HDFS 3103 - Exam 2

Today, young people (starting at least at age 5 [kindergarten]), sometimes as early as age 1 [daycare]) ___________________________ spending much less or no time with people outside of their own age.

spend and extraordinary amount of time with peers their own age

Adolescence is _____ age segregated.​

highly

Why did high age segregation in adolescence happen?​

The spread of compulsory education​

Peer Groups

Groups of individuals of approximately the same age.​

Age Grading

The process of grouping individuals within social institutions (e.g., schools) on the basis of age

Baby Boom

The period following World War II, during which the number of infants born was extremely large​

Peer Groups - Less Industrialized Societies (Kinship-Based)​

• Expected adult behavior depends on family​

• People from different families are often expected to live by very different expectations and regulations.​

• Socialization of adolescents is best accomplished in family groups.​

Peer Groups - Modern Societies

• All individuals expected to learn the same set of norms​

• Rules governing behavior apply equally to all members of the community.​

• Socialization of adolescents is not limited to the family.​

• Society has universal norms for many activities.​

• Need for universal school-based education creates age-segregated peer groups.​

Margaret Mead

The best way to socialize adolescents for adulthood depends on the speed of society’s changes (prefigurative, postfigurative, and configurative cultures)​

Postfigurative Cultures

Cultures in which the socialization of young people is done primarily by adults; slow technological advancement (e.g., Sambria in Papau New Guinea)​

Configurative Cultures

Cultures in which young people are socialized both by adults and by each other.​

Prefigurative Cultures

Cultures in which society is changing so quickly that adults are frequently socialized by young people, rather than the reverse (e.g., Adults taking classes on how computers work, but kids already know​)​​​

There is a sharp ______ during adolescence in the amount of time individuals spend with peers.​

increase

Crowds

Reputation-based, large, loosely organized groups of young people, composed of several cliques and typically organized around a common shared activity. ​In these groups, adolescents typically form their identity​ (primary purpose is to develop social and personal identity). Types can include “jocks,” “brains,” “nerds,” “populars,” and “druggies.” Changing membership can be very difficult

What causes peer groups to change during adolescence?

• Puberty stimulates adolescents’ interest in romantic relationships and distances them from their parents.​

• The cognitive changes of adolescence permit a more sophisticated understanding of social relationships.​

• Changes in social definition may stimulate changes in peer relations as a sort of adaptive response.​

Cliques

Small, tightly knit groups of between 2 and 12 friends, generally of the same sex and age​. Provides the main social context in which adolescents interact with one another.​ More about learning social skills, not identity​

On average, ______ girls have more tightly-knit friendship groups than other adolescents, whereas Black boys; cliques are the least cohesive.

White

Romance Changing Peer Groups - Early Adolescence

Activities revolve around same-sex cliques. As romantic interest builds, but before romantic relationships begin, boys’ and girls’ cliques come together.​

Romance Changing Peer Groups - Middle Adolescence

Mixed-sex and mixed-age cliques become more prevalent. Peer group eventually is entirely mixed-sex cliques.​

Romance Changing Peer Groups - Late Adolescence

Peer crowds begin to disintegrate [no longer as important]​. Couples begin to split off from larger group.​ Structure of peer group changes during adolescence, paralleling the adolescent’s development of intimacy.​

Changes in Crowds

• Adolescents become more consciously aware of the crowd structure of their school and their place in it.​

• Crowd structure becomes more differentiated, more permeable, and less hierarchical, which allows adolescents more freedom to change crowds and enhance their status.

The Waxing and Waning of Crowds​

• By ninth grade, there is nearly universal agreement among students about their school’s crowd structure, and the strength of peer group influence is very high.​

• Both decline between 9th and 12th grades. ​

• The decline is also related to adolescents’ developing sense of identity​

• Older adolescents may feel that being part of a crowd is stifling.​

The social world of adolescence can be classified along two dimensions:

• How involved they are in the institutions controlled by adults such as school and extracurricular activities.​

• How involved they are in the informal, peer culture.​

Reference Groups

A group against which an individual compares themself.​

How do crowds act as reference groups?

They provide their members with an identity in the eyes of others.​ Adolescents judge one another on the basis of the company they keep, and they become branded on the basis of the people they hang out with.​

Self-esteem is _____ among students who are identified with peer groups that have relatively more status in their school.​

higher

How are adolescents’ behaviors affected by their crowd membership?

