Best Friend Influence Over Adolescent Problem Behaviors: Socialized by the Satisfied (original) (raw)
Related papers
2016
In this three-wave longitudinal survey, we investigated bi-directional longitudinal associations between best friends and adolescents' alcohol consumption. Additionally, since the relation between best friends and adolescents' drinking may be stronger if adolescents have not consumed alcohol yet, we examined this relation not only with regard to continuation but also with regard to the initiation of adolescent drinking. We also hypothesized that low levels of self-esteem and self-control in youths would be related to a higher susceptibility to the impact of their best friends' drinking. Data were used from 433 adolescents and their best friends. Results of SEM analyses did not provide evidence for bi-directional associations between best friends and adolescents' alcohol use over time. Nevertheless, the results of additional growth curve analyses indicated that adolescents and best friends' drinking does seem to develop in a similar fashion over time. Adolescents' self-esteem, self-control, and gender did not moderate longitudinal associations between best friends and adolescents' drinking. The discussion focuses on methodological and theoretical explanations for the absence of significant longitudinal relations between best friends and adolescents' drinking.
Addictive Behaviors, 2005
Friends are presumed to exert a substantial influence on young people's drinking patterns. The current study focused on the effects of the best friend's drinking behaviour on the alcohol consumption of 12-14-year-old adolescents. Furthermore, we hypothesized friendship characteristics (i.e., reciprocity and sociometric status differences) to moderate the extent in which adolescents had been influenced by their best friends. Longitudinal data of 1276 adolescents and their best friends were used to examine whether the adolescent's friend's drinking behaviour, reciprocity of the friendship, and status differences between friends affected the magnitude of change in the adolescent's drinking behaviour. The findings showed that best friend's drinking behaviour is related to adolescent's drinking both cross-sectionally and longitudinally. Cross-sectionally, this association was particularly strong between mutual friends and friends with lower status. In longitudinal analyses, a different picture emerged. Respondents were most likely to adopt their friend's drinking behaviour when it was a unilateral friend with a higher status. D
Best friends and alcohol consumption in adolescence: A within-family analysis
Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 2007
Although friends and siblings are considered to be important role models in adolescents' peer contexts, these peer influences on adolescent alcohol consumption over time are seldom examined simultaneously in a within-family design. The present study examined the relative impact of alcohol use of the best friend, adolescent sibling and sibling's best friend on the development of alcohol consumption during adolescence. Data reported in this study are part of an ongoing longitudinal questionnaire study among families with two adolescent siblings (N = 416). Results from structural equation modeling showed a strong similarity in drinking between best friends and adolescents cross-sectionally. Over time, however, only marginal effects of friends alcohol use on drinking of the youngest sibling, and no effects for the oldest sibling were found. Robust evidence was found for peer-selection processes. In addition, we found a moderate to high relative similarity in drinking within sibling pairs, but no longitudinal effect of sibling's drinking. We also found no support for a possible additional influence of sibling's best friend's drinking on adolescent drinking. Therefore, we tested several potential moderating variables on peer influences, but found no effects of a set of relationship characteristics or individual characteristics on the links between peer and adolescent drinking over time.
International Journal of Behavioral Development, 2010
In this three-wave longitudinal survey, we investigated bi-directional longitudinal associations between best friends and adolescents' alcohol consumption. Additionally, since the relation between best friends and adolescents' drinking may be stronger if adolescents have not consumed alcohol yet, we examined this relation not only with regard to continuation but also with regard to the initiation of adolescent drinking. We also hypothesized that low levels of self-esteem and self-control in youths would be related to a higher susceptibility to the impact of their best friends' drinking. Data were used from 433 adolescents and their best friends. Results of SEM analyses did not provide evidence for bi-directional associations between best friends and adolescents' alcohol use over time. Nevertheless, the results of additional growth curve analyses indicated that adolescents and best friends' drinking does seem to develop in a similar fashion over time. Adolescents' self-esteem, self-control, and gender did not moderate longitudinal associations between best friends and adolescents' drinking. The discussion focuses on methodological and theoretical explanations for the absence of significant longitudinal relations between best friends and adolescents' drinking.
Discrepancies in Perceived Friendship Intimacy as a Predictor of Adolescent Alcohol Use
Adolescent friendships have traditionally been defined as involving a reciprocal intimate bond, but little research has examined the implications of the lack of affection reciprocity for adolescent positive adjustment. Further, past research suggests that self-and peer- reported intimacy are only modestly correlated, indicating meaningful variability in affection reciprocity within adolescent friendships. Friendships that lack affection reciprocity may be conflict-ridden and imbalanced, leading to adolescent maladaptive outcomes including alcohol use and negative affect. The current study examined the effects of affectionately discrepant friendships in a sample of 94 adolescents. Results indicate that affective discrepancies friendships are psychologically meaningful and within adolescent friendships can be differentiated from (non-discrepant) high intimacy friendships. The lack of affection reciprocity places adolescent at risk for imbalanced friendships and negative affect, althou...
Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 2012
Friend influence over alcohol intoxication and delinquent behavior was examined as a function of relative peer acceptance in a 3-year study of Swedish youth (N ϭ 184 girls, 145 boys). Participants were in the first year of secondary school (7th grade, M ϭ 11.7 years old) or the first year of high school (10th grade, M ϭ 15.3 years old) at the outset. Friends resembled one another before the friendship; resemblances were even greater after the friendship began. Resemblances continued to grow among those who remained friends one year later, but declined among those whose friendships dissolved. Partners were not equally responsible for increases in similarity. In stable friendships, the more accepted partner exerted greater influence over the less accepted partner, such that the greatest increases in problem behaviors were found among less accepted youth whose friends had higher initial levels of delinquency and alcohol intoxication. Unstable friends resembled random pairs of youth in that more-and less-accepted partners were comparably uninfluential.
Prevention Science, 2012
Adolescent friendship groups are often heterogeneous and thus involve exposure to both deviant and nondeviant influences. This longitudinal study examined whether the addition of nondeviant peer influences in early high school protected against the negative socialization effects of deviant affiliation on both concurrent and future smoking, alcohol problems, and depressive symptomatology. Adolescents (9 th and 10 th grade students, N = 1,128) completed self-report questionnaires at both a baseline and 24-month assessment. Nondeviant affiliation consistently reduced the effects of deviant influences on smoking and alcohol problems but not on depressive symptoms. Findings reinforce the complexity of adolescent friendship influences and the notion that distinct mechanisms may drive the associations between deviant affiliations and behavioral and emotional outcomes throughout adolescence. Implications for prevention are also discussed.
Where It's At! The Role of Best Friends and Peer Group Members in Young Adults' Alcohol Use
Journal of Research on Adolescence, 2011
We examined the hypothesis that best friends and members from a broader peer group would not differ in the amount of influence they have on young adults' alcohol consumption and that what counts would be the mere presence of drinking peers in a given contextFirrespective of the type of relationship such peers would have with the target young adult. Data were used from a naturalistic observation study that was conducted in a ''bar-lab'' among 221 young adults aged 18 -25 years. Both hierarchical and multilevel regression analyses showed that group effects (i.e., average group levels of alcohol consumption) explained young adults' drinking. When taking into account these group effects, best friends' alcohol consumption in the bar-lab was a nonsignificant predictor of young adults' alcohol useFalthough best friends' questionnaire-assessed drinking did predict alcohol consumption in the bar-lab.
Personality and Individual Differences, 2015
Friendships differ in terms of their quality and participants may or may not agree as to their perceptions of relationship quality. Two studies (N = 230 and 242) were conducted to identify distinct and replicable categories of friendship among young adolescents (M = 11.6 years old) using self and partner reports of relationship quality. Same-sex friendships were identified from reciprocated friend nominations. Each friend described perceptions of negativity and social support in the relationship. Cluster analyses based on reports from both friends yielded 4 friendship types in each study: a high quality group, a low quality group, and two groups in which friends disagreed about the quality of the relationship. High quality friendships were most apt to be stable from the 6th to the 7th grade. Participants in high quality friendships reported the highest levels of global self-worth and perceived behavioral conduct and the lowest levels of problem behaviors. Dyads reporting discrepant perceptions of quality differed from dyads who agreed that the friendship was high quality in terms of stability and individual adjustment, underscoring the advantages of person-centered strategies that incorporate perceptions of both partners in categorizations of relationships.
Adolescent perceptions of friendship and their associations with individual adjustment
International Journal of Behavioral Development, 2005
This study of 282 dyads examines early-and mid-adolescents' perceptions of friendship quality and their association with daily disagreements, self-and mother reports of behaviour problems, and school grades. Actor and partner analyses identify unique associations between perceptions of friendship quality and perceptions of daily conflict. Actor effects reveal links between friendship negativity and self-perceptions of conflict affective intensity, relationship impact, post-conflict interaction, and post-conflict separation, and between friendship positivity and self-perceptions of relationship impact. Partner effects reveal links between friendship negativity and partner perceptions of conflict outcomes. Perceptions of relationship quality were also associated with self-and mother reports of behaviour problems and with school grades, such that individual and dyadic views of friendship negativity were linked to detrimental outcomes. The worst outcomes tended to be reserved for dyads in which one or both friends reported high levels of relationship negativity.