Peers

Peers: A World of Their Own

• Peer relationships are distinct from adult relationships, characterized by being briefer, freer, more equal, and voluntary.
• Peer relationships involve more shared positive emotions and conflicts.
• Children's interactions with peers change as they grow, offering opportunities for interpersonal exploration and social competence.
• Peers provide a cultural community where children share behaviors and practices.
• This chapter will delve into children's peer interactions, their changing nature with age, their role in socialization, factors affecting peer acceptance, effects of peer rejection, ways adults can promote peer acceptance, development of friendships, and behavior within peer groups.

Definitions and Distinctions

• Peer: A child of roughly the same age.
• Friend: A peer with whom a child has a special relationship.
• Peers are a central part of a child's social world, interacting in various settings.
• Peer interactions are often short, lack strong commitments, and may be one-sided.
• Friendships involve regular and sustained interaction, expectations about future interactions, and reciprocal actions.
• Dyadic relationships with friends are marked by reciprocal liking.
• Interactions occur in dyads (pairs of children) and groups (cliques, teams, crowds).
• Groups develop norms, rules, and hierarchies that regulate member activities.
• Interactions, friendships, and peer groups represent different forms of peer ties and functions in social development.

Developmental Patterns of Peer Interaction

• Young children have social interactions with each other.
• Table 8.1 summarizes changes in peer interactions and relationships with age.

First Encounters in Infancy

• 0-6 months: Babies touch, look at each other, and respond to behaviors but don't actively seek responses.
• 6-12 months: Infants recognize peers as social partners and try to interact by vocalizing, waving, and touching.
• Social behavior is generally friendly, but some infants behave aggressively.
• Social exchanges between infants are shorter, less sustained, and more equal than those with adults.

Social Exchanges between Toddlers

• 1-2 years: Gains in locomotion and language increase the complexity of social exchanges.
• Objects like toys facilitate these exchanges.
• Sharing and cooperation are effective social strategies.
• Toddlers develop complementary social interactions, taking turns and imitating each other.
• Positive social interactions lead to more smiles and laughter, and interactions last longer.
• Researchers have found that 2-year-olds in groups of three actively participate in complex social exchanges.
• 2-3 years: Sharing meaning with a partner is the main social achievement.
• Children communicate activities, switch roles, and share knowledge.
• Sharing of meaning enables a wider range of games and pretend play.

Peer Play in Early Childhood

• Mildred Parten's (1932) categories of peer play are still used today (summarized in Table 8.2).
• As children age, they engage in more complex social play (associative and cooperative) and less solitary or parallel play.
• Negative exchanges and conflicts increase during preschool years and coexist with social play.
• Conflict initiation is linked to sociability.
• Pretend play develops social competence, skills, and emotional understanding.
• It allows children to experience roles, function in groups, and coordinate activities.
• Pretend play appears mid-way through the second year, increasing in complexity and shared symbolic meanings.
• 4-year-olds negotiate roles and themes more easily than 3-year-olds.
• Pretend play peaks around age 6 with coordinated fantasies and role transitions.
• Middle-class children and girls engage in more pretend play than working-class children and boys.
• The nature of pretend play varies across cultures, with some cultures showing more affect expression or imagination.
• Pretend play is not universal and is less common in collectivist cultures.
• The pathways through which pretend play aids social development are still unclear.

Peer Society in the School Years

• Children increase social interactions with peers and decrease interactions with adults after starting school (Figure 8.1).
• Physical aggression decreases, and generosity increases.
• Acceptance by peers and fitting in become critical.
• Preference for same-age peers increases as shared interests and abilities become important.
• Age segregation in Western classrooms and sports teams reinforces this trend.
• In other cultures, older children care for and teach younger ones.
• Gender matters in play companions.
• Up to age 3 or 4, children choose companions of any gender.
• Elementary school children increasingly choose same-gender playmates, across cultures.
• Gender exclusivity has exceptions but is often kept secret to avoid teasing.
• Gender segregation is evident in school activities, with boys and girls playing differently.
• Girls prefer quiet games in small groups near supervision, while boys prefer high-energy games in large groups.
• Girls play involving artistic endeavors, books, or dolls and unstructured activities.
• Boys play sports and games with rules, often characterized by noise and competitiveness.
• Pretend play differs, with boys enacting superhero roles and girls portraying mommies and princesses.
• Both boys and girls are more competitive in groups than in dyads, but the difference is more marked for boys.
• Boys become less boisterous, and girls more so in mixed-gender groups, adjusting to preferred play styles.
• Both boys and girls participate in cooperative and competitive activities, with many similarities in play behaviors.