• They often imitate the crowd leader behavior.​

• They strive to follow the crowd’s established social norms.​

• They receive reinforcement for following norms.​

• Reinforcement for following a crowd’s norms leads to feeling better about themselves and further incorporating crowd membership into their identity.​

Ethnicity and Crowd Membership

• Evidence indicates that adolescents in multiethnic high schools first divide across ethnic lines, then form into the more familiar adolescent crowds within ethnic groups.​

• Adolescents from one ethnic group are less likely to see crowd distinctions within other ethnic groups than within their own group.​

Cliques are typically composed of people who share certain traits:

• Age.​

• Ethnicity.​

• Sex (at least during early and middle adolescence).

Why is there so much age similarity/segregation in adolescent cliques?

• Age grouping in junior and senior high schools makes it unlikely that an individual will have friends who are substantially older or younger.​

• Age segregation in adolescents’ cliques appears to result mostly from the structure of schools.​

• Adolescents’ online friends are less similar in age than the friends they make in school.​

Sex Segregation During Adolescence

This begins in childhood and continues through most of adolescence, weakening later.​ It is due partly to early shared activities and interests. Also due to concerns about acting in sex-appropriate ways.

Ethnic Segregation During Adolescence

• Ethnicity is not a strong determinant of clique composition in childhood, but by adolescence, it is an enormously powerful determinant.​

• Adolescents are more likely to have friends of the same ethnicity from a different social class than friends from the same social class but different ethnic group.​

• It may be partially due to differential levels of academic achievement of adolescents from different ethnic groups.​

• Both adolescent and parental attitudes are factors.​

Three factors are important for determining clique membership:

• Orientation toward school.​

• Orientation toward the teen culture.​

• Involvement in antisocial activity.

Orientation Toward School

• Adolescents and their friends tend to be similar in their attitudes toward school, school achievement, course selection, and educational plans.​

• Students also influence each other’s academic performance.​

Involvement in Antisocial Activity

Antisocial, aggressive adolescents gravitate toward each other and form deviant peer groups.​

Gangs

Organized peer groups of antisocial individuals.​

Adolescent Gangs vs. Other Peer Groups

• Are at greater risk for many types of problems (e.g., antisocial behavior, psychological distress, exposure to violence, victimization).​

• Adolescent gangs both resemble and differ from other sorts of peer groups.​

• Gang members tend to be more isolated from their family, have more emotional and behavioral problems, and have poorer self-conceptions than other adolescents.

Role of Parents in Cliques/Peer Groups

• Family and peer contexts should not be viewed as separate worlds, for what takes place in one setting often has an impact on what occurs in others.​

• Parents play a role in socializing certain traits in their children.​

• Problematic parent-child relationships lead to the development of an antisocial disposition in the child.​

• Parents manage adolescent’s friendships by monitoring the individuals their child spends time with their, but excessive control can backfire​

• Group-based interventions for adolescents with conduct problems may not work. (iatrogenic effects)

Iatrogenic Effects

Unintended adverse consequences of a treatment or intervention.

Do adolescents develop interests and attitudes because friends influence them, or do people with similar interests and tastes become friends?​

Studies indicate that both selection and socialization are at work across a variety of attitudinal and behavioral domains.

• Socialization is far stronger over day-to-day preferences in things like music than over many of the behaviors that adults worry about.​​

As adolescents get _____, they become increasingly like their friends in patterns of alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana use.​

older

Stability of Adolescent Friendships

• Cliques show only moderate stability over the course of the school year, although they are more stable later in high school.​

• Boys’ friendships tend to be more stable.​

• The most common causes of broken friendships are jealousy, incompatibility, betrayal, and aggression

Examples of Jealousy

“She stole my boyfriend and my closest friends. Then got angry when she found out I slept with him.”​

“This person disliked my boyfriend/date I was going to bring to the prom, which led me to going to the prom with my boyfriend only. I felt that she had ruined my senior life in high school.”

Examples of Incompatibility

“An argument started when my friend would just make really loud noises for no reason, and when I would ask her to stop she would just continue.”​

“This person was loud, annoying, and really had no point of talking because her argument made no sense.”​

“We stopped talking and hanging out for no apparent reason. All of a sudden it just ended.”

