Addiction - Social - Peer Infleunce Flashcards
``How does ‘peer influence’ explain addiction
As humans are influenced by social groups - Peers can be role models that are imitated, they can establish social norms so that certain behaviours are seen as acceptable – for instance engaging with addiction.
What are the two main elements of peer influence?
Peer Influence
Perceived Social Norms
How does ‘peer influence’ explain addiction?
Theory first outlined by Bandura. Social Learning Theory emphasises the importance of social factors on behaviour. Includes both direct and indirect reinforcement.
There are two key processes for behaviour to be learned:
Observation of role model (someone the observer admires in some way)
Vicarious reinforcement (indirect) Seeing the role model be rewarded in some way for their behaviour, with the individual anticipating a similar response when they engage with the behaviour.
This can be applied to addiction. For instance: an individual may observe their peers smoking and receive vicarious reinforcement through their higher social status and their enjoyment so choose to smoke themselves.
How does ‘Perceived social norms’ explain addiction?
Social norms are behaviours that are considered acceptable within a particular social group. Social norms differ from culture to culture. E.g. Drinking in the UK (normalised) vs a Middle Eastern country (illegal in many)
Some social groups may hold attitudes that encourage behaviour that increases the chances of addiction. Even what we believe is a social norm can influence our behaviour even if it is not really a social norm.
What are the two types of social norms and who came up with them?
Bosari and Carey (2001) made a distinction between two types of social norms.
Descriptive norms: An individual’s perception of how much others engage in behaviours. What an individual believes everybody else is getting up to and using this as the ‘norm’ for their own behaviour.
This causes addiction as people may overestimate how much others are engaging in behaviours such as drinking or smoking. This has been found in relation to alcohol consumption – studies found students believe that peers are drinking more than they are by over 44%.
Injunctive norms: What an individual perceives as others’ approval of the behaviour. What they believe others think they should or shouldn’t be doing.
This causes addiction as people may misperceive their peers’ attitudes towards such behaviours, often believing the behaviour to be deemed acceptable by others. For instance: Students often believe that drinking alcohol is the ‘cool’ thing to do.
What is one strength of the ‘peer influence’ explanation of addiction?
Strength 1:
Research evidence in the form of Simons & Farhat (2010) Reviewed 40 prospective studies into the relationship between peers and smoking. Found those with friends who smoke were more likely to smoke themselves in all but one study.
What is another strength of the ‘peer influence’ explanation of addiction?
Strength 2:
Can be used as a method of modification If we know that misdirected injunctive norms leads to people developing addictive behaviours, we can design interventions around this, for instance Social Norms Marketing Advertising – This will help challenge addiction change people’s inaccurate perception of social norms by educating them on how often these social norms occur in reality, for instance a poster around a university telling people that students overestimate what others drink by 44%.
What is one weakness of the ‘peer influence’ explanation of addiction?
Weakness 1:
Lack of cause and effect, we can’t know if individuals become addicted because of peer influence, or they choose friends because they engage in the same behaviour. In reality, it is likely both are true and interact with each other,
this is seen in Ennet and Bauman who conducted a study on smokers who found both that participants who were non-smokers whose friends who did smoke were more likely to become smokers themselves at a follow up,
but also found individuals changed friend-groups to those who were more in line with their smoking habits (or lack there of) Suggesting both elements work in conjunction to explain addiction. (weakness of this study is that it only looks at smoking addiction)
What is another weakness of the ‘peer influence’ explanation of addiction?
Weakness 2:
The majority of studies involving addiction have major methodological issue. For example, most studies involve self-report methods and correlational research which have many issues such as Demand Characteristics aka people lying about their rate of engaging with addictive behaviours. Additionally defining peer groups is very hard as friend groups change over time and people may associate with different people for different activities.
Finally, most of these studies have generalisability issues as the participants are usually adolescents (students) meaning the research cannot be generalised to those older, such as in their 30s and above.
