Putting the Situation in Context: Variation in Situational Peer Influence by the Behavioral Composition of the Friendship Dyad

• In Event: Contexts, social media and virtual reality: Novel approaches to studying peer offending

Abstract

The association of a young person’s antisocial behavior with that of their peers is one of the most consistent observations in criminology, but our understanding of this relationship has been limited by two factors. First, there has been inadequate attention to causal inference in studies that examine the influence of an actual friend. Second, few studies have simultaneously accounted for (1) the socialization of the young person and their peers, such as the behavioral composition of a friendship network, and (2) the situation in which an opportunity for antisocial behavior emerges. We address these gaps in prior research by conducting an experiment using virtual reality (VR) technology with a sample of young adult friendship dyads. First, we examine the situational influence of an actual friend on a young person’s decision to cheat on a task for monetary gain. Second, we assess the extent to which this situational peer influence varies by the behavioral composition of the dyad (i.e., risky/illegal behaviors and unstructured socializing in the past year). Our study is among the first to examine the causal effect of an actual friend on the decision to engage in antisocial behavior, and to assess variation in these effects across dyads of different behavioral compositions.

Authors

• Wade C Jacobsen, University of Maryland

• Jean-Louis van Gelder, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law

• Yikang Zhang, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law

• Guyu Sun, University of Maryland, College Park