Peers: the Wider World of Social Development

Chapter 8

Peers: The Wider World of Social Development

Chapter Outline

PEERS: THE WIDER WORLD OF SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT

DEFINITIONS AND DISTINCTIONS

DEVELOPMENTAL PATTERNS OF PEER INTERACTION

First Encounters in Infancy

Social Exchanges between Toddlers

Peer Play in Early Childhood

Peer Society in the School Years

The Importance of the Peer’s Age

The Importance of the Peer’s Gender

Peer Interactions in Adolescence

PEERS AS SOCIALIZERS

Modeling Behavior

Reinforcing and Punishing Behavior

Social Comparison

Cultural Context: Peer Roles and Relationships in Different Cultures

PEER STATUS

Studying Peer Status: Acceptance and Rejection

Factors That Affect Peer Acceptance

Behaviors That Make a Difference

Biological Predispositions

Social-Cognitive Skills

Are Children Always Reflective?

Children’s Goals in Social Interactions

Learning from Living Leaders: Steven R. Asher

Physical Appearance

Blending In

Consequences of Peer Rejection

What Determines How Children React to Rejection?

Bet You Thought That ... Names Would Never Hurt You

Short- and Long-Term Consequences of Rejection

Research up Close: When “Love Thine Enemy” Fails

Insights from Extremes: From Rejection to Revenge?

Can Peer Status Change?

PROMOTERS OF PEER ACCEPTANCE

Parents as Promoters of Peer Acceptance

Parents As Positive Partners

Parents As Coaches and Teachers

Parents As Social Arrangers and Monitors

When Parents Fail: Peer Rejection of Abused Children

Researchers As Promoters of Peer Acceptance

Learning From Living Leaders: Gary W. Ladd

Peers Can Help Too

WHEN PEERS BECOME FRIENDS

Age Changes in Friendship

Earliest Friendships

Changing Friendship Goals

Changing Friendship Expectations

Interactions with Friends

Insights from Extremes: When Children Love and Protect Each Other

Learning from Living Leaders: Willard W. Hartup

Friendship Patterns

The Pros and Cons of Friendship

Romantic Relationships

Teenage Love Affairs Really Do Matter

Changes in Romantic Dynamics Over Time

INTERACTION IN GROUPS

Dominance Hierarchies

Cliques, Crowds, and Gangs

Into Adulthood: What Happens When Jocks, Brains, and Princesses Grow Up

Real-World Application: Youth Gangs

Chapter Summary

Key Terms

At the Movies

Learning Objectives

Understand the difference between peers and friends.
Describe developmental patterns of peer interaction.
Describe the types of play observed among preschool-aged children.
Describe the characteristics of peer relations in terms of age and gender.
Explain the ways in which peers act as socializers (modeling, renforcing, punishing, social comparison).
Discuss the sociometric technique for assessing peer status.
Describe the peer status categories and the characteristics of children in each category (average, popular, controversial, rejected, neglected).
Describe the perceived popularity method of assessing peer status.
Explain the factors that affect peer acceptance (behavior, biological predispositions, social-cognitive skills, goals, physical appearance, fitting in).
Summarize the consequences of peer rejection for children’s social adjustment
Summarize what is known about parents as promoters of peer acceptance (interactive partners,coaches and social arrangers/monitors)
Describe how researchers can be promoters of peer acceptance.
Describe changes in friendship across childhood and adolescence.
Summarize the observed friendship patterns of rotation, growth, decline, static, and friendless.
Explain the risks and benefits of friendships.
Summarize the myths and realities of adolescent romantic relationships.
Describe the changes in romantic dynamics over time.
Explain the dominance hierarchy and the functions it serves in peer interactions.
Describe what is known about cliques, crowds, and gangs.

Student Handout 8-1

Chapter Summary

Peer Interactions

Children’s interactions with peers are briefer, freer, and more equal than interactionswith adults. These interactions facilitate interpersonal exploration and growth in socialcompetence.

Developmental Patterns of Peer Interaction

Infants interact with peers by vocalizing and touching.
Toddlers exchange turns and roles during interactions with peers; major achievementsinclude sharing meaning with a peer and engaging in mutual pretend play.
Children increase their preference for interacting with peers rather than adults as theygrow.
Companionship with peers of the same age increases over the school years.
Children are likely to choose same-gender play partners.
In adolescence, gender segregation lessens as dating begins. Peer relationships are used toexplore and enhance identities.

Peers as Socializers

Peers act as models of social behavior, reinforce and punish each another, serve as standardsagainst which children evaluate themselves, and provide opportunities for developing asense of belonging.
Peers have a stronger influence than parents on adolescents’ lifestyle choices.
Patterns of peer interaction and influence are different in different cultures.

Peer Status

Peer status is assessed with sociometric techniques by having children identify peers theylike and don’t like; peer acceptance is assessed with ratings of how much children like ordislike each classmate. Children are classified as popular, rejected, neglected, controversial,or average.
Peer status depends on children’s abilities to initiate interaction, communicate effectively,respond to others’ interests and behaviors, and cooperate in activities.
Popular children engage in prosocial behavior and help set the norms for the group.Nonaggressive-rejected children tend to be withdrawn and lack social skills. Aggressiverejectedchildren have low self-control and exhibit problem behaviors. Neglected childrenare less talkative and more shy and anxious. Controversial children are liked by many peersand disliked by many others.
According to social-cognitive information-processing theory, children attend to the cues ina social situation, interpret other children’s behavior, decide what their own goals are andhow to achieve them, decide to take certain actions, and act on their decisions.
Children may not always respond to social situations in a reflective and thoughtful way;sometimes their behavior is impulsive or automatic.
In comparison to unpopular and socially unsuccessful children, those who are popular andsocially successful have more positive goals and strategies, more self-confidence and persistence,can try a new approach when another has been unsuccessful, are more attractive,and blend in with other children.
Being unpopular can lead to short-term problems such as loneliness and low self-esteem andlong-term problems such as depression. Having at least one friend can reduce loneliness.
Social status tends to remain stable across time and situations, especially for rejected children.

Promoters of Peer Acceptance

Parents serve as partners from whom children acquire social skills, act as social coaches, andprovide opportunities for children to have peer interactions.
Researchers can help children improve their social skills by coaching.
Peers themselves can help rejected children improve their social skills and experience morepeer acceptance.

When Peers Become Friends

Children develop close friendships with only a few peers.
The goals and expectations of friendship change with age.
Friends communicate more clearly and positively, disclose more about themselves, exchangemore information, establish more common ground, and are able to resolve conflicts moreeffectively than nonfriends.
Boys’ same-gender friendships are less fragile than those of girls because they are oftenembedded in a larger group of relationships.
Friends provide support, intimacy, and guidance. However, some friendships encouragedeviant behavior, such as cheating, fighting, and using drugs.
Withdrawn and aggressive children have friends with characteristics similar to their own.
Romantic relationships in adolescence are an important and distinctive form of socialrelationship.

Interaction in Groups

Children form hierarchically organized groups with common goals and rules of conduct.
In middle childhood, children form cliques, which enhance their well-being and ability tocope with stress.
In high school, children may be thought of by their peers as belonging to a specificcrowd.
A gang is a group of adolescents or adults who form an allegiance for a common purpose.The gang may be a loose-knit group or a formal organization; organized gangs are ofteninvolved in criminal activity.

Student Handout 8-2

Key Terms

GLOSSARY TERMS

aggressive-rejected children / Youngsters who are not accepted by their peers because of their low level of self-control and high level of aggression.
associative play / Interaction in which young children share toys, materials, and sometimes conversation, but are not engaged in a joint project.
average children / Youngsters who have some friends but who are not as well liked as popular children.
clique / A peer group formed on the basis of friendship.
controversial children / Youngsters who are liked by many peers but also disliked by many.
cooperative play / Interaction in which children share goals and work together to achieve them.
crowd / A collection of people whom others have stereotyped on the basis of their perceived shared attitudes or activities—for example, populars or nerds.
dominance hierarchy / An ordering of individuals in a group from most to least dominant; a “pecking order.”
gang / A group of adolescents or adults who form an allegiance for a common purpose.
homophily / The tendency of individuals to associate and bond with others who are similar.
mutual antipathy / A relationship of mutual dislike between two people.
negative gossip / Adverse or detrimental information shared about another child with a peer.
neglected children / Youngsters who are often socially isolated and, although they are not necessarily disliked, have few friends.
nonaggressive-rejected children / Excluded youngsters who tend to be anxious, withdrawn, and socially unskilled.
parallel play / Interaction in which very young children are doing the same thing, often side by side, but are not engaged with each other.
peer group network / The cluster of peer acquaintances who are familiar with and interact with one another at different times for common play or task-oriented purposes.
perceived popularity / Ratingsof how well a child is liked by his or her peers, made by teachers, parents, and children.
popular children / Youngsters who are liked by many peers and disliked by very few.
pretend play / Make-believe activity in which objects are used symbolically.
rejected children / Youngsters who are disliked by many peers and liked by very few.
reputational bias / Tendency to interpret peers’ behavior on the basis of past encounters with and feelings about them.
self-disclosure / The honest sharing of information of a very personal nature, often with a focus on problem solving; a central means by which adolescents and others develop friendships.
social comparison / The process by which people evaluate their own abilities, values, and other qualities by comparing themselves with others, usually their peers.
sociometric technique / A procedure for determining a child’s status within her or his peer group; each child in the group either nominates others whom she or he likes best and least or rates each child in the group for desirability as a companion.

