WEEK 8: Ecology of the Peer Group
Key Point Summary
-What makes a good friend? Why is it important to have at least one?
-What is the value of friendship?
-How do friends work through conflicts?
-What are some issues that arise in a group that affect friendship?
-What are some strategies that friends engage in to maintain the
relationship?
I.
The Peer Group as a Socializing Agent
A. Peers are individuals who are approximately the same gender,
age, and social status and who share interests.
An Ecological Model of Human Development
B. The Significance of Peers to Development
1. Belonging needs and socialization
a. Infancy/Toddlerhood
a. Develops first within the family
b. Attachment behaviors shift to awareness of
peers.
b. Early Childhood
a. Adults provide opportunities for interaction
b. Authoritative parenting has been associated
with children’s social-behavioral competence
and confidence
c. Middle Childhood
a. Opportunities for social interaction increase.
d. Adolescence
a. Relationships are delineated according to
several factors, including sense of closeness.
2. Sense of self and personal identity
a. Infancy/Toddlerhood
a. Relationships with peers become more
reciprocal over the first three years of life.
b. Early Childhood
a. Children begin to play, alone and together, in
groups.
c. Middle Childhood
a. Provides opportunities for greater
independence
b. Peer group becomes an important source of
self-confirmation.
c. Provides role models to incorporate into one’s
self-image
d. Adolescence
a. Peer activities escalate.
b. Adolescents turn to parents for future-oriented
decisions and their friends for present-oriented
decisions.
c. Parental values dominate for moral issues.
d. Peer values dominate on appearance.
Conformity Peaks
3. Parent vs. peer influence
a. Parenting style is linked to differences in children’s
peer interactions.
b. Authoritative
a. Children have little need to rebel or
desperately seek acceptance from parents
c. Authoritarian
a. Children often alienate themselves from
parental values and are attracted to the peer
group to gain understanding and respect
b. At risk for negative peer influences
d. Permissive
a. May be drawn to peer groups that are
antisocial and have a negative influence on
their values and behaviors
C. Psychological Development: Emotions
1. Poor peer relations in childhood linked to later
development of neurotic and psychotic behavior and to a
greater tendence to drop out of school.
D. Social Development: Social Competence and Conformity
1. Social competence involves behavior informed by an
understanding of others’ feelings and intentions, the
ability to respond appropriately, and knowledge of the
consequences of one’s actions.
2. Social competence affects and is affected by:
a. Age and stage of cognitive development
a. Most susceptible to influence of peers in middle
childhood
b. Situation
a. Social conformity more apparent in ambiguous
situations where children are unsure what they
should do or are supposed to do.
c. Personal Values
a. Personal values affect one’s likelihood of
conforming.
d. Psychological Factors
E. Cognitive Development: Social Cognition
1. Social cognition includes the conceptions and reasoning
about people, the self, relations between people, social
groups’ roles and rules, and the relation of such
conceptions to social behavior.
2. Social cognition varies by developmental level.
a. Social cognition in the preoperational stage
a. Not aware of peer pressure to conform or the
consequences for deviance
b. Social cognition in the concrete operational stage
a. Cognitive conceit is David Elkind’s term for
children who put too much faith in their
reasoning ability and cleverness
c. Social cognition in the formal operational stage
a. Imaginary audience is the belief that others
are as concerned with one’s behavior and
appearance as one is oneself.
b. Children strive extra hard to be like their peers
so they will not stand out.
c. Also a time of entering Erikson’s Identity vs.
Role Confusion stage
F. Peer Group Socializing Mechanisms
1. Reinforcement
2. Modeling
a. The extent to which modeling influences behavior
depends upon the situation, the model, and the
observer.
3. Punishment
4. Apprenticeship
G. Cliques and Crowds
1. Cliques are friends who view themselves as mutually
connected and do things together.
a. Dominated by leaders
b. Exclusive in nature
2. Crowds are loosely organized reference groups of cliques.
II.
Macrosystem Influences on the Peer Group: Developmental Tasks
A. Getting Along with Others
1. Peers provide opportunities to experience give-and-take
relationships.
B. Developing Morals and Values
1. Children learn to understand and follow rules.
2. Peers provide opportunities which help form basic morals
and values.
a. Morality of constraint (heteronomous morality) refers
to behavior based on respect for persons in
authority.
b. Morality of cooperation (autonomous morality) refers
to behavior based on mutual understanding between
equals.
C. Learning Appropriate Sociocultural Roles
1. The peer group gives children the opportunity to try out
roles learned at home.
2. Gender roles are sociocultural in that children learn from
their peers what is culturally acceptable and admirable
for boys and girls.
