Peer Relationships

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Peer Relationships

• How Children Develop (3rd ed.)
• Siegler, DeLoache Eisenberg
• Chapter 13

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I. Whats Special About Peer Relationships?

• Peers are people of approximately the same age
  and status.

• Theorists such as Piaget, Vygotsky, and Sullivan
  have argued that peer relationships provide a
  unique context for cognitive, social, and
  emotional development.
• In their view, the equality, reciprocity,
  cooperation, and intimacy that can develop in
  peer relationships enhance childrens reasoning
  ability and their concern for others.

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Overview

• Friendships
• Status in the Peer Group
• Role of Parents in Childrens Peer Relationships

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Friendships
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Friendships

• Intimate, reciprocated positive relationships
  between people
• The degree to which the conditions of friendship
  become evident in peer interactions increases
  with age during childhood.

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Early Peer Interactions

• Some researchers have argued that children can
  have friends by or before age 2.
• Even 12- to 18-month-olds seem to select and
  prefer some children over others.
• Starting at around 20 months of age, children
  also increasingly initiate more interactions with
  some children than with others.

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Early Peer Interactions

• By the age of 2, children begin to develop
  skills that allow greater complexity in their
  social interactions.
• These include imitating other
  peoples social behavior, engaging in cooperative
  problem solving, and reversing roles during play.
• These more complex skills tend to be in greater
  evidence in the play of friends than of
  nonfriends.

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Developmental Changes

• Between ages 6 and 8, children define friendship
  primarily on the basis of actual activities and
  view friends in terms of rewards and costs.
• Between the early school years and adolescence,
  children increasingly experience and define their
  friendships in terms of mutual liking, closeness,
  and loyalty.

• More than younger friends, adolescents use
  friendship as a context for self-exploration and
  working out personal problems.

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Dimensions on Which Elementary School Children
Often Evaluate Their Friendships
Dimension Indicators
Validation and Caring Makes me feel good about my ideas.Tells me I am good at things.
Conflict Resolution Make up easily when we have a fight.Talk about how to get over being mad.
Conflict and Betrayal Argue a lot.Doesnt listen to me.
Help and Guidance Help each other with schoolwork a lot.Loan each other things all the time.
Companionship and Recreation Always sit together at lunch.Do fun things together a lot.
Intimate Exchange Always tell each other our problems.Tell each other secrets.
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Functions of Friendships

• Friends can provide a source of emotional
  support, validation and security.
• Can help to develop social and cognitive skills
  by providing feedback.
• The support of friends can be particularly
  important during difficult transition periods.
• Friendships may also serve as a buffer against
  unpleasant experiences.
• Among children who were victimized by peers,
  children who showed increases in adjustment
  problems a year later were those who did not have
  a reciprocated best friendship (i.e., a
  friendship in which two children view each other
  as best or close friends).

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Possible Costs of Friendships

• In elementary school, children who have
  antisocial and aggressive friends tend to exhibit
  antisocial and aggressive tendencies themselves.
• However, it is unclear whether having aggressive
  friends actually causes children and adolescents
  to behave aggressively or if aggressive children
  gravitate toward one another.

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Possible Costs of Friendships

• Whether having an aggressive friend affects a
  childs own behavior over time may depend on the
  childs baseline level of aggression.
• Young adolescents who are somewhat aggressive and
  disruptive, but who do not yet exhibit a high
  level of such behavior, seem to be the most
  vulnerable to the negative influence of
  aggressive and disruptive friends.

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Possible Costs of Friendships

• The extent to which friends use of drugs and
  alcohol may put an adolescent at risk seems to
  depend, in part, on the nature of the
  child-parent relationship.
• If the adolescents parents are authoritative in
  their parenting rather than cold and detached,
  the adolescent is more likely to be protected
  against peer pressure to use drugs.

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Choice of Friends

• By age 7, children tend to like peers who are
  similar to themselves in the cognitive maturity
  of their play and in their aggressive behavior.
• Fourth- to eighth-grade friends are more similar
  than nonfriends in prosocial behaviors,
  antisocial behavior, peer acceptance, and
  academic motivation.
• Adolescent friends tend to have similar
  interests, attitudes, and behavior.