OTHER IMPORTANT TERMS IN THIS CHAPTER

automaticity of social behavior
coaching
co-rumination
cognitive map
emotional encoding /decoding
empathic stage
friend
friendship goals
gender segregation
monitoring
nomination sociometric technique
normative stage
peer
popular-aggressive peer
reward-cost stage
roster and rating sociometric technique
shared meaning
social arranging
social goals
social skills training
social-cognitive skills
socially reticent peer
transactional cycle of helplessness/hopelessness
unsociable or socially uninterested peer

Student Handout 8-3

Child Age______Child Gender______

Time / Play Category / Description of Behavior
Minute 1
Minute 2
Minute 3
Minute 4
Minute 5
Minute 6
Minute 7
Minute 8
Minute 9
Minute 10

SUMMARY OF OBSERVATION

Behavior / Unoccupied/
Onlooker / Solitary Play / Parallel Play / Associative/Cooperative Play / Other
Total number of each category observed

SUMMARY COMMENTS

Relate your observations to children’s social development. Is this child below average, average, or above average for child’s age? What are your reasons for this rating?

Practice Exam Questions

MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS

At what age are interactions with peers characterized by a stable preference for same-gender playmates and a main friendship goal of coordinated and successful play? (a) 2-3 years (b) 4-5 years (c) *6-7 years (d) 7-9 years
Interaction in which young children are doing the same thing, often side by side, but are not engaged with each other has been described as: (a) *parallel play (b) pretend play (c) cooperative play (d) associative play
During interactions with peers during adolescence peers are especially likely to influence: (a) adolescents’ educational plans (b) adolescents’ religious beliefs (c) *whether the adolescent uses controlled substances (d) adolescents’ level of volunteer work
Youngsters who are often socially isolated and, although they are not necessarily disliked, have few friends are labeled: (a) controversial (b) *neglected (c) rejected (d) average
Which of the following accurately describes the association between deficits in social understanding and actual peer rejection? (a) deficits in social understanding do not predict peer rejection (b) peer rejection does not predict deficits in social understanding (c) there is no association between deficits in social understanding and actual peer rejection (d) *deficits in social understanding predict children’s level of social rejection
Acceptance by peers is more likely when: (a) *the child is more physically attractive (b) the child has a unique name or clothing that sets him or her apart and therefore focuses positive peer attention (c) the child pursues low-cost indirect social goals (d) the child suffers from a physical or mental handicap, because classmates feel sympathetic
Studies of rejection and loneliness suggest that: (a) aggressive-rejected children typically feel lonelier than nonaggressive-rejected children (b) *rejected children who have at least one friend are less lonely than those who are totally friendless (c) rejection is not associated with other outcomes beyond loneliness (d) loneliness is reduced only if the rejected child has two or more friends
Parents who coach their children are particularly effective when: (a) *parents themselves are socially skilled (b) parents do not appeal to prepared scripts (c) parents are physically present during the interaction with peers (d) parents are in happy marriages
Interventions designed to help children who are lonely have focused on communication with peers including: (a) *asking questions in a positive tone (b) waiting for peers to offer suggestions (c) replacing general statements of support with focused expressions of the child’s goals (d) hovering at the edge of a social group they wish to join
The tendency of individuals to associate and bond with others who are similar to them is described as: (a) a clique (b) a gang (c) social comparison (d) *homophily
The peer relationships formed by the Jewish children at Bulldog Banks during World War II showed that: (a) children without friends suffer serious developmental problems that are not easily reversed (b) although children without friends suffer serious developmental problems, these are easily reversed by acquiring friends (c) children’s friendships can provide fun and games in a stressful environment (d) *children’s friendships can provide comfort and care
Children who end up in gangs in adolescence or adulthood are more likely to: (a) have neglectful parents (b) come from dysfunctional families (c) live in communities surrounded by drugs and crime (d) *all of the above

ESSAY QUESTIONS

1. List three consequences of being rejected by peers.

2. Describe three processes by which peers act as socializers of children’s social development.

3. How is the social information processing approach useful in understanding peer acceptance?