Peer influence Flashcards
Introduction
Substance use often begins during adolescence. Individuals who begin using at younger ages are at increased risk of developing a substance use disorder because early onset usage is associated with a host of other individual and social negative consequences. A risk factor is a variable that precede and significantly predict the onset of a disorder. Strongest environmental factor of substance use is association with substance using peers. The key processes that describe the onset and development of substance use in adolescence are social facilitation, peer influence and peer selection. The key processes will be further discussed in regards to how peers influence the onset and development of substance use in adolescence.
P1- Peer influence
Direct influence
Direct influences range from polite gestures such as “would you like a cigarette?” to overt commands such as “finish your beer.” Refusal of these direct commands, especially when surrounded by peers, may result in feelings of inferiority, loss of social ease, fear of rejection and exclusion, and actual rejection or exclusion.
P1- Peer influence
Indirect influence
In contrast, indirect peer influences are more subtle, modeling and perceived norms are two examples of indirect influences.
P1
cigarette smoking example
With cigarette smoking, adolescents tend to report that overt peer pressure for smoking is not a factor, but they feel internal pressure due to perceived norms of the group, rather than peer pressure thus, suggesting that social facilitation may be more common.
P1
Social facilitation
Social facilitation is the tendency for people to perform differently when in the presence of others than when alone. Modeling, a form of indirect influence, is defined as imitation of another’s behaviour, presumably based on perceived contingencies of engaging in the behaviour. For example, seeing another person receive social reinforcement for smoking marijuana would increase the probability that the viewer will try marijuana. During early life stages of childhood and adolescence, influential models include parents and other family members. However, during teen and adult stages of life, peers become more influential, as demonstrated by Gardner and Stienberg (2005).
P2
Gardner and Steinberg (2005)
Gardner and Steinberg (2005) examined age differences in the effect of peer setting on risky decision making in adolescents (aged 13-16), young adults (aged 18-22) and adults (24+). The three groups were tested on a computerized driving task called the Chicken Game, which challenges the driver to advance a vehicle as far as possible on a driving course while avoiding crashing into a wall that could appear, without warning, on the course at any point. The task was completed alone or in the presence of two similar-aged peers.
P2
Gardner and Steinberg (2005)
Results
When tested alone, participants in each of the three age groups engaged in a comparable amount of risk taking. In contrast, early adolescents scored twice as high on an index of risky driving when tested with their peers in the room than when tested alone, whereas late adolescents’ driving was approximately 50% riskier in the presence of peers, and adults showed no difference in risky driving related to social context. It appears that the presence of peer groups may influence risk of substance use amongst adolescents, possibly due to desire to be liked by the group.
P2
Gardner and Steinberg (2005)
Limitations
However, a limitation of this study is that risky behavior on a computerized task may not reflect risks that the individual would be willing to take in real life circumstances. This does not mean that peers would not influence behavior, but that the influence may not be as pronounced as was found by Gardner and Stienberg (2005).
P3
Peer selection
However, an issue when applying this peer influence model to substance use is that the association between peer use and individual use could be due to peer selection. The peer influence and peer selection models assume opposite causal directions, and knowing which is true or relatively important is fundamental to understanding the causation of drug behavior. Friends have similar drug behavior when their friendships are formed on the basis of common drug behavior. In these cases, selection rather than influence produces the association between friend and adolescent drug use.
P3
Selection has multiple mechanisms
Selection has multiple mechanisms: (a) drug users choose other users to be friends, (b) non-users choose other non-users to be friends, (c) friendships dissolve when the drug behavior of friends becomes dissimilar (deselection), and (d) peer groups restrict membership to people with drug behaviors like their own. Each mechanism produces an association between the drug behavior of friends and the adolescent, but it is incorrect to attribute it to peer influence. A study by Robinson et al (2006) may address this.
P4
Robinson et al (2006)
Robinson et al (2006) conducted a study investigating whether adolescent cigarette smoking was related to peer influences. A survey was administered to 4461 seventh-graders assessing usual sources of cigarettes and related variables.
P4
Robinson et al (2006) - results
At baseline, 30% of the 1144 smokers got cigarettes from peers, compared with 11% using stores, 6% using vending machines, and 17% who stole them. Adolescents are therefore much more likely to get their first cigarette from peers than from any other source, suggesting the important influence of peer socialisation on substance use onset. It was also found that the longer students smoked, the more likely they were to have friends who smoked. Therefore, this would suggest that onset of substance may be largely associated with peer influence, but development and maintenance of substance use behaviours may occur in a process of peer selection whereby the individual select peers who share the same attitudes towards substances.
P4
Poulin et al (2011)
This is supported by studies showing that this applies to not only cigarette smoking, but also to alcohol and cannabis use. Poulin et al (2011) conducted a longitudinal study on reciprocal effects of selection and substance use. Canadian adolescents (n = 143) were assessed four times over a school year. Each assessment measured amount of new friends at each stage, and how many of these smoked, drank, or used cannabis. It was found that adolescents select new friends with similar substance use patterns, but that these friends in turn contribute to individual use.
