Students experience many developmental changes as they experience adolescence. They begin to examine their identities in relation to others and often question their original values and beliefs that have been guiding their behavior. In fact, this susceptibility to peer influence can lead adolescents to engage in risky behavior rather than consider the future consequences of their actions. Despite the large body of literature that delineates peer influence and its effect on adolescent behavior, researchers have yet to examine the impact of high quality friendships on adolescents’ ability to resist to peer influence, and the following effects that this resistance to peer influence has on the youth’s identity and future consideration. Friendship quality was chosen as a moderating variable in the present study, as resistance to peer influence’s effect on identity and future outlook is believed to depend on whether or not the adolescent is in a high quality friendship. Specifically, the present study aims to answer the following research question: Does friendship quality moderate the effect of resistance to peer influence on identity and future outlook in adolescents after controlling for gender, socioeconomic status, and parental involvement in schooling? Many theories support the hypothesis that resistance to peer influence is associated with identity and future consideration, such as Social Comparison Theory, as well as theories associated with motivation. This study analyzed data collected as part of the NICHD–SECCYD comprehensive longitudinal study. Specifically, the effects of resistance to peer influence on identity and future consideration was analyzed in AMOS 22, using a multiple group path model with friendship quality as a moderator.

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<p>Adolescents are highly sensitive to peer influence and thus at higher risk of acquiring problematic behaviors through peer interactions. However, adolescents vary in the extent to which they are influenced by their peers. Resistance to peer influence (RPI), the tendency to refuse undesired peer norms and peer pressure, is one of the crucial explanations for this variation. Prior to designing effective interventive plans to improve RPI, it is important to elucidate the pathways of how RPI develops in childhood and adolescence. Therefore, the present study leverages an adopted-at-birth design and proposes a moderated mediation model to examine whether: 1) child phenotypic impulsivity mediates the association between birth parent impulsivity and adolescent RPI; 2) child phenotypic self-esteem mediates the association between birth parent self-esteem and adolescent RPI; 3) adoptive parent responsiveness buffers the impulsivity pathway; and 4) adoptive parent responsiveness strengthens the self-esteem pathway. The sample consists of 538 family triads, with adopted child, birth parents, and adoptive parents, drawn from a sample of 561 families recruited from 45 adoption agencies in the United States. Birth parents’ impulsivity and self-esteem were measured to index heritable factors for phenotypic impulsivity and self-esteem. Adoptive parents’ responsiveness was measured via home observations. Impulsivity and self-esteem of adopted adolescent were reported by their adoptive parents, whereas RPI was assessed via self-report. Covariates included adolescent sex, age, and the openness to adoption between birth parents and adoptive parents. Results of structural equation models revealed that none of the proposed mediating or moderating pathways reached statistically significant levels. Overall, girls reported higher RPI than boys. For future studies, researchers may want to consider more accurate proxies of genetic factors for impulsivity and self-esteem, and repeated measures designs.</p>

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Prior research suggests that adolescents are drawn to the temptations of immediate rewards to a greater degree than adults, particularly when making decisions in the company of their peers. Dual-systems models of adolescent decision making posit that this immediate reward bias derives from a developmentally normative imbalance in the neural dynamics characterizing the adolescent brain. At a time when the brain's "top-down" cognitive control system is still developing the processing efficiency and functional integration thought to support mature self-regulation in adulthood, changes in "bottom-up" dopaminergic functioning imbue adolescents with heightened sensitivity to environmentally salient rewards. The resulting bias toward under-controlled, reward-driven behavior may be further accentuated by the presence of peers, who are hypothesized to prime incentive processing circuitry to respond to opportunities for immediate rewards. The present study utilized functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine age- and context-related differences between adolescents and adults in neural activity and choice behavior corresponding to the comparative evaluation of sooner-smaller and larger-later rewards in an intertemporal choice task. Half of the participants were scanned in a standard "alone" condition, and half were scanned in a "peer" condition, wherein two same-sex, same-age peers informed the participant that they would be observing task performance from the scanner control room. Although behavioral results did not support the hypothesis that peer presence would accentuate adolescents' bias toward immediate rewards, they confirm that, even when making decisions alone, adolescents are more inclined than adults to sacrifice the added value of a larger future reward in order to receive a smaller reward immediately. Furthermore, fMRI results demonstrate at least three important differences between adolescents and adults in neural activity corresponding to the comparative evaluation of rewards. First, adolescents evince stronger activation than adults in regions implicated in incentive processing (including bilateral caudate), consistent with a bias toward reward-driven behavior. Second, adolescents show stronger functional connectivity between a region in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) whose activity is correlated with impulsive choice and a region in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) shown by prior research to represent the value of decision options. This stronger OFC-vmPFC connectivity among adolescents is consistent with greater affective (OFC) influence on choice valuation and behavior (vmPFC). Finally, adolescents show stronger deactivation of regions implicated in cognitive control (including anterior cingulate and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex) when evaluating rewards with relatively longer delays, consistent with a failure to carefully consider the value of future rewards. Together, results suggest that neurodevelopmental theories of adolescent decision making would be improved by more explicit modeling of age differences in the neural processes underlying evaluation of the temporal properties of rewards. / Psychology

