9. Peers & Romantic Relationships Flashcards
Who are peers and why are they important?
Individuals who are about the same age or maturity level.
Provide a source of information about the world outside their family. Can receive feedback about their abilities.
How can peer contexts be classified?
- type of peer (acquaintance, crowd, friend, romantic partner)
- situation or location (school, neighbourhood, religious setting etc.)
What are 2 kinds of personality traits that can affect peer relations?
1) negative emotionality (low threshold for anger, fear, anxiety, and irritation. impair peer relations)
2) openness to peer influence (power status of adolescent vs power status of adolescent or peer group)
Describe the developmental changes in time spent with peers vs parents.
Increasing amount of time spent in peer interaction in adolescence. Twice as much time with peers than with parents.
Are peers necessary for development?
Yes. Good peer relations are necessary for social development. Social isolation is associated with many problems and disorders.
What are some benefits of positive peer relations?
- Explore principles of fairness and justice by working through disagreements with peers
- Observe peer’s interests and perspectives to smoothly integrate themselves into peer activities
- teach them to be skilled and sensitive partners in intimate relationships
What are some disadvantages of negative peer relations?
- peers with deviant behavior –> lower self control
- negative peer events –> maintain depression symptoms
- bad company –> heavy drinking, delinquency
What are 3 ways that parents can influence their child’s peer relations?
- parents’ direct interactions with child
- how parents manage their own lives
- opportunities parents provide to the child (parents’ choice of neighbourhoods, schools, churches, friends influence the pool from which adolescents select possible friends)
How can parents model or coach their adolescents positive ways of relating to peers?
- recommend specific strategies. discuss how disputes can be mediated or how to become less shy
- encourage them to be tolerant and resist peer pressure
How might parental attachment link to peer relations?
Secure attachment to parents is linked to positive peer relations. only moderately correlated. Fosters trust to engage in close relationships with others and providing a strong foundation for developing interpersonal skills
Which kind of adolescents are most likely to conform to their peers?
1) adolescents who are uncertain about their social identity (Eg. low self-esteem and high social anxiety)
2) in the presence of someone they perceive to have higher status
What is sociometric status?
Describes the extent to which children and adolescents are liked or disliked by their peer group.
How is sociometric status measured?
Ask children and adolescents to nominate the peers they like the most and those they like the least.
What are the 5 different types of peer statuses?
- popular children
- average children
- neglected children
- rejected children
- controversial children
Describe the popular children.
Frequently nominated as best friend and rarely disliked by peers. Give out reinforcements, listen carefully, maintain open lines of communication with others, are happy, control their negative emotions, show enthusiasm and concern for others, are self confident without being conceited.
Describe average children.
Average number of positive and negative nomination from peers
Describe neglected children.
Not really nominated as best friend but not disliked by peers. Often described as shy and don’t really interact with peers much.
Describe rejected children.
rarely nominated as best friend and actively disliked by peers. Have more serious adjustment problems than neglected chidren. Associated with depression and conduct problems. Not all rejected children are aggressive, some are shy.
Describe controversial children.
Frequently nominated both as best friend and being disliked.
What is adolescent pseudomature behavior?
trying to act cool (eg. engage in minor delinquency, precocious romantic involvement)
associated with a desire to be popular
Why do aggressive boys have problems in social relationships?
- more impulsive and have problems sustaining attention. more likely to be disruptive of ongoing activities in the classroom
- more emotionally reactive. Aroused to anger more easily and have difficulty calming down once aroused. More prone to being angry at peers and attacking them physically.
What is social cognition? What does it comprise of?
Involves thoughts about social matters. Comprises of social intelligence and social information processing.
What is social intelligence?
Knowing what it takes to make friends, to get peers to like you etc. Some children and adolescents have difficulty with peer relations because they lack social intelligence.
What are the 5 steps of social information processing? (DIRSE)
1) decode social cues
2) interpretation
3) response search
4) selection of an optimal response
5) enactment
How do aggressive boys engage in social information processing?
likely to perceive another child’s ambiguous actions as hostile, When they search for cues to determine intention, they respond more rapidly, less efficiently, and less reflectively than nonaggressive children.
Adolescents perform more poorly than adults in which 2 social cognitive areas?
1) theory of mind
2) emotion recognition
How does emotion relate to peer relations?
ability to regulate emotion is linked to successful peer relations. anger displays and depression were linked to being unpopular with peers.
Describe what it means to have effective self-regulatory skills.
Can modulate their emotional expressiveness in contexts that evoke intense emotions, such as when a peer says something negative.
What are 4 strategies to improve adolescents’ social skills?
1) demonstration or modeling of appropriate social skills
2) discussion of emotions
3) reasoning about social skills
4) use reinforcement for their enactment in actual social situations
What are the 6 sequential steps to take before acting in a situation?
1) stop, calm down, think before you act
2) go over the problem and state how you feel
3) set a positive goal
4) think of lots of solutions
5) plan ahead for consequences
6) go ahead and try out the best plan
How do we improve neglected adolescents’ social skills? (2)
Help them hold their peers’ attention by:
1) asking questions
2) listening in a warm and friendly way
3) saying things about themselves that relate to peers’ interests
Why is it difficult to improve the social skills of adolescents who are actively disliked and rejected?
Because they are aggressive or impulsive and lack the self-control to keep these behaviors in check.
Why are social skills intervention programmes more successful with children than adolescents?
Because peer reputations become more fixed as cliques and peer groups become more important in adolescence. Attitude of others is slow to change even if the problem has already been fixed. Need to targeted the minds of peers too.
How to administer social skills intervention programmes in a group training style?
adolescents will work towards a common goal that holds promise for changing reputations. Most successful when conducted in academic settings.