PSYC 3310 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Age Segregation, Generation Gap, Waking Hours
20 Jun 2018
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CHAPTER 5 PEER GROUPS
The Importance of Peers
• Peer: someone who is roughly the same level in age, social status, or level of
functioning with another
• The fact that relationships with peers involve equal status gives them a
special significance for children and adolescents.
o Families do not offer much experience with social equality – power,
knowledge, and privileges tend to be asymmetrical.
o Peers are less bossy and critical.
• Because peers are more open, they create a space for exploration and
experimentation.
o New ideas, skills, and roles can be tried out in relative safety.
• Children start interacting with other children when they are still babies, as
early as the middle of the first year.
o By 2 or 2 ½ – imitation and complementary roles
• Preschool and elementary school years – the social complexity and their
importance increases steadily
o Help children learn about teamwork, cooperation, compromise, taking
turns, sharing, and other essential social skills
• Puberty – well prepared to spend more time and invest more emotional
energy in interactions with their age mates
• Adolescents spend more time with peers and friends.
o Most of the weekday is spent in class
o After-school activities – formal (sports, clubs) or informal (hanging out
with friends)
• They spend time with peers of the same age as them.
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Function of Peers
• Helping to achieve identity
o More information from other people
o A broader view of themselves – whether they are good friends,
whether other people think they’re intelligent
o Can explore a wide variety of ideas, opinions, and information
• Belonging
o Identifying with a group of people that share similarities
• Support and advice
o Peers are the major source of information and advice.
o More significant source of support and buffers for stress
o Provide a sense of companionship
o Esteem support – peers boost their confidence
o Associated with better psychological health and better self-esteem
• Socializing agent
o They start to be influenced by peers and friends.
o Reinforce particular behaviours (approval, inclusion, and support) and
punish other behaviours (ostracism, ridicule, teasing)
o Adolescents often choose peers that are similar to them.
▪ Values that came from the family
o Peers can social adolescents in positive and negative ways.
o Positive peer relationship – higher academic achievement
o Poo peer relationship – higher drop-out rates, criminal or delinquent
behaviour, psychological problems
o Peer relationships serve as a socializing agent for future relationships
and romantic relationships
▪ Effective communication
▪ Conflict resolution
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Peers Across Cultures
• The way teens in North America and Western Europe become progressively
less involved with parents and other adults, and more involved with age
mates reflect features common to practically all human societies.
o It is influenced by specific social and historical trends.
• Boys spend more time with peers than girls do.
o Boys tend to engage with larger groups. Activities are activity-based.
• Girls spend more time with girls and women of various ages.
o Spend more time with their mothers than boys do
o Girls tend to engage with smaller, same-sex groups. Activities are
conversation-based.
• Some theorists may explain that adolescent males are sexually mature
enough to be possible rivals to adult males, but they are not yet strong
enough to defend themselves against a jealous adult.
o Given this, it makes a good evolutionary sense for them to keep a safe
distance from adult society and band together for mutual protection.
From Peers to Family
• The disappearance of traditional home-based occupation has meant that
fewer adolescents work side by side with their parents, but at the same time
an increased stress on education leads parents to supervise their teenage
children more closely.
• Between the ages 10 to 18, the proportion of waking hours teens spend with
other family members drops from 35% to 14%.
• Many factors have contributed to this shift from family to peers, including:
o Trend toward smaller families – fewer siblings to be with
o Trend toward dual-earner families – much of the time parents are not
on hand
o Social trends such as urbanization – create a larger pool of accessible
children who are similar in age
Document Summary
Activities are activity-based: girls spend more time with girls and women of various ages, spend more time with their mothers than boys do, girls tend to engage with smaller, same-sex groups. The teens, however, turn up their noses to academic success and especially at striving for academic success. Culture and the pace of change: the emergence of youth culture in today"s world reflects both technological changes and the rate at which those changes take place. Three important components: demeanour body movements. Image style, appearance: gestures, ways of walking. 6: posture, argot language, vocabulary, speaking in a particular way. Informational social influence: acting like others because of a belief that others have better information about the correct thing to do. 7: problem with adolescents is that they have unrealistic comparative reference groups, reference groups also serve as an audience that observes, evaluates, and reacts to what the individual does and says.
