several health-risk behaviors, including maladaptive weight-related behaviors (Rancourt & Prinstein, 2010). Longitudinal work by Juvonen and Ho (2008) demonstrated that middle school students who associated peer-directed aggressive behavior with high social status (coolness) in the first semester of middle school demonstrated increased antisocial behavior in the second year at that school. In addition, research has revealed that adolescents are more likely to engage in these behaviors and endorse deviant-related attitudes if they believe that doing so has been endorsed by high-status peers (Cohen & Prinstein, 2006). If adolescents are led to believe that these same deviant-related attitudes are endorsed by low-status peers, adolescents demonstrate anticonformity, adopting opposite-valenced attitudes (Cohen & Prinstein, 2006). Related research suggests that failure to adhere to dominant or valued social norms may be met with social punishment in the form of exclusion and rejection by peers (Juvonen & Galvan, 2008).