Peer Interactions in Adolescence

• Time spent with peers peaks in adolescence.
• High school students spend nearly 30% of waking hours with peers, twice as much as with adults.
• This pattern is more salient in Western cultures.
• US 12th graders spend more time talking with peers than students in Korea and Japan.
• Peer interaction in adolescence occurs with limited adult guidance.
• Adolescents engage in recreation and conversation, picking up ideas about behavior.
• Peers influence interpersonal behavior, friend selection, and fashion choices.
• Peers have a stronger influence on alcohol, tobacco, and drug use than parents.
• Parental support reduces susceptibility to peer pressure.
• Authoritative parenting among friends' parents is also protective.
• Gender segregation breaks down a bit as dating begins.
• Peer groups with shared interests enhance self-identities.

Peers as Socializers

• Peers influence children's values and behaviors.

Modeling Behavior

• Peers act as social models, with children learning by observing.
• Even 2-year-olds imitate each other.
• Preschoolers improve language skills with competent peers.
• Older children learn social rules.
• Adolescents copy peer models in deciding what to wear, what to eat, whether to start smoking, whether to join a gang, and if they should skip school.
• Children imitate older, more powerful, and more prestigious peers.

Reinforcing and Punishing Behavior

• Peers actively try to convince other children to engage in behaviors, reinforcing approval and punishing disapproval.
• Peer praise affects social involvement, as seen in a case study with socially withdrawn girls.
• Negative actions from peers also affect behavior, such as toy preferences.
• Peer pressure affects engagement in antisocial behaviors, including modeling, encouragement, and reinforcement.
• Influence is most marked when a high-status peer encourages deviant behaviors.

Contagion

• Research suggests passive, emotional "contagion" processes between friends, especially in adolescence.
• Having friends with internalizing symptoms (depression, anxiety) increases one's own chances of developing these symptoms.
• Depressed youth may lead their friends to talk or think in ways that result in anxious or depressive symptoms.

Social Comparison

• Peers provide standards for children to measure themselves against.
• Through social comparison, children evaluate themselves and define their self-esteem.
• Comparing themselves with peers is adaptive.
• Peer groups are unequaled as a basis for self-definition.
• Social comparison increases in elementary school and continues through adolescence.
• Social media has become another source of social comparison for children and adolescents.

Cultural Context: Peer Roles and Relationships in Different Cultures

• Peer roles vary in different cultures.
• Adolescents in Japan and China spend less time with peers, with parents' values playing a more prominent role.
• Latino children are more family-oriented and less influenced by peers, with parents often discouraging peer interactions.
• Styles of relating to peers vary across cultures; Italian children are more likely than Canadian children to embrace debates and disputes with their friends.
• Children in China, India, and Korea are more cooperative and compliant with peers than are children in Canada and the United States.
• Korean American preschoolers use more polite requests and statements of agreement compared to European American children.
• These differences relate to the importance of individuals versus groups.
• Traditional Chinese culture values shyness and sensitivity in children, with Chinese and Canadian children demonstrating different preferences with these traits.
• Shift toward a market-oriented economy in China is changing children's social values.
• Social sensitivity continues to be valued in China.
• Cultural and historical contexts should be considered when understanding peer relationships.

Peer Status

• Peers provide a sense of acceptance or status outside the family.

Studying Peer Status: Acceptance or Rejection

• Sociometric technique: Measures peer acceptance and rejection.
• Nominations sociometric technique: Asks children to name peers they like most and least.
  • Popular children: Receive many most-liked nominations and few least-liked ones.
  • Average children: Receive some of both types of nomination but not as many most-liked nominations as popular children.
  • Neglected children: Receive few most-liked and few least-liked votes; they are isolated and friendless.
  • Controversial children: Receive a large number of each type of nomination.
  • Rejected children: Receive many least-liked nominations and few most-liked nominations.
• Nominations approach is quick and easy to administer.
• Roster-and-rating sociometric procedure: Asks children to rate how much they like to play with each of their classmates on 5-point scales.
• Rating-scale measures are better for detecting changes in acceptance when interventions are carried out.
• Children referred to many times as "popular" are not necessarily the peers who youth themselves think of as "popular."
• Researchers actually ask youth to nominate which of their peers is "popular."
• Youth who receive many "popular" nominations are referred to as "perceived popular."
• In childhood, perceived popularity is quite strongly related to popularity assessed with sociometric techniques or, in order words, being well liked. In adolescence, however, these associations become weaker. At this age, popular adolescents tend to be visible and well known among their peers, but not necessarily well liked. In fact, often times they are dominant or aggressive with peers.

