Adolescence and Emerging Adulthood: A Cultural …ion.uwinnipeg.ca › ~clark › teach › zzArchives › 3230 › cc08...social world • Make judgments (social, moral) about others

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Adolescence and Emerging Adulthood:

A Cultural Approach

Chapter 8

Copyright © Pearson Education 2013

Friends and Peers

Chapter Overview

• Contrast between friendships and family relationships

• Friends as a source of emotional highs and lows

• Developmental changes in friendship and peer groups in

adolescence and emerging adulthood

• Family contexts in relation to friendship and peer groups

• Friends’ influence, popularity, and unpopularity

• Youth culture

• Friends and leisure activities in emerging adulthood


Clarifying the Difference

• Peers

– People who are about the same age • Classmates, co-workers, community

• Friends

– People with whom you develop a

valued, mutual relationship • Not all peers are friends

• Tend to be same age and same gender during

grade school and high school Copyright © Pearson Education 2013

Family & Friends in Adolescence Time spent

with family

decreases

Time spent with

friends increases

28 minutes per

day with parents

103 minutes per

day with friends


• Most dramatic change from grade 9-12

• School, leisure time, evenings, weekends, summer

Who do adolescents talk to?


• Relationships with family and friends change in

quantity and QUALITY

– Depend on friends for companionship, intimacy,

happy experiences

• Youniss & Smoller (1985)

– Surveyed >1000 adolescents age 12-19

– Adolescents are more likely to talk to friends about

more personal issues, and to their parents about

education and future occupation

• “Personal issues” = secrets, sorrows, advice/info on social

relationships, leisure

Adolescents’ Discussion of

Topics Figure 8.1 – Youniss & Smollar (1985, p. 295)


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• Close relationships with parents are not

incompatible with having close

friendships

• Parents shape adolescent relationships

indirectly • Where to live, where to go to school

• Encouraging friendships vs. disapproval

• Personality and behaviour

• E.g., encourage academic

achievement; parental monitoring

Are parents important?


Mood Changes Figure 8.2 – Larson & Richards (1998)


More time with parents during school week

Feel less free, open, understood

Emotional low point of week

Emotional high, acceptance

Family & Friends in Traditional

Cultures • Pattern around world of increasing time spent

with peers, decreasing time spent with parents

• Substantial gender differences in terms of family

relationships

– Girls spend more time with same-sex adults; more

intimacy with mothers; more contact with female

extended family

• Even in cultures where most adolescents attend

school, the social and emotional balance tilts

toward family; WHY?


Choosing friends: Similarities Selective association promotes smooth relations

• Age

• Gender

• Educational orientation

• Level of achievement, academic plans, attitudes

• Media and leisure preferences

• Music, dress style, sports activities etc

• Participation in risk behavior

• Ethnicity


“When I was younger [my friends and I] just played.

Now we talk over things and discuss problems. Then it

was just a good time. Now you have to be open and

able to talk.” …15 year old boy (Youniss & Smollar, 1985)


Intimacy

• Intimacy = degree to which 2 people share

personal knowledge, thoughts, feelings

• Higher intimacy with adolescent friend than child

– “close friend” around age 10; same-sex; honest

evaluation of faults/merits; mutual attachment

– Involves perspective taking and empathy

– Important for identity formation; accurate self-

evaluation


Intimacy

• Thinking more abstract and complex

• Influences problem solving Thoughts about

abstract qualities (loyalty, affection)

• Awareness and understanding of complex

social relationships (alliances, rivalries, status)

• Involves perspective taking and empathy

• Talking about abstract and complex issues

promotes exchange of personal knowledge

and perspectives = = intimacy

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My friend is….

• Late adolescents and emerging adults describe their closest relationship:

1. Friendly (focus on shared activities) • High friendly, low intimacy

2. Intimate (focus on affection, emotional attachment) • High intimacy, low friendly

3. Integrated (combines friendly and intimate) • Median on both

4. Uninvolved (focus on neither shared activities nor intimacy) • Low on both

(Fischer, 1981)

College students more likely than high school students to be

rated as having an intimate or integrated friendship relationship.

Gender and Intimacy Females Males

Tend to have more intimate

friendships than boys

Tend to have less intimate

friendships than girls

More likely to place higher

value on talking together as

a friendship component

More likely to emphasize

shared activities as the basis

of friendship

What might be the origins of these differences from

a social roles perspective?


“Friends’ Influence” ? • “Friends’ influence” a more accurate description

• Effect of entire peer group weak

• Peers more or less anonymous with less

emotional/social importance

• Friends’ influence is not always toward negative

behaviors

• Discouraging risk behaviour

• Emotional support and help coping

• When friendship is high quality, influence may

be magnified

Influence on Risk Behavior • Finding: A correlation exists between rates of

risk behavior self-reported and reported for

their friends

– Substance use, criminal behaviour

• Can we conclude that adolescents’ behavior is

influenced/caused by their friends? Why or why

not?


Recall: Gardner & Steinberg Research Issue: Limitations 1. Self-report

• Adolescent egocentrism may be associated

with adolescents’ perceiving more similarity

between themselves and others than actually

exists

• Inflates the correlation

2. Selective Association

• People tend to choose friends that are similar

to themselves (not influence, just similarity in

risk tendency)


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Other Research • Selection and influence contribute to similarities in

risk behaviours

– Adolescents similar before they become friends; if they

stay friends they become more similar

– Becoming more similar can increase or decrease rates

of risk behaviour

• Adolescents rated pressure to take risks as

weakest area of influence

– Grooming, dress style, school activities rated higher

– Pressure against participation in risks more common


Friends: Support & Nurturance • Informational Support – guidance in personal problems

“What should I do? Should I ask Jimi to go out with me?”

• Instrumental Support – help with tasks “Thanks for helping me with my math homework”

• Companionship Support – companions in social activities “Let’s go to the game together – that way we can sit together.”

• Esteem Support – giving congrats, encouragement

“Don’t worry about it, you’re the best guitar player here. You’ll win the songwriting contest next time.”

• Positively associated with psychological health; negatively associated with depression and disturbance


Close friends, Cliques & Crowds • Cliques

– Small groups of friends who know each

other well, do things together, and form a

regular social group

• Crowds

– Larger, reputation-based groups of

adolescents who are not necessarily friends

and do not necessarily spend time together


5 Types of School Crowds


1. Elites (“the plastics”, preppies)

2. Athletes (jocks)

3. Academics (brains, nerds)

4. Deviants (burnouts)

5. Others (normals, nobodies)

• Within each are cliques and close friends

• Provide setting for social interactions and friendships; implications for identity

Sarcasm & Ridicule • As complex thinking increases so does

appreciation and use of sarcasm

• Ridicule a sharper form of sarcasm

• More common in early and mid-adolescence

• Critical evaluations of one another a typical part of social interactions (“antagonist interaction”)

• Directed at members within group and outside group


Sarcasm & Ridicule

• Promotes dominance hierarchy (Regina George)

• Reduces non-conformity and increases group cohesion

• Directed at outsiders, clarifies group boundaries

• Eases anxiety by directing attention to others – Part of the process of sorting out who you are

• In other cultures also directed at adults, reinforces cultural standards of behaviour – Example


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Mean Girls: Relational Aggression

• Non-physical forms of aggression:

– Gossiping

– Spreading rumors

– Snubbing

– Excluding

• Covert, indirect form of aggression

common amongst girls

• Aggressors prone to depression and

eating disorders Copyright © Pearson Education 2013

Changes in Crowd Structure During Adolescence

What do you notice about these structures into the higher grades?

2 5

8+ Copyright © Pearson Education 2013

Figure 8.3 – Brown, Mory, & Kinney, 1994

Crowds: Developmental Changes

Age Group Crowd Characteristics

Middle School

(Grades 6–8)

-less differentiated (two main groups – the in-crowd and the out-crowd)

Early High School

(Grades 9–10)

-become more differentiated

-more influential

Later High School

(Grades 11–12)

-become yet more differentiated

-more niches for people to “fit into”

-less hierarchical and less influential

Crowds: Developmental Changes

• As crowds become more differentiated in mid-

adolescence = more central to thinking about

social world

• Make judgments (social, moral) about others in crowd

• Finding: Despite no evidence, it’s OK to punish the

entire group for a transgression if it was consistent

with stereotypical perceptions about the group

• By late adolescence crowds less important in

defining social status and social perception

• Less likely to accept crowd label

• Identities are better established

• Impediment to develop individualism, independence

and uniqueness

In Traditional Cultures…

• There is often only one adolescent peer crowd in the community

• The peer crowd is less strictly age-graded (variety of ages in the crowd)

• Dormitory Life: adolescents sleep and spend leisure time in a separate dwelling, and typically work and eat meals with parents during the day

• Men’s House Life: male adolescents live together with widowed or divorced men in a multi-age dormitory arrangement


Adolescence to Emerging Adulthood

• End of formal education (late teens/early 20s) marks transition – Daily social interaction at school over

• Workplace – No age-grading

– Hierarchy of authority already exists; no anxiety about finding place in social hierarchy

• Dunphy: Transitions follow stages


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• Stage 1: Same-sex cliques – Spend little/no time with opposite sex

• Stage 2: Boys’ and girls’ cliques spend some time together – Spend leisure time “near each other”, watching each other

• Stage 3: Gender cliques break down as clique leaders form romantic relationships

• Stage 4: Other clique members follow suit – Mid-teens

• Stage 5: Males and females pair off in more serious relationships – Disintegration of cliques and crowds

(Dunphy, 1963)



Stage model is 50 years old. Does it still apply?

