Chapter 13: Peers as Socialization Agents

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Chapter 13 Peers as Socialization Agents

• Sociability
• Peer acceptance lots of issues
• Friendship
• Peer influence how does it work?

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1. Sociability

• Sociability willingness to interact with others
  and to seek their attention or approval

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1. Sociability

• Sociability in preschoolers
• Types of play
• Nonsocial play solitary
• Parallel play side by side, no mutual influence
• Associative play pursue own interests, but may
  share toys
• Cooperative play cooperate and assume reciprocal
  roles toward a shared goal
• Pattern?
• Cognition?

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1. Sociability

• Sociability in middle childhood and
  adolescencetrue peer groups
• What do peer groups do?
• Cliques evolve into crowds.
• Clique abt. 6-8 people
• Crowd several cliques joined together
• What is the most frequent reason for this
  evolution?

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1. Sociability

• What influences the development of sociability?
• Is it heritable?
• How do parents affect it?
• Parents choose a neighborhood.
• Parents may influence peer interactions.
• Parents who directly influence interactions have
  kids who are more disliked by peers.
• Parents enroll kids in preschools.
• Kids who go to preschool are often more
  outgoing.

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1. Sociability

• Indirect parental effects?
• Attachment
• Insecurely attached children may be anxious and
  inhibited.
• Why?

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2. Peer acceptance

• Acceptance is a measure of likability in the eyes
  of peers
• Sociometrics
• Nomination procedures
• Sociograms

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2. Peer acceptance categories

• Popular
• High positive nominations
• Rejected
• High negative nominations
• Neglected
• Low nominations
• Controversial
• Lots of high, lots of low

• Average-status
• Moderate number of liked or disliked
• Bullies
• May also be popular
• Victims
• May get more negative nominations

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2. Peer acceptance correlates

• Parenting styles
• Authoritative
• Correlated with secure attachment and good peer
  relations
• Authoritarian
• Often uncooperative, aggressive, disruptive, may
  be actively disliked

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2. Peer acceptance correlates

• Temperament
• Easy
• Difficult
• Slow-to-warm-up

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2. Peer acceptance correlates

• Cognitive style
• Role-taking skills
• IQ tests

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2. Peer acceptance correlates

• Physical correlates
• Facial attractiveness
• Infants as young as 6 months prefer attractive
  faces
• Body build
• Mesomorphs athletic, muscular
• Endomorphs soft, rounded, chubby
• Ectomorphs thin, linear

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2. Peer acceptance correlates

• Physical correlates
• Timing of puberty
• Early-maturing boys have social advantages.
• More difficult for early-maturing girls.

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2. Peer acceptance more correlates

• Behavioral correlates what can you do to make
  yourself more likable?
• Be calm, outgoing, friendly, resolve disputes in
  a positive way
• What about rejected kids?
• Two kinds
• Rejected-aggressive hostile
• Rejected-withdrawn passive

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2. Peer acceptance improvements!

• How do we improve social skills of these rejected
  kids?
• Reinforce them in a token economy
• Expose to social models
• Coaching
• Demonstrate, practice, feedback

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3. Friendship

• Friendship
• Strong and often enduring relationship between
  two people, char. by loyalty, intimacy, and
  mutual affection
• Self-disclosure
• Correlated with people who are friends/become
  friends

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3. Friendship

• Why are friends helpful?
• Security and support
• Kids who enter kindergarten with friends enjoy
  school more.
• Its easier for kids to adjust to divorce if they
  have friends.

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3. Friendship

• Why are friends helpful?
• Friends help you solve social interaction
  problems.
• Friends stop a conflict before it escalates.
• Friends who play together follow rules and cheat
  less than acquaintances.

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3. Friendship

• Friends help you prepare for adult life.
• Quality of friendship matters.
• Children who have good friends at school tend to
  like school.
• Attachment is again related

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4. Peer influence

• Peer reinforcement
• Peer pressure
• 22-24 month olds discourage cross-gender play
• caving in to a bully
• Modeling
• Social skills may be learned
• Social comparison

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4. Peer influence

• Peers as critics and agents of persuasion
• If a peer challenges your views, you are more
  likely to be persuaded than if a parent
  challenges you.
• Peers as a normative influence conformity
• Peers set norms!
• Conformity
• Going along with peers