Semester Award Granted

Spring 2025

Submission Date

May 2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Thesis/Dissertation Advisor [Chair]

Brett Laursen

Abstract

Across the transition into adolescence, changes in the child’s social world give rise to growing peer influence. As adult supervision declines and time with peers increases, children and adolescents become increasingly susceptible to influence from friends and popular peers. Unclear, however, is the relative magnitude of each and whether the scope of their influence varies across different domain behavior. Friends dominate private settings, where behaviors that promote reciprocity are particularly salient. Popular peers dominate public settings, where behaviors that promote hierarchy are particularly salient. The present study concerns the unique hypothesis that peer influence is domain specific, such that best friends influence reciprocity behaviors which are prevalent in private settings and popular peers influence hierarchical behaviors which are prevalent in public settings.

Participants were 780 (386 girls, 394 boys) Lithuanian students (5th-8th grade; M=12.29 years old) from 29 classes in three middle schools. Students nominated and rank ordered their best friends. Participants also completed a standard peer nomination inventory consisting of rosters with the names of all students in the class. Students nominated classmates who best fit the following descriptions: Accepted, aggressive, popular, prosocial, rejected, and unpopular. Additionally, participants completed self-report items describing emotional problems, problem behaviors, physical activity, social media use, and weight concerns. Popularity norms were calculated separately for each socioemotional behavior.

Support emerged for the hypothesis that best friend (top ranked nominated friend) and popularity norm influence is domain specific. Best friends influenced emotional problems (a reciprocity domain behavior), as well as problem behavior and prosocial behavior (cross-domain behaviors), whereas popularity norms influenced social media use and (among older adolescents only) weight concerns (a hierarchical domain behavior). Contrary to hypotheses, there was no evidence of popular peer (first nominated popular classmate) influence over any behavior.

Best friends and popularity norms represent unique sources of influence during childhood and early adolescence. Best friends are particularly influential over internalizing symptoms, as well as prosocial and problem behaviors; popularity norms are particularly influential over social media use and (for older adolescents) weight concerns. The findings underscore the importance of assessing influence across sources simultaneously and recognizing that patterns of influence vary as a function of domain.

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