• Some new research confirms stage 1 and 2

• Marriage is later – 1960’s age 20-22 versus today 26-28

– Intimate pairings by stage 5 end of high school not likely

• Still an increase in time spent with other-sex groups from grade 9-12

• Likely to maintain membership in same-sex or mixed-sex group well into emerging adulthood


Time Spent in Other-Sex Groups or Pairs


Figure

8.4

From Csikszenthmilalyi & Larson (1984): Being Adolescent: Conflict & Growth in the Teenage Years, p. 183. Copyright © 1983 by Basic Books, Inc., a member of Perseus Books, LLC

Popularity in Adolescence: Sociometry

What makes some adolescents popular and others not?

• Sociometry: a research method in which students rate the social status of other students


Who is popular?

Who is unpopular?

Who do you like best?

Who would you like to be paired

with on a class project?

Popularity in Adolescence • Unpopular adolescents lack social skills, deficit in

social information processing

1. Rejected – actively disliked by peers Teen ignores what others want, selfish, belligerent,

*interpret others’ actions incorrectly (e.g., as hostile) and respond inappropriately (e.g., with aggression)

2. Neglected – have few friends (not enemies); the nobodies

Teens is shy, avoids group activities

• Aggression is NOT always associated with unpopularity – Controversial students, high in aggressiveness, may be

strongly liked AND strongly disliked by different people Copyright © Pearson Education 2013

Interventions for Unpopularity

Adolescent Intervention Focus

Neglected learning the social skills needed for making

friends; how to enter, attract positive

attention

-instruction, modeling, role play

Rejected learning how to control and manage anger

and aggressiveness

- stop, go over problem, set positive goal,

identify possible solutions, anticipate, choose

• Popularity tends to be consistent from childhood through

adolescence

• Being unpopular reduces chances of inclusion in the kinds of

social interaction that would help them develop social skills

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Bullying

• Extreme form of peer rejection

1. Aggression (e.g., physical or verbal)

2. Repetition (e.g., patterns over time)

3. Power imbalance (e.g., the bully has higher

peer status than the victim)

What is the negative impact of bullying on the

bullies and the bullied?

• A new variation of bullying is cyberbullying


Youth Culture: Values – Young people constitute a group as a whole,

separate form children & adults with distinct culture

– Youth culture created and spread by young people

themselves

– Parsons: distinguishing values are hedonism,

irresponsibility (opposite of adults);

• Temporary “rite of passage”; ends with marriage

• *Proposed in 1964 so the period lasts longer and mainly

experienced by emerging adults

– Matza: subterranean values of hedonism,

excitement, adventure (shared with adults but

expressed differently)

Youth Culture: Style 3 essential components of the style of youth culturel

symbolizes certain values and beliefs

1. Image –dress, hairstyle, tattoos, jewelry, other

aspects of appearance

2. Demeanor – distinctive forms of gesture, gait,

posture

3. Argot – certain vocabulary and way of speaking (includes profanity)

• Examples from today and past generations???


Why do Youth Cultures Exist?

– A way of constructing a coherent and meaningful

worldview in a society that fails to provide one

– Parsons: arise in societies that allow young people

extended period between independence from

parents and adult responsibilities

– Brake: experimentation with different identities

– Argued different youth subcultures exist (e.g.,

jocks, geeks) and participate to different degrees

• geeks/normals are conventional and do not participate

in pursuit of pleasure that defines the culture


Tech Change & Youth Culture

1. Postfigurative Culture

• Youth learn from their elders (e.g., traditional farming)

2. Cofigurative Culture

• Learning from both elders and peers

3. Prefigurative Culture

• Learning is full circle

• Chanté teaches her grandmother how to use the

Internet

(Mead, 1928)

Rate of technological change in a culture influences the

degree to which adolescents receive teachings from adults or

from each other

Documents

Adolescence and Emerging Adulthood: A Cultural …ion.uwinnipeg.ca › ~clark › teach › zzArchives › 3230 › cc08...social world • Make judgments (social, moral) about others