Ostracization in Producing Short-Term Adolescent Peer Relations

• In Event: 30461 - Section on Children and Youth Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 1. Youth and Peer Relationships

Abstract

This study presents a story based on my recollection of a three-day competition camp in which peer ostracization occurred and evolved. I utilize my first-person account as a participant observer to demonstrate the formation and change of adolescent exclusion. This story shows that ostracization may be a necessary step for individuals to set the social structure and acknowledge the “target” in the group early on, through which other adolescents' anxiety over being targeted is reduced in a temporary, ad hoc group. The target of exclusion also depends on abnormality, race, performance, and third-party presence, and the swift ostracization of a target can be a tool for prompt structuring. This study offers a unique, adolescent perspective, which complements existing inquiries on ostracization.

Author

• Jennifer Ma, The Baldwin School