THE MYTH OF PEER PRESSURE.

Ungar, Michael T.

ABSTRACT

The construct of peer pressure was examined as part of a qualitative study of the determinants of mental health for 41 high-risk adolescents. While the concept of peer pressure enables adults to explain youths' troubling behaviors, content analysis of the participants' accounts of their lives revealed peer pressure to be a myth. The youths indicated that adoption of the behavior and appearance of peers was a consciously employed strategy to enhance personal and social power. Association with peers was used to construct and maintain health-promoting identities that challenged the stigmatizing labels given to them by others. Three developmental stages to this process of identity construction were identified. During stage one, vulnerable youths learn to maintain a singular self-definition through interaction with peers. In stage two, youths purposefully use their peer relations to experiment with multiple identities. During stage three, youths collaborate with peers as equal partners in the construction of one o r more identities for which they find acceptance.

INTRODUCTION

The construct of peer pressure was examined as part of a larger study investigating the relationship between the process of empowerment and the mental health of high-risk adolescents (Ungar, 1995). It can be defined as pressure from peers to "do something or to keep from doing something else, no matter if you personally want to or not" (Clasen & Brown, 1985, P. 458), and has been used to explain young people's behavior. In the present research, adolescents' personal accounts were compared with data collected from clinical files, family interviews, and focus groups in order to understand peer group interactions and determine whether peer pressure is actually a part of youth culture.

Myths shape thinking and provide a convenient way to organize thoughts and experiences (Berger & Luckmann, 1966; Eagleton, 1983; Maturana & Varela, 1987). While people contribute to the meaning of myths through participation in social discourse, or collective conversation, the decision as to which myths become prominent and how they are interpreted depends on who has the most power in that discourse (Foucault, 1961/1965, 1972/1980; Weedon, 1987). It may be adults, not teens, whose description of events is reflected in the term "peer pressure."

Authoring Identity During Adolescence

Identity is the story people tell about themselves (McAdams, 1985, 1995). The language used to construct that story depends on the interpersonal context (Gergen & Davis, 1985; Maturana & Varela, 1987). Marginalized, high-risk youth compete with their parents, mental health professionals, and the broader community for control of the defining labels that contribute to the construction of self-identity. The outcome may have serious consequences. Tyler, Tyler, Tommasello, and Connolly (1992), examining the lives of homeless youths in Bogota, Colombia, and Washington, DC, noted: "When I use the words street youth, delinquents, and alienated kids to describe these youth, I am also separating them from society by words that become labels. Such labels are often inaccurate, stigmatizing, and damaging not only to the children's self-esteem, but to their survival" (p. 206). Similarly, evaluating a self-esteem program for working-class and underclass girls, Simmons and Parsons (1983) found that class bias inherent in th e indicators of healthy functioning inadvertently made the girls devalue their knowledge and competencies: they had lower self-esteem after participating in the training. Simmons and Parsons concluded that the girls were shown "psychologically unreachable roles and coping skills," which heightened their "awareness of the discrepancies between their own lives and the possible alternatives" (p. 922). They came to view themselves as merely "streetwise" (their label) when exposed to middle-class social norms.

While the relationship between the peer group and misconduct has received considerable attention (see Batcher, 1987; Brown, Clasen, & Eicher, 1986; Brown & Lohr, 1987; Clasen & Brown, 1985; Coleman, 1961; Hurrelmann & Engel, 1992; Matza, 1964; Newman & Newman, 1976; Pearl, Bryan, & Herzog, 1990; Simon, Dent, & Sussman, 1997; Ziervogel, Ahmed, Fisher, & Robertson, 1997), the personal agency of individual members has often been ignored. For example, Pearl, Bryan, and Herzog (1990) studied urban and suburban youths with and without learning disabilities and their response to peer pressure. They reported that females felt less pressured than did males to engage in misconduct, learning disabled youths were more likely to engage in misconduct, and urban students (mostly from ethnic minority groups) were more likely than their white suburban counterparts to anticipate negative consequences from peers if they refused to engage in misconduct. However, questions arise with regard to why teens choose to associate with peers who are delinquent and why collectively these peer groups choose antisocial behaviors. Do delinquent urban youths from minority cultural groups have as many options to define themselves as powerful and competent as do their white suburban counterparts? Do learning disabled youths find in delinquent acts the personal competence they lack elsewhere in their lives? Why are females more likely to conform to broader social norms?

