processing Skills • Kenneth Dodge (1993) argues that children go through five steps in processing information about their social world: decoding social cues, interpreting, searching for a response, selecting an optimal response, and enacting it.

9. Peer Relations The Development of Communication Skills • Refer to Figure 16.2

10. Peer Relations • Social Cognition and Emotion (continued) • Social Knowledge • The social cognitive perspective views children who are maladjusted as lacking social cognitive skills to interact effectively with others (Rabiner et al., 1991). • Emotion • The ability to regulate emotion is linked to successful peer relations.

11. Peer Relations • Peer Statuses • Popular children are frequently nominated as a best friend and are rarely disliked by their peers. • Average children receive an average number of positive and negative nominations from peers. • Neglected children are infrequently nominated as a best friend but are not disliked by their peers. • Rejected children are infrequently nominated as a best friend and are actively disliked by their peers. • Controversial children are frequently nominated both as someone’s best friend and as being disliked.

12. Peer Relations • Peer Statuses (continued) • Rejected children often have more serious adjustment problems than those who are neglected. • Being rejected by peers and being aggressive forecasts problems, but not all rejected children are aggressive. • Neglected and rejected children can be trained to interact more effectively with their peers; however, it is difficult to improve the social skills of adolescents who are actively disliked and rejected.

13. Peer Relations • Bullying • Significant numbers of students are victimized by bullies. • Bullies are more likely to have low grades and to smoke and drink alcohol. • Victims of bullies are more lonely, have difficulty making friends, and have a higher incidence of headaches, sleeping problems, abdominal pain, fatigue, and depression. • Bully victims are the most troubled, displaying high levels of conduct, school, and relationship problems.

14. Peer Relations Bullying Behaviors among U.S. Youth • Refer to Figure 16.3

15. Peer Relations • The Role of Culture in Peer Relations • Peer groups are often segregated according to socioeconomic status and ethnicity. • Middle-SES students often assume leadership roles in formal organizations, but African American and low-income adolescents are able to gain parity or surpass middle- and upper-SES adolescents in athletic groups. • For many ethnic minority youth, their own ethnic group provides a sense of brotherhood or sisterhood. • In some cultures, peers assume adult responsibilities.

16. Review and Reflect: Learning Goal 1 • Discuss peer relations in childhood • Review • What are the functions of peer groups? • What is the developmental course of peer relations in childhood? • How are the worlds of parents and peers distinct but coordinated?

17. Review and Reflect: Learning Goal 1 • Review (continued) • How is social cognition involved in peer relations? How is emotion involved in peer relations? • How are peer statuses related to development? • What is the nature of bullying? • How are peer relations influenced by culture?

18. Review and Reflect: Learning Goal 1 • Reflect • Think back to your middle school/junior high and high school years. What was your relationship with your parents like? Were you securely attached or insecurely attached to them? How do you think your relationship with your parents affected your friendship and peer relations?

19. Play • Play • A pleasurable activity that is engaged in for its own sake; social play is one type of play. • Play’s Function • Play is essential to a young child’s health. • Play therapy is used by therapists to allow children to work off frustrations and to provide an opportunity for analyzing children’s conflicts and ways of coping. Children may feel less threatened and be more likely to express their true feelings in the context of play.

20. Play • Play’s Function (continued) • Play releases tension, advances cognitive development, and increases exploration. • Play also increases affiliation with peers, raising the probability that children will interact and converse with each other. • During play, children practice the roles they will assume later in life.

21. Play • Parten’s Classic Study of Play • Unoccupied play: Play in which the child is not engaging in play as it is commonly understood and might stand in one spot, look around the room, or perform random movements that do not seem to have a goal. • Solitary play: Play in which the child plays alone and independently of others.

22. Play • Parten’s Classic Study of Play (continued) • Onlooker play: Play in which the child watches other children play. • Parallel play: Play in which the child plays separately from others, but with toys like those the others are using or in a manner that mimics their play.

23. Play • Parten’s Classic Study of Play (continued) • Associative play: Play that involves social interaction with little or no organization. • Cooperative play: Play that involves social interaction in a group with a sense of group identity and organized activity.

24. Play • Types of Play • Sensorimotor and Practice Play • Sensorimotor play: Behavior by infants to derive pleasure from exercising their sensorimotor schemas. • Practice play: Play that involves repetition of behavior when new skills are being learned or when physical or mental mastery and coordination of skills are required for games or sports. Practice play can be engaged in throughout life.

25. Play • Types of Play (continued) • Pretense/symbolic play: Play that occurs when a child transforms the physical environment into a symbol. • Social play: Play that involves social interactions with peers.

26. Play • Types of Play (continued) • Constructive play: Play that combines sensorimotor/practice repetitive activity with symbolic representation of ideas. Constructive play occurs when children engage in self-regulated creation or construction of a product or a problem solution. • Games: Activities engaged in for pleasure that include rules and often competition with one or more individuals.

27. Review and Reflect: Learning Goal 2 • Describe children’s play • Review • What are the functions of play? • How would you describe Parten’s classic study of play? • What are the different types of play?

28. Review and Reflect: Learning Goal 2 • Reflect • Do you think most young children’s lives today are too structured? Do young children have too little time to play? Explain.

29. Friendship • Friendship’s Functions • Companionship • Stimulation • Physical support • Ego support • Social comparison • Intimacy/affection

30. Friendship • Friendship’s Functions • Harry Stack Sullivan (1953) contended that in addition to parents’ influence on development, friends also play important roles in shaping children’s and adolescents’ well-being and development. • The need for intimacy intensifies during early adolescence, motivating teenagers to seek out close friends who support one another’s sense of personal worth.

31. Friendship Developmental Changes in Self-Disclosing Conversations • Refer to Figure 16.4

32. Friendship • Willard Hartup (1996, 2000) concluded that children often use friends as cognitive and social resources on a regular basis. • The quality of friendships is more positive when friends engage in prosocial behavior and more negative when they engage in aggressive behavior.

33. Friendship • Similarity and Intimacy • Friends are generally similar in age, sex, ethnicity, and other factors; they often have similar attitudes toward school, similar educational aspirations, and closely aligned achievement orientations. • Intimacy in Friendship • Self-disclosure or the sharing of private thoughts. • Friendship intimacy is more prominent in 13- to 16-year-olds than in 10- to 13-year-olds. • The friendships of girls are more intimate than the friendships of boys.

34. Friendship • Mixed-Age Friendships • Parents’ concerns that adolescents who have older friends will be encouraged to engage in delinquent behavior or early sexual behavior are supported by the research, although it could be that younger adolescents were already prone to deviant behavior before they developed their friendships with older youths.

35. Review and Reflect: Learning Goal 3 • Explain friendship • Review • What are six functions of friendship? What is Sullivan’s view of friendship? • What role do similarity and intimacy play in friendship? • What is the developmental outcome of mixed-age friendship?

36. Review and Reflect: Learning Goal 3 • Reflect • Examine the list of six functions of friendships at the beginning of this section. Rank order the six functions from most (1) to least (6) important as you were growing up.

37. Adolescence, Peers, and Romantic Relationships • Peer Pressure and Conformity • Conformity to peer pressure in adolescence can be positive or negative. • Around eighth and ninth grades, conformity to peers peaks.

38. Adolescence, Peers, and Romantic Relationships • Cliques and Crowds • Cliques and crowds assume more important roles in the lives of adolescents than children. • Cliques: Small groups that range from 2 to about 12 individuals and average about 5 to 6 individuals. • Cliques can form because of friendship or because individuals engage in similar activities, and members usually are of the same sex and about the same age.

39. Adolescence, Peers, and Romantic Relationships • Cliques and Crowds (continued) • Crowds: The crowd is a larger group structure than a clique. Adolescents usually are members of a crowd based on reputation and may or may not spend much time together. Many crowds are defined by the activities adolescents engage in.

40. Adolescence, Peers, and Romantic Relationships • Adolescent Groups versus Child Groups • The members of child groups often are friends or neighborhood acquaintances, and their groups usually are not as formalized as many adolescent groups; adolescent groups tend to include a broader array of members. • Rules and regulations are usually defined more precisely in adolescent peer groups. • During adolescence, mixed-sex participation in groups increases.

41. Adolescence, Peers, and Romantic Relationships Dunphy’s Progression of Peer Group Relations in Adolescence • Refer to Figure 16.5

42. Adolescence, Peers, and Romantic Relationships • Dating and Romantic Relationships • It is through dating that more serious contacts between the sexes occur. • Heterosexual Romantic Relationships • A number of developmental changes characterize heterosexual dating. • Adolescents often find comfort in numbers and begin to hang out together in heterosexual groups. • Cyberdating poses potential hazards; so does early dating.

43. Adolescence, Peers, and Romantic Relationships • Dating and Romantic Relationships (continued) • Romantic Relationships in Sexual Minority Youth • Most sexual minority youth have same-sex experience but relatively few have same-sex romantic relationships because of limited opportunities and the social disapproval such relationships may generate.

44. Adolescence, Peers, and Romantic Relationships Age of Onset of Heterosexual Romantic Activity • Refer to Figure 16.6

45. Adolescence, Peers, and Romantic Relationships • Dating and Romantic Relationships (continued) • Dating Scripts • The cognitive models that adolescents and adults use to guide and evaluate dating interactions. • Male dating scripts are proactive, those of females are reactive, and these gender differences in dating scripts give males more power in the initial stage of a dating relationship. • Male and female adolescents bring different motivations to the dating experience.

46. Adolescence, Peers, and Romantic Relationships • Dating and Romantic Relationships (continued) • Emotion and Romantic Relationships • The strong emotions of romantic relationships can thrust adolescents into a world in which things are turned upside down and ordinary reality recedes from view (Larson, Clore, & Wood, 1999). • The strong emotions of romance can have disruptive effects on adolescents; conversely, they can also provide a source for mastery and growth.

47. Adolescence, Peers, and Romantic Relationships • Dating and Romantic Relationships (continued) • Sociocultural Contexts and Dating • The sociocultural context exerts a powerful influence on adolescent dating patterns and on mate selection (Booth, 2002; Stevenson & Zusho, 2002). • Cultural values and religious beliefs often dictate structures for dating, thus dating can be a source of cultural conflict for adolescents whose families have come from cultures in which dating standards are more strict.

48. Review and Reflect: Learning Goal 4 • Characterize peer relations and romantic relationships in adolescence • Review • What is peer pressure and conformity like in adolescence? • How are cliques and crowds involved in adolescent development? • How do adolescents’ groups differ from children’s groups? • What is the nature of adolescent dating and romantic relationships?

49. Review and Reflect: Learning Goal 4 • Reflect • What were your peer relationships like during adolescence? What peer groups were you involved in? How did they influence your development? What were your dating and romantic relationships like in adolescence? If you could change anything about the way you experienced peer relations in adolescence, what would it be?

50. Summary • Peers are individuals who are at about the same age or maturity level. Peers provide a means of social comparison and a source of information about the world outside the family. • Some researchers believe that the quality of social interaction with peers in infancy provides valuable information about social development. • Healthy family relations usually promote healthy peer relations.