Factors that Affect Peer Acceptance

• Peer status depends on behavior, cognitive and social skills, and superficial factors.

Behaviors that make a difference

• Popular children (majority): Friendly, assertive but not disruptive, good at communication, set rules, engage in prosocial behavior.
• Popular-aggressive kids (minority): Athletic, arrogant, aggressive but cool and attractive; they wield high social influence though they are often manipulative.
• Being seen as “popular” has adaptive value, as aggression provides a route to power and influence.
• Being seen as "popular" also has its risks: increased alcohol use and increased rates of sexual activity.
• Aggressive-rejected children: Poor self-control, frequent aggression and behavior problems.
• Nonaggressive-rejected children: Anxious, withdrawn, and socially unskilled.
• Social withdrawal is one of the strongest correlates of peer rejection.
• Neglected children: Shy, quiet, and less aggressive.
  • Two types of children are neglected:
    • Socially reticent-anxious children: watch others from afar, remain unoccupied in social company, and hover near but do not engage in interaction.
    • Socially uninterested-unsociable children: are not anxious or fearful but simply refrain from
      social interaction because they prefer to play alone.

Biological predispositions

• Underlying behaviors affecting peer status are evident in temperaments.
• Those who are likely to be rejected by their peers because they are disruptive, aggressive, and hyperactive are temperamentally active, outgoing, impulsive, and unfocused; that is, their temperaments are characterized by high extraversion-surgency and poor effortful control.
• Children who are likely to be rejected or neglected by their peers because they are withdrawn are temperamentally unsociable: They smile less during interactions with their mothers in early infancy, and low extraversion-surgency in early childhood.
• Children who are likely to be popular because their interactions with peers are frequent and competent have temperaments that are neither inhibited nor impulsive.
• As in other areas of development, temperament interacts with experience to predict peer status.
• Children likely to be rejected have high parental conflict and low effortful control.
• Children likely to be withdrawn have negative mothers and shy temperaments.
• Behaviors related to peer interactions map onto neural-based systems, namely, the Behavioral Activation System (BAS) and the Behavioral Inhibition System (BIS).
• Children high on BAS tend to approach peers and social interactions, whereas children high on BIS tend to avoid peers and social interactions.
• Socially competent children tend to be high on BAS and low on BIS.
• Biological findings that there appears to be underpinnings to peer status has also been shown in studies with children's horomone and heart rate levels.

Social-cognitive skills

• Social competence means asking new acquaintances for information, offering information, or inviting other children to join them in an activity.
• Children with better understanding of mental states are less anxious or aggressive.
• Children lacking social skills are behind from the beginning.
• Social situations require understanding, interpretation, goal formulation, decision-making, communication, and evaluation.
• Kenneth Dodge devised a model of social information processing (presented in Chapter 1, Figure 1.3).
• Children make helpful or unhelpful decisions/actions.
• The study by Kenneth Dodge reveals that socially incompetent children are less likely to notice and/or correctly interpret verbal/non-verbal cues that occur within social dynamic. The findings are as follows: generated fewer competent responses, and chose less-appropriate responses.
• Maladaptive behaviours are an increased likelihood, for those who have deficits in social understanding, which will have a direct, negative effect of overall peer acceptance. However, the opposite is also true as peer rejection can lead to deficits in social information processing.
• Cognitive skills used to access information are involved with peer interactions.
• Children may respond to social situations in an automatic or impulsive state instead of deliberately reflective.
• Social habits are set with specific exposure to routine social situations. Advantages include but are not limited to: Quick response time, saves deliberating between various alternative, more effecient social life. One downside is that with impulsive, automatic social cues, assumptions with certain triggers can be incorrect. For an example, if a boy responds aggressively to a slight as they automatically assume the other person is a bully.
• Social information-processing approach may be a more fitting approach to understanding encounters in novel and less familiar situations versus situations that occur more regularly with existing peers. To consider that children are more habitual versus reflective depending on the influence by environment and/or certain traits, characteristics that children embody with certain temperment will influence both assessments/responses within various social situations. The general emotions, thoughts, and or feelings of a child may influence/effect how their peers affect and percieve them within social environments.

Children's goals in social interactions

• Goals affect strategies, related to peer status.
• Communal goals with prosocial strategies lead to acceptance; coercive strategies lead to rejection.
• Researchers ask children how they would respond to hypothetical social situation.
• High-status, popular children offer positive goals and strategies.
• Low-status, rejected children describe hostile goals and strategies and avoid the situation.
• Socially withdrawn children pursue low-cost social and use indirect strategies.
• Goals shape how children respond to routine altercations.
• Children who are high in perceived popularity, for example, might have the mixed goals of wanting to be popular and wanting to dominate and influence their peers. They achieve these mixed goals by a combination of prosocial behavior and manipulative or socially savvy behavior.