Other researchers have taken a more optimistic view of the adolescent peer group. They have found it to be necessary for the accomplishment of developmental tasks and critical for cognitive and emotional growth (Furman & Gavin, 1989; Pombeni, Kirchler & Palmonari, 1990; Selman & Shultz, 1989). Pombeni, Kirchler, and Palmonari (1990) have indicated that adolescents who highly identify with their peer group "not only are more inclined to ask other people, peers as well as friends, parents and other adults, for support, to accept their offers of support, and to talk about their problems, but they also seem to be more often able to resolve their problems than low-identifiers" (p. 366). They emphasized that "street groups, although commonly perceived as often close to deviant groups, such as drug abusers or delinquent cliques, provide an equally important and helpful juvenile subculture as formal groups committed to sports, religious programs or politics. The crucial factor is getting involved with peers, sharing thoughts and feelings with the group, rather than the nature of the group itself' (p. 367). Attachment to the peer group helps the young person avoid the problem of alienation, even when the identification is with a group of delinquents (Hurrelmann & Engel, 1992; Newman & Newman, 1976). In fact, interventions have successfully used the positive aspects of peer relationships to benefit delinquent youth (Gottfredson, 1987; Kuchuck, 1993).

Further, other research has shown the presumed negative influence of the peer group to be exaggerated. For example, after a meta-analysis of the literature, Bauman and Ennett (1996) concluded that peer influence on drug use is overestimated. They argued that the "strong and consistent correlation between drug use by adolescents and the drug use that they attribute to their friends" (p. 186) can be explained by the selection of friends and the projection by adolescents of personal behaviors onto their peers. Bauman and Ennett hypothesized that the causal relationship is the opposite of that implied by the term peer pressure.

Michell and West (1996) investigated the issues of selection and projection in regard to smoking and peer group influences. They found that 12- to 14-year-olds who did not want to smoke "avoided particular social situations and contexts associated with smoking behavior, or chose non-smoking friends, or, if necessary, dropped friends who started to smoke" (p. 47). They concluded: "Data from this study lead us to reject definitions of peer pressure as one-way and coercive, and assumptions about adolescents as socially incompetent and vulnerable. [ldots] We agree that individual choice and motivation need to be put back on the drug use agenda and that social processes other than peer pressure need to be acknowledged. These may have more to do with the way like-minded young people group together as friends and then cooperatively develop a 'style' which may, or may not, include smoking" (p. 47).

The present research sought to provide further empirical support for the notion that adolescents exercise personal power through their associations with peers.

METHOD

In the course of studying the relationship between the process of empowerment and mental health during adolescence (Ungar, 1995), an important question arose: What role do friends and peer groups play in the lives of teenagers? It was thought that experiences of power in relationships with peers might somehow protect high-risk youth against the impact of biopsychosocial risk factors, such as poverty, the mental illness of one or both parents, physical and sexual abuse, family violence, neglect, intellectual and physical challenges, addictions, and mental disorders (e.g., depression). Some combination of three or more of these risk factors were present in the lives of the participants in this research.

The grounded theory approach and qualitative methods used are well-suited to address the above question, as they take into consideration the complexity of interpersonal dynamics without ignoring context (Handel, 1992; Lincoln & Guba, 1985). Glaser and Strauss's (1967) grounded theory approach, with its emphasis on the inductive generation of theory from data, facilitated the discovery of peer processes. Furthermore, it gave participants a great deal of latitude in their exploration of the concept of peer pressure.

Participants

The participants were 41 high-risk adolescents, ages 13 to 18, who had been in therapy within the last 12 months. High risk was determined by the presence of three or more of the previously noted biopsychosocial factors known to jeopardize mental health (for a more complete list of the risk factors that predict poor mental health, see Anthony & Corner, 1987; Cochran, 1988; Garmezy, 1985; Kramer, 1992; Rolf et al., 1990; and Rutter, 1987). The author and at least two other clinicians (with supervisory experience) had to agree that the adolescent showed such characteristics.

Participation in the study was voluntary. A small stipend was paid to all the participants to ensure the inclusion of less altruistic youth (Rich, 1968) and to emphasize the distinction between this research and therapy.

Two groups participated. The first group included 21 white adolescents, 12 females and 9 males, from several small urban centers in southwestern Ontario, Canada. Fourteen came directly from the author's clinical practice (individual, group, and family therapy); all had been clients for 12-18 months. Seven were referred by other human service workers. All 21 satisfied the eligibility criteria for subsidized counseling services. Interviews with this group were conducted from December 1992 to December 1993.

