The Prominence of Peer Interactions, Relationships, and Networks in Adolescence and Early Adulthood

Peer relationships are prominent when children move into adolescence. Peer research has been motivated by an interest in understanding where peer interactions and relationships come from and how these experiences affect multiple aspects of positive and negative development. Peer research continues to provide insight in how adolescents strive for status and affection, how adolescents are connected to their peers, and how peers influence and select each other. Recent advances show the importance of considering variations between contexts (such as classrooms) in these peer processes. Selection and influence processes vary strongly between classrooms, and in particular popular peers set a norm for what behaviors are important for friendship selection and influence processes. Moreover, some contexts may elicit exacerbated social comparison processes, which may explain why certain individuals have academic or psychosocial maladjustment in some contexts but not in others. The avenues for further research offer researchers several opportunities to diversify and expand into new areas of inquiry among adolescents and young adults.

Peers and Homophobic Attitudes in Adolescence: Examining Selection and Influence Processes in Friendships and Antipathies

Homophobic attitudes and behavior are a widespread problem among adolescents, but what the role of peer relationships such as friendships and antipathies is in shaping these attitudes remains unclear. Therefore, this study examined to what extent homophobic attitudes are influenced by friends’ and foes’ homophobic attitudes, and whether homophobic attitudes serve as a selection criterion for the formation of friendships and antipathies. Participants came from three Dutch high schools across two waves (wave 1 November 2014, wave 2 March/April 2015, ages 11–20, N = 1935, 51.5% girls). Stochastic actor-oriented models were estimated for testing hypotheses. The results showed that adolescents adjusted their homophobic attitudes to their friends’ homophobic attitudes, but homophobic attitudes were not consistently related to friendship selection. Further, findings indicated that being dissimilar in homophobic attitudes increased the likelihood to dislike cross-sex peers. Together, the findings suggest that adolescents’ homophobic attitudes were to some extent subject to peer influence, but homophobic attitudes did not steer who adolescents befriended or disliked.