Peer group

(noun)

A peer group is a social group whose members have interests, social positions, and age in common.

Related Terms

Examples of Peer group in the following topics:

  • Peer Groups

    • A peer group is a social group whose members have interests, social positions, and age in common.
    • The influence of the peer group typically peaks during adolescence.
    • Peer groups have a significant influence on psychological and social adjustments for group individuals.
    • Peer groups can also serve as a venue for teaching members gender roles.
    • Peer groups cohesion is determined and maintained by such factors as group communication, group consensus, and group conformity concerning attitude and behavior.

  • Gender Messages from Peers

    • Peer groups can serve as a venue for teaching gender roles, especially if conventional gender social norms are strongly held.
    • Peer groups can serve as a venue for teaching members gender roles.
    • Peer groups can consist of all males, all females, or both males and females.
    • There is much research that has been done on how gender affects learning within student peer groups.
    • One thing that is an influence on peer groups is student behavior.

  • Informal Means of Control

    • Informal social control—the reactions of individuals and groups that bring about conformity to norms and laws—includes peer and community pressure, bystander intervention in a crime, and collective responses such as citizen patrol groups.
    • A peer group is a social group whose members have interests, social positions, and age in common.
    • The influence of the peer group typically peaks during adolescence.
    • However, peer groups generally only affect short-term interests, unlike the long-term influence exerted by the family.
    • Informal social control—the reactions of individuals and groups that bring about conformity to norms and laws—includes peer and community pressure, bystander intervention in a crime, and collective responses such as citizen patrol groups.

  • Stages of Socialization Throughout the Life Span

    • Secondary socialization refers to the socialization that takes place throughout one's life, both as a child and as one encounters new groups that require additional socialization.
    • Context: In earlier periods, the socializee (the person being socialized) more clearly assumes the status of learner within the context of the initial setting (which may be a family of orientation, an orphanage, a period of homelessness, or any other initial social groups at the beginning of a child's life), the school (or other educational context), or the peer group.
    • Socialization, as noted in the distinction between primary and secondary, can take place in multiple contexts and as a result of contact with numerous groups.
    • Each of these groups include a culture that must be learned and to some degree appropriated by the socializee in order to gain admittance to the group.
    • By the time individuals are in their preteen or teenage years, peer groups play a more powerful role in socialization than family members.

  • Adolescence

    • Peer groups are especially important during adolescence, a period of development characterized by a dramatic increase in time spent with peers and a decrease in adult supervision.
    • Adolescents also associate with friends of the opposite sex much more than in childhood and tend to identify with larger groups of peers based on shared characteristics.
    • Peer groups offer members the opportunity to develop various social skills like empathy, sharing and leadership.
    • During early adolescence, adolescents often associate in cliques; exclusive, single-sex groups of peers with whom they are particularly close.
    • These small friend groups break down even further as socialization becomes more couple-oriented.

  • Juvenile Crime

    • Beaver, adolescent males who possess a certain type of variation in a specific gene are more likely to flock to delinquent peers.
    • The study, which appeared in the September 2008 issue of the Journal of Genetic Psychology, is the first to establish a statistically significant association between an affinity for antisocial peer groups and a particular variation (called the 10-repeat allele) of the dopamine transporter gene (DAT1).
    • Beaver, adolescent males who possess a certain type of variation in a specific gene are more likely to flock to delinquent peers.
    • The study, which appeared in the September 2008 issue of the Journal of Genetic Psychology, is the first to establish a statistically significant association between an affinity for antisocial peer groups and a particular variation (called the 10-repeat allele) of the dopamine transporter gene (DAT1).
    • When considering these statistics, which state that Black and Latino teens are more likely to commit juvenile offenses, it is important to keep the following in mind: poverty is a large predictor of low parental monitoring, harsh parenting, and association with deviant peer groups, all of which are in turn associated with juvenile offending.

  • Adolescent Socialization

    • Bullying is an example of the negative influence that peer groups can have on adolescents.
    • Floridian Michael Brewer was lit on fire by a group of bullies.
    • Peer groups are especially important during adolescence, a period of development characterized by a dramatic increase in time spent with peers and a decrease in adult supervision.
    • Adolescents also associate with friends of the opposite sex much more than in childhood and tend to identify with larger groups of peers based on shared characteristics.
    • Peer groups offer members the opportunity to develop various social skills like empathy, sharing and leadership.

  • Defining Boundaries

    • Social groups are defined by boundaries.
    • Cultural sociologists define symbolic boundaries as "conceptual distinctions made by social actors…that separate people into groups and generate feelings of similarity and group membership. " In-groups, or social groups to which an individual feels he or she belongs as a member, and out-groups, or groups with which an individual does not identify, would be impossible without symbolic boundaries.
    • Where group boundaries are considered permeable (e.g., a group member may pass from a low status group into a high status group), individuals are more likely to engage in individual mobility strategies.
    • Here, without changing necessarily the objective resources of in the in-group or the out-group, low status in-group members are still able to increase their positive distinctiveness.
    • This may be achieved by comparing the in-group to the out-group on some new dimension, changing the values assigned to the attributes of the group, and choosing an alternative out-group by which to compare the in-group.

  • Organized Crime

    • Organized crime refers to transnational, national, or local groupings of highly centralized enterprises run by criminals.
    • Organized crime groups operate as smaller units within the overall network, and as such tend towards valuing significant others, familiarity of social and economic environments, or tradition.
    • Bureaucratic and corporate organized crime groups are defined by the general rigidity of their internal structures.
    • A distinctive gang culture underpins many, but not all, organized groups; this may develop through recruiting strategies, social learning processes in the corrective system experienced by youth, family, or peer involvement in crime, and the coercive actions of criminal authority figures.
    • The term "street gang" is commonly used interchangeably with "youth gang", referring to neighborhood or street-based youth groups that meet "gang" criteria.

  • Tracking Systems

    • Tracking sorts students into different groups depending on academic ability; however, other factors often influence placement.
    • Since low-class and minority students are overrepresented in low tracks with Whites and Asians generally dominating high tracks, interaction among these groups can be discouraged by tracking.
    • Parents and peers may influence academic choices even more than guidance counselors by encouraging students with similar backgrounds (academic, vocational, ethnic, religious, or racial) to stay together.
    • Research suggests that tracking produces substantial gains for gifted students in tracks specially designed for the gifted and talented, meeting the need for highly gifted students to be with their intellectual peers in order to be appropriately challenged.
    • Since tracking separates students by ability, students' work is only compared to that of similar-ability peers.