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Status in the Peer Group
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Measurement of Peer Status

• The most common method used to assess peer status
  is to ask children to rate how much they like or
  dislike each of their classmates or to nominate
  some of those whom they like the most or least,
  or whom they do or dont like to play with.
• The information from these procedures is used to
  calculate childrens sociometric status a
  measurement of the degree to which children are
  liked or disliked by their peers as a group.

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Characteristics Associated with Sociometric
Status

• Peer status is affected by the childs
• Attractiveness
• Athletic ability
• Social behavior
• Personality
• Cognitions about self and others
• Goals when interacting with peers
• Peer status is also influenced by the status of
  the childs friends.

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Common Sociometric Categories
Category Description
Popular Children who receive many positive nominations and few negative nominations.
Rejected Children who receive many negative nominations and few positive nominations.
Neglected Children who are low in social impact (i.e., they receive few positive or negative nominations). These children are not especially liked or disliked by peers they simply go unnoticed.
Average Children are designated as average if they receive an average number of both positive and negative nominations.
Controversial Children who receive many positive and many negative nominations. They are noticed by peers and are liked by a quite a few children and disliked by quite a few others.
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Popular Children

• A category of sociometric status that refers to
  children or adolescents who are viewed
  positively by many peers and are viewed
  negatively by few peers.
• These individuals...
• Tend to be skilled at initiating interactions
  with peers and at maintaining positive
  relationships.
• Tend to be cooperative, friendly, sociable, and
  sensitive to others.
• Are not prone to intense negative emotions and
  regulate themselves well.
• Tend to be less aggressive than average children.

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Popular Children

• Important to differentiate between children who
  are popular in terms of sociometric measures and
  those who are perceived by peers as being popular
  with others.
• Individuals with high status in the peer group
  are often labeled popular by peers, but tend to
  be above average in aggression and use it to
  obtain their goals.
• The relationship between perceived popularity and
  aggression is especially high in adolescence,
  particularly among high-status girls, who may use
  relational aggression to hurt others by spreading
  rumors or withholding friendship.

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Rejected Children

• A category of sociometric status that refers to
  children or adolescents who are liked by few
  peers and disliked by many peers.
• A majority of rejected children tend to fall into
  two categories

Aggressive-Rejected
Withdrawn-Rejected
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Aggressive-Rejected Children

• Are especially prone to hostile and threatening
  behavior, physical aggression, disruptive
  behavior, and delinquency.
• About 40 to 50 of rejected children tend to be
  aggressive.
• When they are angry or want their own way, many
  rejected children also engage in relational
  aggression.
• Aggressive behavior often underlies rejection by
  peers.
• However, not all aggressive peers are rejected
  some develop a network of aggressive friends.

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Withdrawn-Rejected Children

• Are socially withdrawn, wary, and often timid
• Make up about between 10-25 of the rejected
  category
• Not all socially withdrawn children are rejected
  or socially excluded.
• Rather, it appears that withdrawn behavior
  combined with negative actions or emotions is
  correlated with rejection, although this pattern
  may change with age.

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Social Cognition and Social Rejection

• Rejected children, particularly those who are
  aggressive, tend to differ from more popular
  children in their social motives and their
  processing of information in social situations.
• Are also more likely to attribute hostile motives
  to others in negative social situations and to
  have more difficulty than other children in
  finding constructive solutions to difficult
  social situations.

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Neglected Children

• A category of sociometric status that refers to
  children or adolescents who are infrequently
  mentioned as liked or disliked.
• Display relatively few behaviors that differ
  greatly from those of many other children
• Appear to be neglected primarily because they are
  not noticed

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Controversial Children

• A category of sociometric status that refers to
  children or adolescents who are liked by quite a
  few peers and are disliked by quite a few others
• Tend to have characteristics of both popular and
  rejected children.
• Some peers view such children as arrogant and
  snobbish.

