Chapter 8: Friends and Peers Flashcards
What are Peers?
people who have certain aspects of their status in common
What is the definition of “friends”?
Friends are people with whom you develop a valued, mutual relationship.
When do adolescents become increasingly involved with their friends?
As they move away from their parents
The amount of time spent with friends increases (and time spent with family decreases)
Who do adolescents depend most on for intimacy and companionship? In what ways?
Adolescents indicate that they depend more on their friends than parents or siblings for companionship and intimacy
Friends are whom adolescents feel most comfortable and feel they can talk to most openly.
friends become increasingly significant as confidants and as sources of personal advice and emotional support
who become the source of adolescents’ happiest experiences,?
their friends
how can adolescents develop good attachments to friends?
Adolescents who have secure attachments to their parents are more likely to develop secure attachments to friends and parents shape their adolescents’ peer relationships in a variety of indirect ways.
8.1 Summarize the shift in adolescence in the balance between friendships and family relationships in developed countries.
Although peers are also important to young people in traditional cultures, the influence of peers is enhanced in developed countries because school brings peers together for many hours each day, away from their parents.
what issues do adolescents goto their parents about vs. their friends?
parents: education and career
friends: more personal issues, such as romantic and sexual issues or problems with their parents
how do parents influence their children’s friendships during adolescene?
-where they live, religious services, school choice
-they set the pool of peers from which they select their friends
-encouraging or communicating disapproval
-encouraged academic achievement and lowers drug use which changes the friends they have
8.2 Explain how the balance between friendships and family relationships is distinctive in developing countries.
Adolescence in traditional cultures also entails less involvement with family and greater involvement with peers, although peer involvement tends to be greater for boys.
However adolescents in developing countries often still work alongside their parents in fields or factories. Therefore, more of their time is spent with their families than in the West, thus it may be that they remain close to their families even as they develop greater closeness to their friends during adolescence.
difference between time with peers in boys and girls in traditional cultures?
Traditional cultures are more likely to have gender differences in adolescents’ relationships with peers and family.
in traditional cultures, involvement with peers and friends tends to be much greater for boys than for girls
what do adolescents find in having a “close friend”?
In a close friend, adolescents find someone who mirrors their own emotions and they feel open with friends in a way they rarely do with parents.
why are friends also the source of adolescents’ most negative emotions ?
Friends are also the source of adolescents’ most negative emotions as their strong attachments and reliance on friends leave them vulnerable emotionally.
They worry whethar their friends like them or if they are popular enough
two reasons why friends are the source of adolescents happiness?
- in a close friend, adolescents find someone who mirrors their emotions
- adolescents feel free and open with friends in ways they rarely do with their parents- friends accept and value them for who they really are
The most distinctive feature of adolescent relationships, compared to friendships in late childhood is…
what does it involve?
intimacy
it involves sharing thoughts and feelings
what is involved in intimacy in adolescent friendships?
-trust and loyalty
-an increased amount of time together spent in conversation about significant issues
Adolescents rate which qualities as more important to friendship than younger children?
trust and loyalty involved in intimacy, rather than as stressing play in shared activities
How does greater abstract thinking allow for more intimacy in adolescent friendships?
-become cognitively capable of perspective taking and empathy
-allows adolescents to think about and talk about more abstract qualities in their relationships, such as affection, loyalty, and trust,
-talking about their new social understandings with their friends such as embarassing moments, gossip
How does thinking change during adolescene?
What does this influence?
Thinking becomes more abstract and complex
it influences their social cognition
gender differences in intimacy of adolescent friendships?
Girls tend to have more intimate friendships than boys
-they express their feelings more openly
-they spend more time talking
-more likely to say they feel trust and closeness with their friends
Boys still increase their intimacy, but not to the same extent as girls
-they are more likely to emphasize shared activities as the basis of friendship, such as sports or hobbies.
-they may risk loosing their masculinity when talking about their feelings
one way of explaining the increased importance of intimacy in adolescents is in terms of…
cognitive changes
For adolescents, what is one of the keys to choosing friends?
similarity
Adolescent friends tend to be similar in
their educational orientations, the preferences for media and leisure activities, and in risky activities
how are adolescent friends similar in their educational orientations?
-attitudes toward school
-levels of academic achievement
-future educational plans
how are adolescent friends similar in their preferences for media and leisure?
tend to like the same music, wear the same style clothes, and prefer to do the same things in their leisure time
it makes relations between friends smoother and help avoid conflict
how are adolescent friends similar in their risk behaviour?
resemble in the extent to which they use substances, drive dangeriously, vandalize
they tend to do these activities with other friends
how do ethnic boundaries in friendships become sharper during adolescence?
-as they become adolescents they become aware of the interethnic tensions in society
-as they create an ethnic identity, they may begin to see differences more sharply
-it reflects the patterns of the society they live in
which age group is most likely to have other-sex friends?
emerging adults, rather than adolescents
what is a more accurate term than peer pressure for the social effects adolescents experience? why?
Friends’ influence
friends have a substantial influence on adolescent’s choices and values, but the peer effects (from peer pressure) tend to be relatively weak
how do friends INFLUENCE risk behaviour in adolescents?
-important both in encouraging participation in risk behavior and in discouraging risk behavior
-providing emotional support and assistance in coping with stressful events
-Both types of friends’ influence rise in strength in early adolescence, peak in the midteens, then decline in late adolescence
in terms of adolescent’s risk behaviour, is there a correlation between them and their friends?
A correlation exists between the rates of risk behaviors that adolescents report for themselves and the rates they report for their friends
however, this does not imply causation
two reasons why correlation between adolescent’s risk behaviour and their friends is NOT causation?
- seperate reports indicate that adolescent’s percieve their friends to be more similar to them than they actually are
- selective association: the principle that most people choose friends who are similar to themsleves