2-044 - Influencing Friends and Resisting Their Influence: Moderators of Deviant Peer Selection and Socialization

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Friends’ behaviors are a robust predictor of adolescent problem behaviors. However, adolescents differ in their likelihood of selecting problematic friends and adopting their friends’ problem behaviors. Furthermore, some adolescents are more influential than others. This symposium includes three studies that describe the most recent ideas about the individual attributes and characteristics that make some adolescents more (and less) resistant to deviant peer influence and that make some adolescents more influential socializing agents. The first study examines personality traits as a moderator of peer influence related to delinquency in Dutch adolescents. Conscientiousness moderated the association between adolescent’s perceptions of friends’ delinquency and changes in adolescent behaviors, but did not moderate the association involving friends’ self-reported behaviors. The second study examines three forms of social status as moderators of selection and influence involving externalizing and internalizing problems of adolescents from a school in the US. These results suggest that popularity impacts friendship choices somewhat differently than social preference and network centrality. Popularity also emerged as the most robust moderator of peer influence related to externalizing behaviors. The third study examines adolescents with a childhood-onset of risk behavior as particularly influential in the onset of their friends’ antisocial behavior, alcohol and tobacco use. Findings indicated that adolescents with this predisposition for risk behavior are important socializing agents for the onset of tobacco use, but not for antisocial behavior and alcohol use. Collectively, these three papers provide a cohesive symposium that furthers our understanding of the socialization of problem behaviors in adolescent peer networks.

Sub Unit

• Social Relationships

Chair

• William J. Burk, Radboud University Nijmegen

Individual Presentations

• Is Delinquent Behavior Contagious? Adolescents’ Susceptibility to Friends’ Delinquent Behavior Depends on Their Personality Traits - Presenting Author: Meike Slagt, Utrecht University; Judith Semon Dubas, Utrecht University; Maja Dekovic, Utrecht University; Gerbert J. T. Haselager, Radboud University Nijmegen; Marcel van Aken, Utrecht University

• Social Status as a Moderator of Selection and Socialization of Adolescent Externalizing and Internalizing Behavior - Presenting Author: William J. Burk, Radboud University Nijmegen; Antonius H. N. Cillessen, Radboud University Nijmegen

• The Role of Adolescents with a Childhood-Onset of Antisocial Behavior in the Spread of Risk Behavior in Adolescent Peer Networks - Presenting Author: Aart Franken, Utrecht University; Zeena Harakeh, Utrecht University; Jan Kornelis Dijkstra, University of Groningen; Christian Steglich, University of Groningen; Wilma A.M. Vollebergh, Utrecht University