PEER PRESSURE

'Peer pressure' is a term describing the pressure exerted by a peer group in encouraging a person to change their attitude, behavior and/or morals.
A social hierarchy may require members, in a more or less blatant way, to conform to, for example, the group's actions, fashion sense, taste in music and television, or outlook on life. Social groups affected include ''membership groups'', when the individual is "formally" a member (for example, a political party or trade union), and social cliques. A person affected by peer pressure may, or may not want to, belong to these groups. They may also recognize ''dissociative groups'' with which they would ''not'' wish to associate, and thus they behave adversely concerning that group's behaviors.

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Forms of peer pressure

See also

Forms of peer pressure

★ 'Youth peer pressure' is one of the most frequently referred-to forms of negative peer pressure. It is particularly common because most youths are forced to spend large amounts of time in fixed groups (schools and subgroups within them) regardless of their opinion of those groups. Also, young people are more willing to behave negatively towards those who are not members of their own peer groups. However, youth peer pressure can also have positive effects. For example, if one is involved with a group of people that are ambitious and working to succeed, one might feel pressured to follow suit to avoid feeling excluded from the group. Therefore, the youth would be pressured into improving themselves, bettering them in the long run. This is most commonly seen in youths that are active in sports or other extracurricular activities.

★ 'Financial peer pressure' is more common in adulthood. Many adults feel as though they must attain a certain level of wealth and financial success to keep up with their peers, whereas this may not be required at all in order to live a secure, content and comfortable life. Often this motivates people to engage in behaviours that increase their ''perceived'' wealth even without increasing their real wealth (eg, using credit to purchasing expensive goods that are trappings of status) Additionally, one may feel pressured to achieve better real financial status as well, and may act upon this by making risky decisions like a change of job.

★ 'Expert peer pressure': Experts, analysts and academics tend to stick to mainstream paradigms, fearing that, if they go against the common approaches, they might be considered dissidents who threaten to make obsolete the knowledge to which the majority of experts have committed themselves. Also, advisors (for example financial analysts) usually give advice that fits their peers' consensus as a precaution against the effect of mistakes. If the advice given turns out to be wrong, they can claim that not just themselves but the entire profession was wrong and thus can attribute the error to unforeseeable circumstances. Therefore, economic and financial predictions (for example GDP growth predictions), whatever the uncertainties, usually are in a very narrow range that most of the time just mirror the recent trends, and thus dramatic changes in economic and financial trends are rarely anticipated except by a few contrarians.

See also

★ Blue eyes/Brown eyes

★ DARE

★ Milgram experiment

★ Normative

★ Socialization

★ Stanford prison experiment

★ The Third Wave

★ Keeping up with the Joneses