Chunk #18 — PEER INFLUENCE MECHANISMS — Peer Influence Mechanisms: Adolescents Engage in Behaviors That Match the Social Norms of a Valued or Desired Group
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 behavior and adolescents’ own engagement in the behavior (Maddock & Glanz, 2005). Moreover, some behaviors may be associated with high status only at a developmental level in which these behaviors are considered to be unique. For instance, Heilbron and Prinstein (2010) revealed that nonsuicidal self-injurious behaviors were concurrently associated with high peer status (both reputation- and preference-based popularity) in a sample of early adolescents, suggesting that these behaviors might be perceived as a feature of high-status peer groups in this particular context.