The second group included 4 females and 16 males from a long-term treatment program in a young offenders, closed-custody facility in eastern Canada. Seventeen were white and three were Native Canadians. All of these adolescents and their families were the author's clients for 4-24 months. Interviews with this group were conducted from September 1995 to March 1997.

Difficulties associated with engaging adolescents in interviews, and the related dearth of qualitative studies with this population, provided the motivation and rationale for recruiting participants from the author's clinical practice. The clinical relationships helped establish trust with the youths and their parents, who acted as gatekeepers. Although this approach is uncommon, the clinician and ethnographer/researcher roles can be merged when the boundaries between the two are clear (Daly, 1992; Schatzman & Strauss, 1973; Schein, 1987; Snyder, 1992). In the case of the first group, the distinction between the two roles was obvious, as all interviews were conducted after treatment had ended. Given the closed nature of the youth center, role boundaries were more difficult to maintain with the second group, especially during the first interviews, which were conducted while the participants were in custody. To reduce these boundary problems, half of the first round of interviews and three-quarters of the seco nd interviews were conducted by a research assistant.

No clinical distinction was made between youths who found acceptance in socially desirable ways and those who found acceptance as "delinquents," "troublemakers," "victims," and "patients." Instead, the selection of participants was based on variability in the way these adolescents dealt with the risks they faced (several studies, e.g., Hutchinson, Tess, Gleckman, & Spence, 1992, have shown that there are more similarities than differences between clinical and noncinical groups of at-risk youths).

Data Collection and Analysis

Each teen participated in two interviews lasting one to one-and-a-half hours. The first interview included open-ended questions, covering issues related to adolescence, mental health, relationships, competencies, coping strategies, and experiences of power and control. Questions regarding relationships with family, peers, and community included: "Who are the important people who have had an influence in your life, before and now?" "Can you tell me about your relationships with your family? Friends? Other people in your community?" Clinical case files, including family data, were reviewed prior to the interviews to gain a better understanding of participants' histories.

The second interviews were used to ensure that the data were trust-worthy (Lincoln & Cuba, 1985). Participants were asked to comment on the emerging theory. This process, known as dialogic retrospection, helped guide the analysis of the data so as to best reflect the lived experiences of the participants. It also assisted in theory development.

FINDINGS

Power and the Peer Group

Peer groups were described by participants as forums in which to enhance personal power through the assertion of both an individual and a collective identity. Laura (age 14) emphasized the tolerance peers show toward each other. Though her parents are convinced otherwise, Laura noted that her individuality is not compromised by her relationships with peers: "I'm my own unique person and nobody is like me and nobody will ever be just like me. I don't like it when people are the same. People should have their own identity and know who they are." She asserted that she chooses who she associates with on the basis of which relationships enhance her sense of self: "I just stay with my friends who like me and believe in the way I do things and don't believe in what everyone else says."

When asked specifically about their attire, the adolescents focused on the unique ways they express their sense of self through clothing. Patricia, a streetwise 14-year-old who was well-known in her community as a leader among other troubled teens, appeared to conform to her peer group in dress and behavior. Yet, she spoke extensively about how she differs from her peers: "Everybody knows this about me, that I dress for me--nobody else[ldots]. Like one day I'll wear nice preppy clothes, then the next I'll wear huge jeans that fall off my butt. Like if I think a big long skirt is neat, and if my friends don't like it, I'll say, 'Don't look at it then.'" Casual observers overlook the subtle differences in this form of personal expression.

Kevin, a 15-year-old "delinquent," saw himself as different from other delinquents because, he said, "I always help my friends out when they have problems, and I give good advice." Stephanie, age 16, who had problems with truancy and violent behavior, insisted she is different from her closest friends because she does not drink, wanting to avoid becoming an alcoholic like her mother and aunts and uncles. In each case, apparent conformity hid the important power these adolescents had within the peer group to be themselves.

Three Developmental Stages of Power

In three stages, adolescents progress toward greater power and self-expression in their interactions with peers, family members, and others in the community. Though these stages are sequential, high-risk teens move back and forth between them as they attempt to cope with the multiple problems they face.

During the first developmental stage, high-risk teens are stuck with one self-definition. Although some choice may be exercised in the selection of this identity, there are few alternatives from which to choose. The peer group helps to reinforce the one label the individual teen controls. These teens typically include the repeat offender whose only talent is getting into trouble, the suicidal youth who has few other coping strategies, and the youth who sacrifices his or her needs for the needs of others.

