Peer Relationships

How Children Develop

I. What’s Special About Peer Relationships?

• Peers are people of • Theorists such as Piaget, Vygotsky,

approximately and Sullivan have argued that peer
the same age and status. relationships provide a unique
context for cognitive, social, and
emotional development.
• In their view, the equality,
reciprocity, cooperation, and
intimacy that can develop in
peer relationships enhance
children’s reasoning ability and
their concern for others.
Overview

• Friendships
• Status in the Peer Group
• Role of Parents in Children’s Peer Relationships
Friendships

• Intimate, reciprocated
positive relationships
between people

• The degree to which the

conditions of friendship
become evident in peer
interactions increases
with age during
childhood.
Early Peer Interactions

• Some researchers have argued that children can have friends

by or before age 2.

• Even 12- to 18-month-olds seem to select and prefer some

children over others.

• Starting at around 20
months of age, children
also increasingly initiate
more interactions with
some children than with
others.
Early Peer Interactions

• By the age of 2, children begin to

develop skills that allow greater complexity in
their social interactions.

• These include imitating other people’s social

behavior, engaging in cooperative problem
solving, and reversing roles during play.

• These more complex skills tend to be in greater

evidence in the play of friends than of
nonfriends.
Developmental Changes

• Between ages 6 and 8, children • More than younger friends,

define friendship primarily on adolescents use friendship as a
the basis of actual activities and context for self-exploration and
view friends in terms of rewards working out personal problems.
and costs.

• Between the early school years

and adolescence, children
increasingly experience and
define their friendships in terms
of mutual liking, closeness, and
loyalty.
Dimensions on Which Elementary School Children
Often Evaluate Their Friendships

Dimension Indicators
Validation and Makes me feel good about my ideas.
Caring Tells me I am good at things.
Conflict Make up easily when we have a fight.
Resolution Talk about how to get over being mad.
Conflict and Argue a lot.
Betrayal Doesn’t listen to me.
Help and Help each other with schoolwork a lot.
Guidance Loan each other things all the time.
Companionship Always sit together at lunch.
and Recreation Do fun things together a lot.
Intimate Always tell each other our problems.
Exchange Tell each other secrets.
Functions of Friendships

• Friends can provide a source of emotional support, validation and security.

• Can help to develop social and cognitive skills by providing feedback.
• The support of friends can be particularly important during difficult
transition periods.
• Friendships may also serve as a buffer against unpleasant experiences.
• Among children who were
victimized by peers, children
who showed increases in
adjustment problems a year
later were those who did not
have a reciprocated best
friendship (i.e., a friendship in
which two children view each
other as best or close friends).
Possible Costs of Friendships

• In elementary school, children who have

antisocial and aggressive friends tend to
exhibit antisocial and aggressive tendencies
themselves.

• However, it is unclear whether

having aggressive friends actually causes
children and adolescents to behave
aggressively or if aggressive children
gravitate toward one another.
Possible Costs of Friendships

• Whether having an aggressive

friend affects a child’s own
behavior over time may depend
on the child’s baseline level of
aggression.

• Young adolescents who are

somewhat aggressive and
disruptive, but who do not yet
exhibit a high level of such
behavior, seem to be the most
vulnerable to the negative
influence of aggressive and
disruptive friends.
Possible Costs of Friendships

• The extent to which friends’ use of

drugs and alcohol may put an
adolescent at risk seems to depend,
in part, on the nature of the child-
parent relationship.

• If the adolescent’s parents are

authoritative in their parenting
rather than cold and detached, the
adolescent is more likely to be
protected against peer pressure to
use drugs.
Choice of Friends

• By age 7, children tend to like peers who are similar to

themselves in the cognitive maturity of their play and in
their aggressive behavior.

• Fourth- to eighth-grade friends are more similar than

nonfriends in prosocial behaviors, antisocial behavior, peer
acceptance, and academic motivation.

• Adolescent friends tend to have similar interests, attitudes,

and behavior.
Status in the
Peer Group
Measurement of Peer Status
• The most common method used to assess peer
status is to ask children to rate how much they like
or dislike each of their classmates or to nominate
some of those whom they like the most or least, or
whom they do or don’t like to play with.

• The information from these procedures is used to

calculate children’s sociometric status – a
measurement of the degree to which children are
liked or disliked by their peers as a group.
Characteristics
Associated with Sociometric Status
• Peer status is affected by the child’s:
• Attractiveness
• Athletic ability
• Social behavior
• Personality
• Cognitions about self and others
• Goals when interacting with peers

• Peer status is also influenced by the status of the

child’s friends.
 Common Sociometric Categories
Category Description
Popular Children who receive many positive nominations and
few negative nominations.
Rejected Children who receive many negative nominations and
few positive nominations.
Neglected Children who are low in social impact (i.e., they receive
few positive or negative nominations). These children
are not especially liked or disliked by peers; they simply
go unnoticed.
Average Children are designated as average if they receive an
average number of both positive and negative
nominations.
Controversial Children who receive many positive and many negative
nominations. They are noticed by peers and are liked by
a quite a few children and disliked by quite a few others.
Popular Children

• A category of sociometric status that refers to

children or adolescents who are viewed positively by
many peers and are viewed negatively by few peers.
• These individuals...
• Tend to be skilled at initiating
interactions with peers and at
maintaining positive relationships.
• Tend to be cooperative, friendly,
sociable, and sensitive to others.
• Are not prone to intense negative
emotions and regulate themselves
well.
• Tend to be less aggressive than
average children.
Popular Children

• Important to differentiate between children who are

popular in terms of sociometric measures and those who
are perceived by peers as being popular with others.
• Individuals with high status in the peer group are
often labeled “popular” by peers, but tend to be
above average in aggression and use it to obtain their
goals.

