Week 14 - Peer Relationships Flashcards
Peer Relationships
(1) Group •Acceptance/Rejection •Popularity •Victimization/Bullying (2) Dyadic •Friendship •Romantic Relationships
Measuring Acceptance/Rejection and
Popularity
- Peer nominations or ratings
* Ask children to identify classmates who fit certain descriptions or to rate classmates on different dimensions
Measuring Acceptance/Rejection
- Identify the kids you like most and the kids you like least
- Rate how much you like each of these classmates
Measuring Popularity
- Name the kids who are the most popular
- Name the kids who are the least popular
- Rate how popular classmates are
Acceptance and Popularity
•Acceptance and popularity are positively correlated, but they are not the same thing •Gaining in popularity may come at the cost of acceptance
Measuring Victimization
- Self-report
- Peer nominations
- These sources are correlated, but they provide different information
Victimization and Rejection
- Victimization and rejection are correlated with each other
- They are not the same thing
- Children who are rejected are not liked by other classmates
- Children who are victimized are being targeted aggressively by peers
Friendship
- Voluntary, dyadic relationship
* Children’s first freely chosen relationship
Measuring Friendship
(1) Does the child have a reciprocated friendship?
• Friendship nominations
• Children nominate their friends
• Look to see if the nomination is reciprocated
• Note that number of friends does not seem to be an important indicator of functioning
(2) Is the friendship stable?
• Re-do the nominations at a later time point to see if they are still friends
(3) Quality
• Positive features: companionship, intimacy, support/help, security
• Negative features: Conflict
Friendship and Acceptance
- Friendship and acceptance are correlated, but they are not the same thing
- Children who are better accepted are more likely to have friends
- Not all children who are well-liked have a dyadic friend, and many children who are broadly disliked have a dyadic friendship
Is Peer Acceptance/Rejection Stable?
- Yes
- Children’s sociometric status at one time point is strongly related to their sociometric status at a later time point
- Rejected status is the most stable
Why Is Peer Acceptance/Rejection Stable?
- Behavior
* Reputation
Behavior and Peer Acceptance/Rejection
- Behavior is associated with acceptance and rejection
- Greater aggression and greater withdrawal are both linked to great peer rejection
- Withdrawal may become increasingly linked to rejection as children get older
- Prosocial behavior is linked to peer acceptance
Reputation and Peer Acceptance/Rejection
- Once a child has a reputation with peers, it may be hard to change it
- If we put children in a new peer group, can they establish new sociometric status
Is Peer Rejection/Acceptance Stable?
- Yes
* Behavior contributes
Is Popularity Stable?
- Yes
* Youth who are popular at one time point are more likely to be popular later
Why Is Popularity Stable?
- Behavior
- Aggressive behavior does not make children liked
- It may make them popular
- A number of studies have shown a positive association between greater aggression and perceived popularity, particularly during adolescence
- Among adolescent girls, strong link between relational aggression and perceived popularity
Is Victimization Stable?
•Yes •Victimization becomes increasingly stable throughout childhood •Why? •Behavior •Other factors
Is Friendship Stable?
- Having a friend –> yes
* Maintaining the same friendship –> low stability
Why Do Friendships Dissolve?
- Differences between friends
- Friendships between opposite gender friends more likely to dissolve than differences between same gender friends
- Differences between friends in aggression, acceptance, social competence
- Fights between friends
Why Do Some Children Have Trouble Making
or Keeping Friends?
- Less socially skilled, more aggressive
- Children who are withdrawn are not less likely to have a friend
* Friends are more likely to be withdrawn
* Friendship may be of lower quality
Do Experiences with Peers Matter?
- Yes
- Evidence that experience with peers make unique contributions to social and emotional outcomes
• Peer rejection predicts poorer outcomes, even after taking into account prior levels of the problem
• E.g., peer rejection is associated with increased
aggression and depression
• Popularity predicts increased risk behaviors over time
• Smoking, drug, alcohol use
• Peer acceptance does not
• Victimization uniquely predicts subsequent emotional and social problems
• Victimization and suicidal ideation
• Being victimized at age 13 predicts increased
suicidal ideation and suicide attempts
at age 15, even after accounting for
psychological symptoms at age 13
Does Friendship Matter?
•Yes •Many benefits associated with having one high-quality friendship (1) Protects against loneliness and depression (2) Protects against the negative effects of victimization (3) Improves social skills
Is friendship stability associated with behaviors and outcomes?
- No differences between stable and different stable on outcomes
- Suggests that what matters is having a friend, not having the same friend
- Friendship loss and chronically friendless become more victimized, less socially skilled than did children in stable and gain groups
Can We Reduce Rejection/Increase
Acceptance?
- Very hard to change
- (1) Skill-deficit approach
- Reduce aggression
- Improve social skills
- (2) Reputation in the peer group
- Interventions that help children’s reputations may change sociometricstatus
Can We Decrease Victimization?
•Skill-deficit approach
• Help victims learn to respond more effectively
• Not strong evidence that there are associations
between how children respond to victimization and
whether or not it continues
•Change school climate including norms about violence
•Mobilize bystanders
Can We Change Youth’s Experiences in
Friendship?
- Make friends, keep friends, have higher-quality friendships
- In theory, yes
- But, few interventions have been tested
Understand the use of the scientific method to
answer questions about children’s development
- Systematic investigation of core questions about children’s development
- Data collection
- Careful ruling out of alternate explanations
Understand what develops and when
- Discussed developmental milestones in a number of domains
- Vision
- Motor
- Language
- Social cognition
- Emotion
Understand how nature and nurture work
together to shape children’s development
- Visual development
- Bidirectional associations between children’s behavior and parenting
- Differential susceptibility
Understand major research paradigms and
methodological approaches in child development
- Habituation and preferential looking paradigms to examine infant perception and cognition
- Theory of Mind tasks
- Observational paradigms
- Interview paradigms
- Questionnaires
Implications of Developmental Science for Policy
and Practice
- Scientific research must inform the work we do with children, and the decisions society makes about children’s well-being
- The age which children receive surgery to have cataracts corrected
- Making preschool affordable for all families
- Giving advice and recommendations to parents
- Teaching children how to read and do math
