Chunk #17 — PEER INFLUENCE MECHANISMS — Peer Influence Mechanisms: Adolescents Engage in Behaviors That Match the Social Norms of a Valued or Desired Group
Social psychologists’ research convincingly has asserted that social norms are powerful regulators of adolescents’ behavior and can explain peer influence effects (see Berger, 2008; Blanton & Burkley, 2008; Prentice, 2008). Note, however, that although some evidence suggests that adolescents may be influenced toward behaviors that are associated with high status in the peer context, not all adolescents may value popular peers or desire identification with high-status individuals. Some adolescents may be especially influenced toward behaviors that are associated with social norms of peers who occupy a less central position within the larger peer network. For instance, work has suggested that youth with reputations of peer rejection and histories of aggressive behavior may be especially likely to affiliate with deviant peer groups, who actively reject the behavioral norms of the overall peer context and instead adopt a local set of social norms that may be more salient to these adolescents’ identity development (Dishion, Burraston, & Poulin, 2001; Killeya-Jones, Costanzo, Malone, Quinlan, & Miller-Johnson, 2007). Other work has suggested that proximal norms mediate the association between global (i.e., broad) norms for a