The second developmental stage is reached when teens become chameleons. They appear to adopt the labels available to them from the different groups of people with whom they interact, including peers. These youths are the ones who do fine in school, but act violently toward themselves or others when at home, or appear confident when in leadership positions, but surprise adults with their lack of self-esteem.

The third developmental stage is achieved when youths experience the control and competence necessary to construct self-definitions of their own choosing, which are accepted by peers, family, and community members. These are resilient, self-assured individuals who steadfastly proclaim to the world, "This is who I am. Accept me." They use the peer group to assert unique aspects of their identity. Although they may be gifted at sports or academics, many act out socially (for example, running away from home as a result of physical or sexual abuse).

The following case histories help illustrate these three stages of development.

Being Stuck

Tommy (age 16) has attempted to cope with his circumstances by finding one powerful self-definition and tenaciously holding on to it.

In the presence of adults, Tommy is quiet, withdrawn. He is a strong, good-looking young man who has been in and out of jail and foster homes throughout his adolescence. Tommy's mother has moved the family many times throughout her son's life. She talked of five different men who were the fathers of her eight children; in some cases, she was not quite certain who was the father of which child. Alcoholism, spousal abuse, and child abuse characterize the history of this family. Of his siblings, Tommy most idealizes his 17-year-old brother, Jason, who is in a provincial jail (serving a one-year sentence for theft and assault). "No one messes with him," Tommy explained.

Tommy described his friends as being like "brothers." He tries his best to keep up friendships with boys he used to know in other places. He hopes that his mother will stay in one city, though her present partner is violent and an alcoholic and it appears unlikely she will stay with him long. The family has only welfare coming in, which means there is no money for Tommy to join a hockey or football team. He attends school sporadically, and hopes one day to become a mechanic, though at the moment takes no automotive classes.

Despite this bleak picture, Tommy did very well while in detention, maintaining his level of privileges and learning to control his anger. He felt good about the advances he made in his schoolwork and enjoyed the many sporting activities provided for the boys. Now out of custody, he spends most of his time hanging around with friends, intimidating other people, but not breaking the law.

Given the problems confronting him at home, Tommy's "solution" has been to construct the one powerful identity that is readily available to him: delinquent. In and out of custody, Tommy finds peers who accept him in this one way, and who reflect back to him his status as a troublemaker. Even when Tommy tries to be something other than a delinquent, he remains stuck with this label. Unable to construct another self-definition, he tries to sustain the image of a "tough guy" among his peers: "I want people to think I'm tough."

The Chameleon

Becoming unstuck is most often accomplished through the serendipitous discovery and acquisition of another label. The life histories of the participants show how chance encounters with new groups of peers and adults, though circumscribed by socioeconomic forces, offer opportunities to construct a new identity.

In their search for acceptance, high-risk teens may share their power of self-definition with others through superficial conformity. Conformity brings a measure of acceptance within the group, and allows the vulnerable youth to use group identity to appear more powerful than he or she feels otherwise. The chameleon-like coping strategies of Tanya (age 14) are typical.

Tanya is a pleasant young woman, plain in her features and not very popular with her peers. She and her four-year-old brother, Brian, live with their mother. Tanya sees her father every second weekend. The couple divorced three years ago. At first, the children lived with their father due to their mother's emotional instability (she was under psychiatric care for 18 months). During that time, Tanya took over the "mother role" with regard to her younger brother and acted "as a wife" for her father. She was responsible for all the housework while also attending school full-time.

Tanya has done well in school and has become involved in the politics of her low-income housing project. She is very proud of her recent appointment to the board of the recreation center. She makes a good impression on adults, though she has only a few close friends her own age. She tries desperately to fit in with her peers by adopting their mannerisms, but is seldom accepted as much by them as she is by adults.

Tanya has once been caught shoplifting, having stolen a few cosmetics that she said her family could not afford. Tanya spends most of her time away from home, involved in extracurricular activities.

Tanya's ability to fit in with adults, as well as her constant effort to make new friends with peers, helps her avoid feelings of alienation and depression. She has created a large network of relationships that sustain many different identities, though she asserts little influence, especially with her peers, over the labels she is given in each setting. Tanya explained: "I change when I'm in a particular environment. How I'm talking here is not how I talk anywhere else. I'm a totally different person here than I am with my mom or my dad. I'm never the totally same person in every spot. I don't want people to know me totally, just a little bit about me. Feels better that way."

