This article reviews empirical and theoretical contributions to a multidisciplinary understanding of peer influence processes in adolescence over the past decade. Five themes of peer influence research from this decade were identified, including a broadening of the range of behaviors for which peer influence occurs, distinguishing the sources of influence, probing the conditions under which influence is amplified/attenuated (moderators), testing theoretically based models of peer influence processes (mechanisms), and preliminary exploration of behavioral neuroscience perspectives on peer influence. This review highlights advances in each of these areas, underscores gaps in current knowledge of peer influence processes, and outlines important challenges for future research.

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Beyond Homophily: A Decade of Advances in Understanding Peer Influence Processes

In this article, we examine the construct of peer contagion in childhood and adolescence and review studies of child and adolescent development that have identified peer contagion influences. Evidence suggests that children's interactions with peers are tied to increases in aggression in early and middle childhood and amplification of problem behaviors such as drug use, delinquency, and violence in early to late adolescence. Deviancy training is one mechanism that accounts for peer contagion effects on problem behaviors from age 5 through adolescence. In addition, we discuss peer contagion relevant to depression in adolescence, and corumination as an interactive process that may account for these effects. Social network analyses suggest that peer contagion underlies the influence of friendship on obesity, unhealthy body images, and expectations. Literature is reviewed that suggests how peer contagion effects can undermine the goals of public education from elementary school through college and impair the goals of juvenile corrections systems. In particular, programs that "select" adolescents at risk for aggregated preventive interventions are particularly vulnerable to peer contagion effects. It appears that a history of peer rejection is a vulnerability factor for influence by peers, and adult monitoring, supervision, positive parenting, structure, and self-regulation serve as protective factors.

Peer Contagion in Child and Adolescent Social and Emotional Development

This article proposes an evolutionary model of risky behavior in adolescence and contrasts it with the prevailing developmental psychopathology model. The evolutionary model contends that understanding the evolutionary functions of adolescence is critical to explaining why adolescents engage in risky behavior and that successful intervention depends on working with, instead of against, adolescent goals and motivations. The current article articulates 5 key evolutionary insights into risky adolescent behavior: (a) The adolescent transition is an inflection point in development of social status and reproductive trajectories; (b) interventions need to address the adaptive functions of risky and aggressive behaviors like bullying; (c) risky adolescent behavior adaptively calibrates over development to match both harsh and unpredictable environmental conditions; (d) understanding evolved sex differences is critical for understanding the psychology of risky behavior; and (e) mismatches between current and past environments can dysregulate adolescent behavior, as demonstrated by age-segregated social groupings. The evolutionary model has broad implications for designing interventions for high-risk youth and suggests new directions for research that have not been forthcoming from other perspectives.

https://evolution-institute.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/DP-Ellis-et-al-2012-risky-adolescent-behavior.pdf

The evolutionary basis of risky adolescent behavior: Implications for science, policy, and practice

Considerable evidence supports the hypothesis that peer relationships influence the growth of problem behavior in youth. Developmental research consistently documents the high levels of covariation between peer and youth deviance, even controlling for selection effects. Ironically, the most common public interventions for deviant youth involve segregation from mainstream peers and aggregation into settings with other deviant youth. Developmental research on peer influence suggests that desired positive effects of group interventions in education, mental health, juvenile justice, and community programming may be offset by deviant peer influences in these settings. Given the public health policy issues raised by these findings, there is a need to better understand the conditions under which these peer contagion effects are most pronounced with respect to intervention foci and context, the child's developmental level, and specific strategies for managing youth behavior in groups.

Peer influence in children and adolescents: crossing the bridge from developmental to intervention science.

Thomas J. Dishion and Elizabeth A. Stormshak describe their family-centered, ecological approach, which engages children, adolescents, and their families; may be used as a periodic preventive checkup and as a more intensive intervention; and may be delivered in community settings such as schools in order to have the greatest public health impact. The authors demonstrate how they examine psychopathology in children and adolescents in the context of the ecology (families, peer groups, communities, and schools) in which they live. They present their empirically derived approach and illustrate how developmentally and culturally relevant interventions are shaped. An ecological approach works within a health maintenance teamwork. Given individual variation in vulnerability to environmental stress, periodic assessments and interventions are used to prevent, treat, or reduce harm associated with problem behavior and emotional distress. The literature reveals promising findings, in that the highest-risk youth are more likely to respond well to ecologically based interventions.

