Recent research has offered an additional perspective on the biological origins of susceptibility to peer influence. An fMRI study by Grosbras et al. (2007) identified that when 10-year-old participants were exposed to socially relevant and emotionally evocative stimuli, individuals who scored relatively higher on a self-report measure of resistance to peer influence (RPI; Steinberg & Monahan, 2007) exhibited a different pattern of neural activity compared with children who scored lower on this measure (i.e., children who are less likely to resist peer influences). Specifically, individuals with higher RPI scores showed significantly more connectivity between regions of the brain that process actions of others and areas involved in decision making. Evidence for similar functional connectivity between frontoparietal and prefrontal cortical networks in adolescents (Paus et al., 2008) suggests that resistance to peer influence—as measured by the RPI—is mediated by specific features of the brain.