Physical appearance

• Adults and children initially appraise others based on physical characteristics.
• Even newborns look more at faces judged as attractive by adults.
• Adults and children attribute positive qualities to physically attractive people.
• Objective observers rate attractive children as better adjusted.
• Attractiveness is linked to popularity.
• The impact of physical attractiveness continues after childhood.

Blending in

• Children who look or act odd are unlikely to be popular, children with disruptive or hyperactive behavior are likely to be rejected
• Socially withdrawn children are rejected because they don't fit in.
• Atypical behavior becomes more salient with age.
• Even unusual names can mean being an "odd person out"
• They like children with gender-typical names rather than names that are usually given to
  the oppos ite sex; pity the boys named Ashley, Alexis, Courtney, and Shelby. (Figlio,
  2007).
• When children violate gender-role patterns, they are not so popular.
• Even unusual names can lead to being the odd person out.
• Wearing the right clothes also makes a difference.
• Children from a majority ethnic group are more popular.

Consequences of Peer Rejection

• Children express dislike of peers in unpleasant ways.
• The impact of rejection can be negative.
• Children respond differently to rejection based on their characteristics and experiences (Table 8.3).
• Ambiguous comments are more likely to be perceived and reacted to as rejections depending on the personality and previous experience of the rejected individual.
• Rejection is hurtful from close or admired peers.

Short- and long-term consequences of rejection

• Being rejected can lead to both short-term and long-term problems.

• What determines how children react to rejection
  * Peer Status

• Loneliness is one of immediate problems; Rejected children often report feeling lonely:
  * Children Who Is more distress will more often have the following responses:

• The clarity of rejecting child's communication

• A greater likelihood of depression if they do not possess a positive method for solving problems and/or goals.

• Long term effects have a correlation that often result in a lack of humor of the negative response of others. There is great indication of being isolated without the sense of connection and/or support form their peers.

• Being rejected will likely have an adverse effect on one ability to work and/or learn which will likely be impacted in a negative, adverse manner.

• Moreover, children will have to greater likely hood of having a psychological or behavioural issue.

Insights from Extremes: From Rejection to Revenge?

• This area highlights the need for teachers to actively be engaged in order to identify if bullying is present within students. There is also a need on both parts of teachers and parents to take not of any warning signs within adolescents.

Can peer status change?

• Peer status is generally stable over time because people have a reputational bias and only assess information based on past encounters
• Proving this point, when researchers brought boys together and assigned them to new social groups, the boys tended to attain the same peer status as they'd had before~even though the boys in their new groups had no knowledge of their earlier reputations (Coie et al., 1990). Boys who had been widely accepted before were popular again; boys who'd been rejected continued their depressing isolation.

Promoters of Peer Acceptance

• Psychologists seek to help children with low social status improve social skills and gain acceptance.
• Early training in social skills can encourage children to celebrate strengths and support weaknesses.
• Parents, teachers, and peers are possible sources of such training.

Parents as Promoters of Peer Acceptance

• Parents can help their children develop better peer relationships in a variety of ways; They can be teachers, coaches, and social arrangers for their children's peer interactions. They can also interact with their children in ways that demonstrate and promote positive social behaviors.

Parents as positive partners

• Have strong links between relationships with parents and relationships with peers; When relationships with parents are full of mutual warmth, acceptance, reciprocity, and agreeableness, children are more prosocial and empathic with their peers therefore, is liked more. In contrary, when their relationship has controlling or toxic behaviour, one are likely going to be liked less from their peers.
• Securily has a important role in peer relations. There are few key benefits from children who possess this key character as follows:
  * Emotionally Secure Attachment
  * Better friendships with peers
  * Better Social Problem-Solving Skills
  * Less lonely children over all
• A transactional process will have to take place during relations for a better understanding for any aggression, which will show as reciprocal relations.
• Children will learn skills from family dynamics to improve social behavior, which will help make a lot of decisions
  * Encoding and decoding emotions
  * Accurate judgements to people actions/Intention
  * Solving Social problems

Parents as coaches and teachers

• Thus, it is not surprising that parents also promote their children's social abilities and peer acceptance by direct instruction. Parents can prepare their children for successful and satisfying social relationships through specific coaching and teaching.
• Parents will want their children to follow certain social norms by instruction, but this method is only good if the parents is socially good at expressing, doing social cues, and/or following a prepared script. There also have to be understanding on various levels to see results if the child is listening or even understanding. Lastly, parents will need to make their kids practice social scenarios.