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Fostering Childrens Peer Acceptance

• Social skills training is a common approach for
  assisting rejected children.
• Based on the assumption that rejected children
  lack social skills that promote positive
  interaction with peers.
• These deficits are viewed as occurring at three
  levels
• Lack of social knowledge
• Performance problems
• Lack of appropriate monitoring and self-evaluation

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Fostering Childrens Peer Acceptance

• Some social skills training programs teach
  children
• To pay attention to what is going on in a group
  of peers
• To rehearse skills related to participating with
  peers
• To cooperate
• To communicate in positive ways
• For aggressive-rejected children, some training
  programs focus on changing faulty social
  perception.

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Peer Status as a Predictor of Risk

• Rejected children, especially those who are
  aggressive, are more likely than their peers to
  have difficulties in the academic domain.
• The tendency of rejected children to do more
  poorly in school worsens over time.
• Approximately 25 to 30 of rejected children
  drop out of school compared with 8 or less of
  other children.

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Relation of Childrens Sociometric Status to
Academic and Behavioral Problems
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Problems with Adjustment

• Children who are rejected in the elementary
  school years, especially aggressive-rejected
  boys, are at risk for externalizing symptoms
  (i.e., showing outwardly expressed behavior
  problems such as aggression, delinquency,
  attention disorders, conduct disorder, and
  substance abuse).
• These symptoms appear to increase between grades
  six and ten.

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Problems with Adjustment

• Peer rejection may also be associated with
  internalizing problems (i.e., internally
  expressed problems such as loneliness,
  depressive, withdrawn behavior, and
  obsessive-compulsive behavior).
• In one study, both boys and girls who were
  assessed as rejected in third grade were at risk
  for developing internalizing problems years
  later.
• Children in Western cultures who are very
  withdrawn but nonaggressive with peers are also
  at risk for internalizing problems.

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Problems with Adjustment

• Children, especially males, who are socially
  withdrawn with familiar peers may differ in
  important ways from their peers even in
  adulthood.
• Men who were withdrawn children have been
  observed to have less stable careers and
  marriages than their peers, and females who were
  withdrawn as girls have been characterized as
  less likely than other women to have careers
  outside the home.

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Problems with Adjustment

• Rejected children who are victimized, that is,
  who are targets of their peers aggressive and
  demeaning behavior, may be especially at risk for
  loneliness and other internalizing behavior.
• Victimized children tend to be aggressive as well
  as withdrawn and anxious.

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The Role of Parents in Childrens Peer
Relationships
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Relations Between Attachment and Competence with
Peers

• Security of the parent-child relationship is
  linked with quality of peer relationships.

• Probably arises from both the early and the
  continuing effect that parent-child attachment
  has on the quality of the childs overall social
  behavior
• Also possible that characteristics of children,
  such as sociability, influence both the quality
  of attachments and the quality of relationships
  with peers

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Quality of Parent-Child Interactions and Peer
Relationships

• Parent-child interactions are associated with
  peer relationships in much the same way that
  attachment patterns are.
• Mothers of popular children are more likely than
  mothers of less popular children to discuss
  feelings with their children and to use warm
  control, positive verbalizations, reasoning, and
  explanations.
• Fathers parenting practices in general appear to
  be somewhat less closely related to childrens
  social competence and sociometric status.

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Parental Beliefs and Behaviors

• Parents of children who are socially competent
  with peers are more likely to
• Believe that they should play an active role in
  teaching their children social skills
• Provide opportunities for peer interaction

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Gatekeeping, Coaching, and Modeling

• Parents act as gatekeepers, controlling
  opportunities for peer interactions.

• Preschoolers whose parents arrange and oversee
  opportunities for them to interact with peers
  tend to be more positive and social with peers
  and to have more companions so long as their
  parents are not overly controlling during the
  interactions.

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Gatekeeping, Coaching, and Modeling

• Preschool children tend to be more popular if
  their parents effectively coach them in how to
  deal with unfamiliar peers.

• Parents also influence their childrens
  competence with peers by modeling socially
  competent and incompetent behaviors.