The degree to which teens adopt their friends' behavior regarding substance use was not just linked to qualities of the teen's family environment, but also to qualities of the close friend involved. Specifically, adolescents with close friends who were well-liked within the broader peer group were far more likely to have their future substance use predicted by their friend's current level of use. One explanation for these findings is that friends who are well-liked have both a high degree of social caché and a high degree of social skill. This would make them particularly attractive as potential role models to other teens, and such a modeling process may underlie the effects observed. Notably, the particular sociometric measure used was a preference-based (as opposed to a status-based measure). This is relevant in that status-based measures (i.e., who teens think of as being the ‘popular kids’) have previously been associated with dominance-behaviors, whereas preference-based measures (i.e., who teens name as teens with whom they would actually like to spend time) have not (Prinstein, in press). Thus, the phenomenon observed does not appear