This changeability is not simply a function of her age and the associated search for identity (McAdams, 1985). Tanya alters who she is with each group of peers and adults she encounters because she lacks influence over how the labels given to her are constructed. Playing the chameleon helps teens like Tanya learn and practice the social skills they need to develop a self-definition of their own choosing.

What, then, moves a teen forward to the next stage of development, in which he or she has the power to create an identity? The 41 case studies gathered in this research indicate that teens progress when they must assert an identity that does not conform to the group into which they have integrated. This divergence may occur when the teen's morality is transgressed by peers. For example, David, whose chaotic life includes being bounced back and forth between a verbally abusive and alcoholic father and a battered and depressed mother, reached his moral limit when he learned that some of his peers were planning to burglarize the home of a close friend. He refused to participate. His individuation from the group is not a separation from his peers, but a more equitable sharing with them in the way the group defines itself.

Acceptance

In the third stage, the high-risk teen shares in the construction of one or more identities. Several of the participants, such as Melissa, had achieved this level of power.

Melissa, age 15, and her mother, father, and older sister requested counseling to help Melissa cope with her father's mental illness. Her father was diagnosed with manic-depression after spending thousands of dollars on a trip to the United States and then becoming violent during a confrontation with border guards when returning to Canada. Her mother has had to work long hours to get the family out of debt, while her father has been at home where he fights with the children.

Although Melissa's father is now on medication and his behavior is under control, her mother is still very anxious and worried. Neither parent has had much time for Melissa in the last two years. She has been expected to replace her mother around the home and keep it running well. Melissa says she only gets attention when she does not do what she is told.

Her parents say Melissa used to be a "good girl," always helping around the home, never upset, and pleasant to be around. At the time the family began counseling, Melissa was said to be suicidal, truant from school, sexually active, smoking, spending money "frivolously," and refusing to go to church. Melissa had just come back after running away for two days, during which time she tried to harm herself. Melissa explained that she felt like she was being expected to be the "mother" while at home, and that she did not feel ready or able to do the job. She longed for things to be back to how they were before her father's illness.

With her peers, Melissa is outgoing and assertive. She has a boyfriend, and insists that she maintains a great deal of say over how she expresses her sexuality. She feels comfortable being who she is when out of the home. She also likes to break with the gender norms of her peers, and is very proud of her success in an automotive course.

Melissa's search for a positive self-definition has taken her out of her home, where she is seen as a "substitute mother." Her self-constructed identity within the peer group enhances how she feels about herself. With her peers, she is accepted both as a member of a group and as a unique individual. She stated: "I make all my own choices. Like being with a guy or not, and who my friends are, and if I smoke or if I don't smoke."

Other high-risk teens demonstrated this capacity to exercise control over the labels assigned to them. Johnny, a former addict, organized a Narcotics Anonymous group for young people in his community. He had used his time in custody to create a new identity for himself. Troy recently confronted his abusive father about the emotional and physical abuse he suffered as a child, changed peer groups, and nurtured other friendships. Beth, an ecologically minded young woman, gained self-esteem from participation in social causes. This, in turn, helped her deal with the chaos in her family. These are just a few of the paths high-risk youths have followed in constructing identities that bring them acceptance and power.

CONCLUSION

The concept of peer pressure leads to the belief that the peer group demands conformity to its norms, which may include delinquency. The notion that adolescents experience anxiety or frustration when unable to follow "the dictums of their peers" (Brown et al., 1986) supports the idea that teens sacrifice personal agency. However, the high-risk youths in the present study provided a different perspective. The peer group was experienced as a forum in which to participate in the collective construction of both a group and individual identity. Arguably, both group and individual status reflect the ability to convince others of self-worth (Varenne, 1982).

By exploiting opportunities available to them through the peer group, high-risk youths challenge the stigmatizing labels assigned to them by their families and community. As they participate with peers in the creation of self-definitions, they move from feelings of worthlessness and disempowerment to confidence and well-being.

In sum, peer pressure was revealed to be a myth that enables adults to explain youths' troubling behaviors. Rather, the high-risk adolescents in the present study indicated that adoption of the behavior and appearance of peers was a consciously employed strategy to enhance personal and social power.

This study was supported by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Special thanks to Eli Teram, Geoffrey Nelson, Patricia Kelley, and Isaac Prilleltensky for their assistance in conducting this research.

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