Intervening in Children's Lives: An Ecological, Family-Centered Approach to Mental Health Care

The relationships of deviant talk and role taking during peer interaction, association with deviant peers, and growth in overt and covert conduct problems during kindergarten and first grade were examined in a community sample of 267 boys and girls. At entry to kindergarten, high levels of overt and covert conduct problems predicted association with deviant peers, and deviant peer association predicted deviant talk and role taking during peer interaction during kindergarten. Association with deviant peers, and deviant talk and role taking predicted growth in overt and covert conduct problems on the playground, in the classroom, and at home during kindergarten and first grade. Peer processes associated with growth in conduct problems that escalate rapidly during late childhood and adolescence appear to occur in earlier childhood. These peer processes may play a central role in the evolution of conduct problems to include covert as well as overt forms.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0954579405050194

Deviancy training and association with deviant peers in young children: ocurrence and contribution to early-onset conduct problems.

The application of matching law-response choice paradigm in longitudinal research to identify social environmental and organismic factors that increment risk for the development of maladaptive behavior is described. The fit of data to the matching relation can be used to specify environmental contingencies for problem behavior that may be targeted in preventive and clinical interventions. Deviations in the fit of the data from that predicted by the matching relation can also be used to identify sources of variability in individuals' responsiveness to standardized, contingency-based interventions. The proposed formulation is described in relation to the development and treatment of early-onset conduct problems. Keywords: Matching law, conduct problems, developmental risk research, intervention. ********** This report describes how the matching law-response choice paradigm derived from operant research can be applied in longitudinal research to identify social environmental variables that increment risk for the development of maladaptive behavior. This information can, in turn, be used to powerfully specify environmental contingencies in preventive and clinical interventions to ameliorate problem behavior. This report additionally considers how between-individual differences in temperament, learning history, and similar person variables may work in concert with environmental contingencies to affect risk for problem behavior. Between-individual variation in observed response choice from that predicted by the matching law can be used to identify individuals who are less responsive to contingency-based intervention strategies. Individual differences in sensitivity to experienced contingencies may account for baseline X intervention variation in behavior change outcomes, and consequently supply information about creating increasingly effective and robust preventive and clinical interventions. This formulation is detailed in the context of the development of antisocial behavior. A Reinforcement Account of the Development of Antisocial Behavior Individuals whose development is characterized by early-onset, life-course persistent antisocial behavior contribute substantially to the incidence of multiple problem behaviors during adolescence and adulthood, including criminal activity, drug misuse and abuse, domestic violence, and early child-bearing (Reid, Patterson, & Snyder, 2002). Consequently, efforts to identify malleable social-environmental variables occurring during childhood that increment risk for such trajectories are critical to the development of effective preventive and clinical interventions (Reid & Eddy, 1997). Research suggests that reinforcement contingencies operating in familial (Snyder & Stoolmiller, 2002), peer (Snyder, 2002), and classroom (Walker, Horner, Sugai, Bullis, Sprague, Bricker, & Kaufman, 1996) environments are one source of risk for early appearing conduct problems. This has led to a number of empirically validated, contingency-based interventions to ameliorate risk, including parent training (Brestan & Eyberg, 1998), playground monitoring (Stoolmiller, Eddy, & Reid, 2000), and classroom management (Gorman-Smith, 2003). Given that the theoretical mechanisms underlying environmental risk and intervention effectiveness are thought to involve social reinforcement contingencies, remarkably little research has focused on explicitly testing whether reinforcement mechanisms account for developmental risk or serve as mediators of intervention effects (for exceptions, see Dishion, Spracklen, Andrews, & Patterson, 1996; Schrepferman & Snyder, 2002; Snyder & Patterson, 1995). As such, reinforcement theory is really being applied in a metaphorical manner. Much greater effort has been spent on examining the effectiveness, efficacy and sustainability of interventions for antisocial behavior (Kellam & Langevin, 2003). …

The application of response allocation matching to understanding risk mechanisms in development: The case of young children's deviant talk and play, and risk for early-onset antisocial behavior.

Jessica Oeser

Papers

Deviancy training and association with deviant peers in young children: ocurrence and contribution to early-onset conduct problems.

The application of response allocation matching to understanding risk mechanisms in development: The case of young children's deviant talk and play, and risk for early-onset antisocial behavior.