Examples of Intimacy-Rule Violations

“We were best friends, but I couldn’t trust her because she lied to me too many times.”​

“In the beginning she seemed like an awesome friend but then, after I started getting close to her, I saw her true colors revealed. She had a very evil way of trying to hurt people and put them down. She was also very untrustworthy.”

Examples of Aggression

“She spread rumors about me because the guy she liked, liked me.”​

“She was with a boy at our senior BBQ and was taking her time when we were in a rush. She and the boy went home with someone else instead of me and didn’t tell me. The next day I confronted her and we got into a fight and suspended from school. That’s when she started spreading rumors.”

Determinants of Popularity and Rejection

• Popular adolescents are more socially skilled than unpopular peers.​

• However, there is a lot of variability among popular teenagers in other characteristics, making it difficult to predict popularity.

2 Types of Popularity

Sociometric popularity and perceived popularity

Sociometric Popularity

How well-liked an individual is.​

Perceived Popularity

How much status or prestige an individual has.​

Some aggressive teenagers are quite _____.​

popular

Some popular boys are extremely:

Aggressive, athletically competent, and average or below average in friendliness, academic competence, and shyness.

Proactive Aggression

Aggressive behavior that is deliberate and planned​

Reactive Aggression

Aggressive behavior that is unplanned and impulsive.

The Dynamics of Popularity

• The “too popular” face the possibility of being the object of other classmates’ meanness. ​

• The advantages of being popular far outweigh the disadvantages.​

• Popular adolescents are more likely to have close and intimate friendships, have an active social life, take part in extracurricular activities, and receive more social recognition.​

• Teenagers whose peers like them, or who merely think that their peers like them, have higher self-esteem both as adolescents and as adults.​

• Having friends outside school can buffer the harmful consequences of having few friends in school.​

Rejected Adolescents - Three types of Unpopular Adolescents: ​

• Those who have problems controlling their aggression.​

• Withdrawn adolescents who are shy, anxious, and inhibited.​

• Those who are both aggressive and withdrawn.​

Relational Aggression

Acts intended to harm another through the manipulation of relationships with others (malicious gossip/rumors). First found in girls, but boys also use it

Being unpopular has negative consequences for an adolescent’s mental health and psychological development:

• Depression​

• Behavior problems.​

• Alcohol use.​

• Interpersonal difficulties.​

• Academic difficulties.​

Hostile Attribution Bias

The tendency to interpret ambiguous interactions with others as deliberately hostile.​

________-_________ children generally display hesitancy, low self-esteem, and lack of confidence that make other children feel uncomfortable, and their submissiveness makes them targets for bullying.

Unpopular-withdrawn

About ___ of students report physical bullying in the past year.​

1/3

Bullying

Involves repetitive, aggressive acts and an imbalance of power between the bully and victim.

Despite the widespread implementation of anti-bullying programs in the United States, rates of both in-school and electronic bullying have ___ declined over time.

not

Victimization from Bullying

• Victims report a range of adjustment problems: low self-esteem, depression, drinking, and sleep difficulties; increased risk taking, drinking, and difficulties in controlling negative emotions, such as anger and aggression; and attempted suicide.​

• Psychological problems have been shown to be the causes of victimization, rather than the consequences.​

• Public victimization is particularly humiliating.​

• Victimization undermines academic performance, school attendance, school engagement, and feelings of academic competence, all of which has cascading effects well beyond adolescence.​

• Many adolescents who report having been victimized also report bullying/victimizing other​

School-based anti-bullying programs have shown _____ but significant effects when implemented during elementary school, but _____ effect after seventh grade.​

small; no

During high school, anti-bullying interventions may actually lead to ___ bullying.

more

Patterns in Bullying

• Onlookers are more likely to intervene and defend the victim in schools in which doing so was expected by other students.​

• A significant amount of bullying occurs outside of school.

