On the individual level, we also identified lack of social skills in the face of peer deviant behavior as a marker of susceptibility to apparent peer influence. This study modified a long-established analogue measure for assessing adolescent social skills (Freedman et al., 1978; Gaffney & McFall, 1981) so that adolescents were asked to respond to challenging peer situations under two conditions: one in which they did not know how others would respond, and a second in which they were first told of another hypothetical peer's relatively deviant response. The degree to which adolescent skill levels decreased from their baseline level after the adolescent heard another teen's deviant response was used as a marker of lack of social skills in the face of deviant peer behavior (as opposed to a lack of skills overall). Teens lacking such skills were found more likely to change their level of substance use over time in accord with their closest friend's level of substance use (e.g., to report relative increases when friend use was high at baseline, and relative decreases when friend use was low).