• The relationship between perceived popularity and

aggression is especially high in adolescence,
particularly among high-status girls, who may use
relational aggression to hurt others by spreading
rumors or withholding friendship.
 Rejected Children

• A category of sociometric status that refers to

children or adolescents who are liked by few peers
and disliked by many peers.

• A majority of rejected children tend to fall into two

categories:

Aggressive- Withdrawn-
Rejected Rejected
Aggressive-Rejected Children

• Are especially prone to hostile and threatening

behavior, physical aggression, disruptive behavior, and
delinquency.
• About 40% to 50% of rejected children tend to be
aggressive.
• When they are angry or want their own way, many
rejected children also engage in relational aggression.

• Aggressive behavior often underlies rejection by peers.

• However, not all aggressive peers are rejected; some
develop a network of aggressive friends.
Withdrawn-Rejected Children

• Are socially withdrawn, wary, and

often timid
• Make up about between 10-25% of the rejected
category

• Not all socially withdrawn children are

rejected or socially excluded.
• Rather, it appears that withdrawn behavior
combined with negative actions or emotions is
correlated with rejection, although this pattern may
change with age.
Social Cognition and Social Rejection

• Rejected children, particularly those who are

aggressive, tend to differ from more popular
children in their social motives and their
processing of information in social situations.
• Are also more likely to attribute hostile motives to
others in negative social situations and to have
more difficulty than other children in finding
constructive solutions to difficult social situations.
Neglected Children

• A category of sociometric status that refers to children or

adolescents who are infrequently mentioned as liked or
disliked.
• Display relatively few
behaviors that differ
greatly from those of
many other children

• Appear to be neglected
primarily because they
are not noticed
 Controversial Children

• A category of sociometric status that refers

to children or adolescents who are liked by
quite a few peers and are disliked by quite
a few others

• Tend to have characteristics of both popular and rejected

children.

• Some peers view such children as arrogant and snobbish.

Fostering Children’s
Peer Acceptance
• Social skills training is a common
approach for assisting rejected children.

• Based on the assumption that rejected children lack

social skills that promote positive interaction with
peers.

• These deficits are viewed as occurring at three

levels:
1. Lack of social knowledge
2. Performance problems
3. Lack of appropriate monitoring and self-evaluation
Fostering Children’s
Peer Acceptance
• Some social skills training programs teach
children:
• To pay attention to what is going on in a group of peers
• To rehearse skills related to participating with peers
• To cooperate
• To communicate in positive ways

• For aggressive-rejected children, some

training programs focus on changing faulty
social perception.
Peer Status as a
Predictor of Risk

• Rejected children, especially those who are

aggressive, are more likely than their peers
to have difficulties in the academic domain.
• The tendency of rejected children to do more poorly in school
worsens over time.
• Approximately 25% to 30% of rejected children drop out of school
compared with 8% or less of other children.
Problems with Adjustment

• Children who are rejected in the elementary school

years, especially aggressive-rejected boys, are at
risk for externalizing symptoms (i.e., showing
outwardly expressed behavior problems such as
aggression, delinquency, attention disorders,
conduct disorder, and substance abuse).

• These symptoms appear to increase between

grades six and ten.
 Problems with Adjustment

• Peer rejection may also be associated with

internalizing problems (i.e., internally expressed
problems such as loneliness, depressive, withdrawn
behavior, and obsessive-compulsive behavior).
• In one study, both boys and girls who were assessed as rejected in third grade
were at risk for developing internalizing problems years later.
• Children in Western cultures who are very withdrawn but nonaggressive with
peers are also at risk for internalizing problems.
Problems with Adjustment

• Children, especially males, who are socially

withdrawn with familiar peers may differ in
important ways from their peers even in adulthood.

• Men who were withdrawn children have been

observed to have less stable careers and marriages
than their peers, and females who were withdrawn
as girls have been characterized as less likely than
other women to have careers outside the home.
Problems with Adjustment

• Rejected children who are victimized,

that is, who are targets of their peers’
aggressive and demeaning behavior, may
be especially at risk for loneliness and
other internalizing behavior.

• Victimized children tend to be aggressive

as well as withdrawn and anxious.
•The Role of Parents in Children’s Peer
Relationships
 Relations Between Attachment and
Competence with Peers
• Security of the parent-child • Probably arises from both the
relationship is linked with quality early and the continuing effect
of peer relationships. that parent-child attachment
has on the quality of the
child’s overall social behavior

• Also possible that

characteristics of children,
such as sociability, influence
both the quality of
attachments and the quality of
relationships with peers
Quality of Parent-Child Interactions
and Peer Relationships
• Parent-child interactions are associated with peer
relationships in much the same way that attachment
patterns are.

• Mothers of popular children are more likely than mothers

of less popular children to discuss feelings with their
children and to use warm control, positive verbalizations,
reasoning, and explanations.

• Fathers’ parenting practices in general appear to be

somewhat less closely related to children’s social
competence and sociometric status.
Parental Beliefs and Behaviors

• Parents of children who are socially competent with

peers are more likely to:
• Believe that they should play an active role in teaching
their children social skills
• Provide opportunities for peer interaction
Gatekeeping,
Coaching, and Modeling
• Parents act as • Preschoolers whose parents
arrange and oversee opportunities
gatekeepers, controlling for them to interact with peers
opportunities for peer tend to be more positive and social
with peers and to have more
interactions. companions – so long as their
parents are not overly controlling
during the interactions.
Gatekeeping,
Coaching, and Modeling
• Preschool children tend to be • Parents also influence their
more popular if their parents children’s competence with
effectively coach them in how peers by modeling socially
to deal with unfamiliar peers. competent and incompetent
behaviors.
Any questions?

•Thank you