The goal of this study was to examine influence of peers on the popularity goal of early adolescents. Research has demonstrated that there is increased preoccupation with popularity status during early adolescence, but there is little research on what influences youths' actual goal for popularity status (Adler & Adler, 1998). To address this gap in the literature, this research investigated two types of peer influences on adolescents' popularity goal over time: peer group norms and perceived peer norms. Youth are assumed to be influenced by the norms set by their peer groups and by their perceptions of the peer norms for popularity. However, individuals are also assumed to be differentially open to such influence. Therefore, I considered potential moderators for both types of peer influence. Two moderators were explored for the influence of peer group norm on early adolescents' popularity goal over time: the group's popularity status and an individual's own status within the group. For the influence of perceived peer norms on early adolescents' popularity goal over time, I considered an interaction with the peer group's norm for popularity goal. Given the nested nature of the data, with adolescents within peer groups, this study employed Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) analyses to model the effects of peer groups on individuals over time. A total of 232 adolescents in 57 peer groups were included in the study. A series of models were analyzed to test for the influence of peer group norms on adolescents' popularity goal over time. First, the main effect of peer group norm on adolescents' popularity goal was tested. Results demonstrate that the higher the peer group norm, the higher adolescents' popularity goal at Time 2, after controlling for their popularity goal at Time 1. Second, the two-way interaction between peer group norm and groups' popularity status on adolescents' popularity goal was tested. Results indicate that the association between peer group norms and adolescents' popularity goal was significantly moderated by the popularity status of the group. A higher peer group norm was associated with higher popularity goal over time when adolescents were in low popular groups. The association between peer group norm and popularity goal remained relatively stable for those adolescents in high popular groups. Third, I tested the three-way interaction between peer group norms, groups' popularity status, and individual members' status within the group on adolescents' popularity goal over time. Results indicate that the strength of the association between group norm and adolescents' popularity goal was stronger for low status individuals than high status individuals in high popular groups. For those high status individuals, a negative association was found. There was also a positive association between group norm and popularity goal for both low and high status individuals in low popular group with overall higher levels of popularity goal (Time 2) for the low status individuals than for the high status ones in these groups. This study also analyzed models to test for the influence of perceived peer group norms for popularity on adolescents' popularity goal over time. Results indicate there is a positive association between perceived peer norms for popularity and adolescents' popularity goal over time, even after controlling for the influence of peer group norms. There was no significant interaction of perceived peer norms and peer group norms on the adolescents' popularity goal over time. Together, results provide evidence that youths' popularity goal may be influenced by the norms established in their peer group, their groups' popularity status as indicated by the nuclear members' popularity levels, their own status within the group, and their perception of peer norms in the networks. Results suggest that both individual and peer group factors contribute to youths' openness to peer influence and that such factors should be considered when investigating how peers may influence youths' social goals. / Psychology

This study explored the factors that influence public high school students' advanced math course-taking. The factors investigated were parental involvement, peers' educational aspirations, students' own educational aspirations, and math self-concept. These factors were further examined for students in different settings as defined by school demographic variables of urbanicity, minority concentration, and poverty concentration. The study analyzed longitudinal data from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS: 88), using structural equation modeling. Results indicated that parental involvement was much more important than peer influence for students' educational aspirations, and in turn, for their advanced level mathematics course-taking. Parental involvement had a larger effect for students in high-minority, high-poverty urban schools, who, on the average, had taken the smallest number of advanced mathematics courses, compared to students in other settings. Results from the study indicated that African-American students' math self-concepts were not affected by their previous math achievement, suggesting the lack of feedback about their mathematics performance. Recommendations based on the findings included improving parental involvement for all students, especially for students in high-minority, high-poverty urban schools, and providing more feedback to African-American students about their level of performance in mathematics and its consequences in terms of advanced math course-taking. / Ph. D.

Criminologists have long since documented a connection between peer deviance and personal deviance. Some theories suggest that this connection is due to a learning process where individuals may adopt the attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors of those with whom they have significant interactions, such as friends. While individuals may be susceptible to learning anti-social behavior from peers, it is unclear if certain personality characteristics may affect this relationship. The purpose of this study is to determine if differences in specific personality characteristics, such as self-esteem, introversion and extroversion, can have a moderating effect on the pressures to participate in the use of drugs and alcohol that are projected on to individuals during their adolescent years. The findings of the current study can lead to new pathways in substance use prevention and personality assessment in conjunction with risk assessment for juveniles during their middle and high school years. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.S.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2015 / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection