Peer Relationships Flashcards
Who do adolescents spend a lot of time with?
Their peers
Did adolescents always spend a lot of time with their peers?
No, it wasn’t always like that
What is age grading?
Students grouped by age in school
When did adolescent peer groups become prevalent?
In the 20th century, since most people didn’t make it past elementary school, since education was a luxury
What are peer groups?
Groups of individuals of approximately the same age
What do peer groups establish?
They establish a sense of comradery
Are peer groups important nowadays for adolescents?
Yes, peer groups are immensely important during adolescent development
What is the key event that happened for generation z?
Internet explosion
How does the proportion of the population that is adolescent vary around the world?
- Highest in developing countries, especially in the Arab world
- Lowest in highly industrialized countries, like Japan
- This trend is expected to continue such that the percentage of youth in the population will continue to decline
Why do peers become so important during adolescence?
As we move through childhood into adolescence, we are more independent and spend less time with adults and more with peers
Do peer groups get larger or smaller during adolescence?
Peer groups get larger as adolescents
What causes peer groups to change?
- Puberty stimulates adolescents’ interest in romantic relationships and distances them from their parents
- The cognitive changes of adolescence permit a more sophisticated understanding of social relationships
- Changes in social definition may stimulate changes in peer relations as a sort of
adaptive response
What are the two general types of peer groups?
Cliques and crowds
What are cliques?
Small, tightly knit groups of 2 and 12 friends, generally of the same sex and age
What are crowds?
Reputation-based clusters of youths, whose function in part is to help solidify young people’s social and personal identity
What do cliques provide?
Cliques provide the main social context in which adolescents interact
with one another
- Can be defined by common activities (i.e. sports teams, extracurricular activities)
or friendship (i.e. growing up together, living on the same block)
What do crowds include?
Crowds include “jocks,” “brains,” “nerds,” “populars,” and “druggies”
(Labels may vary, but the groups are commonplace)
What is the contrast of cliques to crowds?
In contrast to Cliques, membership in a crowd is based mainly on reputation and stereotype, NOT on actual friendship or social interaction
True or False: Changing membership in a crowd is easy
FALSE.
Changing membership in a crowd can be very difficult
What do crowds contribute more to?
Crowds likely contribute more to the adolescent’s sense of identity and self-conception than to his or her actual social development
How do you determine clique membership?
- Orientation toward school
- Orientations toward the teen culture
- Involvement in antisocial activity