Parents as social arrangers and monitors

• Parents can promote peer relations by providing opportunities for peer interaction, such as in neighborhoods where children can find playmates and there are good facilities for play. The first step may be selecting housing in a neighborhood where children can find suitable playmates and there are good facilities for children's play.
• If there is safety threat involved, there need to have a balance as being there physically versus enabling the child to freely learn/express with their peer. But too much restriction can cause adverse, negative outcomes and can put a rift with their relationships between parents and their child. At end of the day children have to have parental support that is in sync/balance with their safety concern.

When parents fail: peer rejection of abused children

• Researchers have found that chronically abused children are more likely to be rejected by their peers, and the more extensive the abuse, the greater the rejection,

Researchers as Promoters of Peer Acceptance.

• Researchers have to be actively be engaged in peer relations in order to improve their social skills and increase their acceptance among their peers; In one study, Ladd and his colleagues taught preschoolers and 3rd graders to use three methods of communication with their peers: asking questions in a positive tone, offering useful suggestions, and making supportive statements
• Need to increase One's Self Self Efficacy

Peers Can Help Too.

• Interacting with children of both sexes is another way peers can help. Cross-gender and same-gender play can introduce boys and girls to a broader range of behavioral styles and activities. It can expand unpopular children's pool of potential friends and promote a better understanding of qualities that both sexes share. In one study, researchers demonstrated that 3rd and 4th graders who had both cross-gender and same-gender friendships were more socially skilled and accepted than children whose only friendships were with peers of the other gender (Kovacs et al., 1996). Similarly, children may gain peer acceptance when they make the transition to middle school because it offers them the opportunity to interact with a larger number and variety of peers.

When Peers Become Friends.

• Our discussion so far has focused on how well children are accepted by their peers, typically their classmates. Another important aspect of peer relations is the particular friendships children form with a few peers. These two kinds of peer relations are somewhat independent. A child can be rejected or neglected by his or her classmates but still have at least one friend; another child can be widely accepted by classmates but lack a close friend.

Age Changes in Friendship

• In this section, we discuss how children's friendships and concepts of friendship change with age (see Table 8.1 for an overview of developmental changes in friendships).

Earliest friendships

• During the preschool years, children form friendships based on similarities of age, gender, and even ethnicity and become friends with peers who show behavior tendencies similar to their own
• Even at this young age, children behave differently with friends and nonfriends: They direct more social overtures to friends, cooperate more with them, and show more positive behaviors toward them. Their friendships are marked by support and exclusivity.
• Older preschoolers are more likely than younger preschoolers to participate in reciprocated friendships. However, as many as one-quarter of children do not form friendships in the preschool period. Children who are more successful in forming friendships have more advanced social-cognitive abilities, including perspective-taking ability, understanding of other people's social intentions, ability to read other peoples' emotions, and regulation of their own emotional states. Although relationships in the preschool period do not carry the same psychological meaning as later friendships do, they may lay the groundwork for friendships throughout childhood

Changing friendship goals

• For Children aged 3-7 they will do whatever is best to allow successful interactions with a group.
• For children aged 8-12 The goal will be to be good/in high-standing with group activities. There is also great focus on negativity that may occur within friends/peers.
• As adolescence there is an increased amount of honesty and/or solving of issues, and self acceptance.

Changing friendship expectations

• Children who are about 7 to 8 years old they expect friends:
  * To be demographically to alike
  * To provide help
  * Have common ideas
• Ages 9-10
  * Should be good and friendly with one another.
• 11-12 ages will generally:
  * Want more intimacy and genuineness with each other.
  * Understand what makes one happy and the will be an understanding that friends are willing to offer support.
• Lastly is vital to that this is important in understanding in any social/emotional setting. One will be able to have great understanding in which any social life will require high setting of emotional status.
• Interactions with Friends; To find out how children actually interact with their friends, John Cottman and his colleagues conducted studies of children ranging in age from 3 to 7 years
  * Best friend will be able to communicate effectively with positive energy.

Friendship Patterns

• Friendships are not always good and smooth as sometime people betray their friendship.
• During observations there are 5 groups:
  * The rotation
  * Growth
  * Decline
  * Static
  * Friendless group (more aggressive children will fall in this group). -they are sadder and may have a difficult time dealing with others that are not friends but may not the most liked individuals. (Bullies may fall within this category) - There are issues such as bullying. Often there are specific children who may be victim and vice versa.
  These types of relationships have had a history that is mutual. Usually these occurrences include (violation intimacy and/or reconciliation) - these children can experience (annoyance/frustrations and usually from rivalries,