4 Categories of Victims

• Mainly passive (e.g., ignoring the bully or walking away) – effective!​

• Mainly aggressive (e.g., fighting back, either physically or verbally).​

• Support seeking (e.g., telling a parent).​

• Those who do a little of everything.​

Cyberbullying

Bullying that occurs over the Internet or via cell phones​

• Can occur around the clock, causing the effects to be worse than in-school bullying.​

• USUALLY NOT ANONYMOUS, most know who is actually cyberbullying them​

• Becomes more common during adolescence.​

• Associated with both emotional and behavioral problems.​

Types of Bullying and Correlations

• Victims of traditional bullying are also bullied online.​

• Perpetrators of traditional bullying also engage in cyberbullying​

Teens with poor peer relationships are more likely to:

• Be low achievers in school.​

• Drop out of high school.​

• Show higher rates of delinquent behavior.​

• Suffer from emotional and mental health problems as adults.

Regardless of the structure or norms of a particular peer group, peers play an extremely ____ role in the psychological development of adolescents.

important

Average U.S. adolescent will spend about _____ hours in school (not counting after-school sports/activities, homework)​

8,000

Secondary Education

Middle schools, junior high schools, and high schools.​

Nearly ____ adolescents are enrolled in school.​

all

Virtually ____ American adolescents ages 14-17 are in school!​

all

Adolescents spend ____ days in school each year.​ Adolescents remain in school for ____ years than in previous eras.​

more; more

Today, more than ___ of individuals this age are in school.​

95%

The rise in secondary education in America was the result of several historical and social trends that converged at the turn of the twentieth century:

• Industrialization.​

• Urbanization.​

• Immigration​.

Mass amounts of technological advances and newcomers meant education could ____ the lives of the people​.

improve

Before compulsory secondary education, high schools were for the ____.

elite

By 1920s, educators reformed curriculum to meet the needs of a diverse and growing population of young people:​

• Focus on practical education (preparation forwork and citizenship). ​

• Presented as necessary part of Americanization.​

Comprehensive High School

An educational institution that evolved during the first half of the twentieth century, offering a varied curriculum and designed to meet the needs of a diverse population of adolescents.​

During the COVID-19 pandemic, maintaining the academic side of school was only one consideration​:

• Schools provide breakfast and lunch to impoverished students.​

• Extracurricular activities keep students supervised during afternoon.​

• Schools are important tools of social intervention.​

Teachers, other school employees, and school districts had come across many problems during the pandemic:

• School employees had concerns about their health and wellbeing​

• Many wanted schools to transition to remote learning.​

• Schools were poorly equipped for this.​

Teachers needed to be coached on how to shift to that learning style:​

• Teacher morale plummeted.​

• In districts that chose to close schools, there were three uncertain options:​

• Put the teachers online in real time and let them do what they were doing.​

• Have teachers prerecord their presentations and allow students to view them whenever it was convenient.​

• Develop new lesson plans and learning activities from scratch.​

Most parents depend on school to occupy and supervise their children during working hours:

• They did not know how they were going to manage work and parenting at the same time.​

• Many who were required to return to their workplaces had no idea how they were going to supervise their children from afar.​

• Those who worked from home had to find a way to share the space and resources with children who attended school remotely.​

• This was particularly taxing for low-income families.​

• Wealthy families were able to avoid these issues.​

The ability to accommodate/change for such an issue caused achievement gaps to ____ wider than they had been previously.​

grow

During the pandemic, the majority _____ to go back to school because they missed their friends, teachers, and extracurricular activities.​

wanted

Students who were switched from in-person to remote instruction were, on average, faring ____ psychologically as a consequence.

poorer

Those who hadn’t liked going to school before the pandemic, ____ the flexibility and freedom of remote learning.​

welcomed

COVID and Anxiety in Adolescents

• Not going to school eased the feelings of anxiety in some teenagers.​

• Rates of chronic anxiety either remained stable or declined.

After schools across the country reopened, the rates of truancy and chronic absenteeism _____.

doubled

Standards-Based Reform

Policies designed to improve achievement by holding schools and students to a predetermined set of standards measured by achievement tests​

Common Core

Proposed set of standards in language arts and mathematics that all American schools would be expected to use

• Difficult to agree on the standards.​​

Educators ____ ____ been able to agree on the body of knowledge and skills that compromise what a graduate should know.

have not

Other School Options that Parents Look Toward

• Charter schools

• Homeschooling

• School vouchers

Charter Schools

Public schools that have been given the autonomy to establish their own curricula and teaching practices.​

School Vouchers

Government-subsidized vouchers that can be used for private school tuition.​

____ of U. S. high schools produce ​____ of dropouts (1/3 of Black and Latinx students attend these schools).​​

10%; 50%