3. The peer group is often the imparter of information about
sexuality.
a. Knowledge about the mechanics of reproduction tend
to come from the parents and school, but knowledge
about sexual behaviors comes from peers and the
media.
D. Achieving Personal Independence and Identity
1. Social support refers to the resources provided by others
in times of need.
a. Tangible
b. Intellectual
c. Social
d. Emotional
III.
Chronosystem Influences on the Peer Group: Play/Activities
A. The Significance and Development of Play
1. Play is behavior enjoyed for its own sake.
2. Parten categorized play as follows:
a. Solitary: The child plays alone and independently.
b. Onlooker: The child watches other children playing.
c. Parallel: The child plays alone, but with toys like
those that other children are using, or plays in a
manner that mimics the behavior of playing children.
d. Associative: Social interaction and communication
are involved in associative play, but with little or no
organization.
e. Cooperative: Social interaction in a group.
3. Sutton-Smith categorized play as follows:
a. Imitative
b. Exploratory
c. Testing
d. Model-building
4. Other types of play
a. Rough-and-tumble play
b. Pretend play
B. Infant/Toddler Peer Activities
1. Begins as young as 2 months of age
C. Early Childhood Peer Activities
1. Increases in frequency and becomes more complex
2. About age 3 or 4, children begin to enjoy playing in
groups.
D. Middle Childhood/Preadolescent Peer Activities
1. Initiate informal groups
2. Quality of games begins to reflect their culture and is apt
to be more gender-specific.
3. Game patterns change with cognitive, psychological, and
sociocultural influences.
E. Adolescent Peer Activities
1. In early adolescence, most activities occur with same-sex
peers, whereas in later adolescence, activities that attract
and include the opposite sex are favored.
IV.
Peer Group Interaction
A. Development of Friendship: Selman & Selman (1979)
1. Early childhood is characterized as momentary
playmateship.
2. Early to middle childhood is characterized as one-way
assistance.
3. Middle childhood is characterized as two-way, fairweather cooperation.
4. Middle childhood to adolescence is characterized by
intimate, mutually shared relationships.
5. Adolescence to adulthood is characterized by autonomous
interdependent friendships.
B. Acceptance/Neglect/Rejection by Peers
1. A child’s acceptance by peers and successful interactions
will depend on a willingness to cooperate and interact
positively with other children.
2. Accepted and rejected children tend to have different
characteristics.
C. Peer Sociotherapy
1. Sociometry refers to techniques used to measure
patterns of acceptance, neglect, and rejection among
members of a group.
2. Sociotherapy is an intervention to help children who have
trouble making and keeping friends learn to relate to
others.
V.
Peer Group Dynamics and Social Hierarchies
A. Inclusion and Exclusion
1. Groups utilize various methods to include or exclude
members.
B. Bullies/Victims
1. Bullying is aggressive behavior intended to cause harm or
distress. It occurs repeatedly over time in an unbalanced
relationship of power or strength.
2. “Cyberbullying” is bullying that occurs online.
3. Bullies and victims tend to have different characteristics.
C. Antisocial Behavior: Gangs
1. A gang is a group of people who form an alliance for a
common purpose and engage in unlawful or criminal
activity.
2. The single most consistent characteristic of delinquents is
lack of support and socialization by their families.
3. Gangs give members companionship, guidance,
excitement, and identity.
D. Prosocial Behavior: Peer Collaboration, Tutoring and Counseling
1. Collaboration, tutoring, and counseling are methods
encouraged by adults to enable peers to be supportive of
one another.
VI.
Mesosystem Influences on the Peer Group
A. Adult-Structured Peer Groups
1. Adult-structured groups are purposeful and formal.
B. Adult-Mediated Group Interaction
1. How adults mediate, or structure, the social interaction
within a peer group—specifically whether it is competitive
or cooperative—influences children’s behavior.
2. Sherif et. al (1961) found:
a. Groups tend to stratify, with some individuals
assuming more dominate roles and others more
submissive ones.
b. Groups develop norms.
c. Frustration and competition contribute to hostility
between groups.
d. Competition between groups fosters cohesiveness
within groups.
e. Intergroup hostility can often be reduced by setting
up a superordinate, or common, goal that requires
the mutual efforts of both groups.
C. Adult Leadership Styles
1. Groups led by adults differ markedly in the kind of
leadership provided.
2. Three kinds of leadership styles include authoritarian,
democratic, and laissez-faire.
D. Team Sports
1. Sports are organized interactions of children in
competitive and/or cooperative team or individual
enjoyable physical activities.
2. Sports offer various methods of learning about oneself
and one’s peers.
3. Adults play an important role in mediating children’s
experience in group and individual sport.
Statistics, publications, and resources related to a variety of youth
topics including bullying, gangs, school violence, and the abuse of
alcohol