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I never heard of peer pressure until my kids were in school. To me it seems far more pernicious
than beneficial. I wonder to what extent it has been studied, with a view to minimizing its bad
effects.
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In our school, we are always warned to stand up to peer-pressure when it comes to drugs and crime etc. usually it's just the idea of people following along with the crowd to fit in, though it's hard to actually 'minimise it's bad effects' as it's mostly up to the behaviour of the 'group leaders', which everybody else then copies. It seems to me that there are four social statuses that you can have in school within a peer group, either you are an outcast - you do what you like but everyone ignores you so you'd probably do what you can to fit in anyway, or a leader - you do what you like within certain 'cool' boundaries and everyone copies, or an average follower - you fit in completely with the crowd and is accepted, or occasionally you can get away with doing/refusing what you like (like me) and still be accepted because you are so weird/eccentric that you're almost cool (at least that's what a friend told me!). This basically means that most people are subject to peer pressure and have to be quite strong willed to resist it, however, I feel that perhaps peer pressure has far more influence when a person is younger and maybe less opinionated, at least amongst my friends we seem pretty laid back about what everyone does.
Oh yeah, I just remembered, to see a good example of peer pressure refer to Lord of the Flies by William Golding
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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I'm missing one.
Outcast, Leader, Average Follower...
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...or you are accepted because you are so weird/eccentric that you're almost cool.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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...accepted because you are so weird/eccentric that you're almost cool.
...wafting between aspiring outcast and potential leader.
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veteran
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There's some psych stuff I vaguely recall. These recollections are not quite correct, and that's the only thing I'll say to discourage their repetition, as if their source (psychology) and perpetuator (me) were not sufficient to dissuade.
In groups there are three sorts of people. The alphas are the leaders - they're the guys that everyone wants to be like. The betas are the ones who follow the alphas. The gammas are the people who just go off and do their own thing. Now the thing is that there are very few - if any - who are perfectly in one category or the other and the deviation occurs along at least two axes.
First, there can be several alphas in a group, sometimes in their own subgroups and sometimes there are those who are alpha with respect to most members of the group, but beta with respect to the more-alpha alphas.
Second, even in a group of, say, gammas, alphas and betas will emerge. You can see this phenomenon at a chess club, for example, although the criterion might be very different than strength or looks or charm.
(Often time the terms are used to describe stereotypically male behavior - as in alpha male, but my recollection is they are much more general than this.)
There's a whole branch of psychology that deals with ingroup/outgroup behaviors - how do people behave towards those they perceive are members of their groups and whom they do not perceive in like wise. I can't recall study titles or who did them, but as an example, there was one (and I've probably got everything wrong, but I'll repeat it anyways) in which they took a group of girls and put them together and the pretty ones formed a clique unto themselves and treated the less pretty girls very shabbily - and the more plain girls just took it as if that was the way things were supposed to be. The pretty girls just took the role of alpha and the plain girls just took the role of beta. Then they took a group of girls, all of whom were considered very beautiful and they broke down again - suddenly girls who were previously deemed flawless manifested egregious imperfections that made them distinctly less worthy of alphadom.
k
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Carpal Tunnel
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Dear FF: The alphas are not necessarily the happiest of the three groups. They have to constantly
monitor their group to determine how to preserve their status. And every big bug has a bigger bug that
jumps on him and bites him. The brightest guy I knew in college could not adjust to being a medium
sized toad in a very big puddle, and fouled up badly. The only strain the betas have is deciding which
alpha deserves their loyalty. A domineering older brother made a gamma of me. I'll have to admit I
overdid it and have paid a price for it.
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