Influence Among Adolescents and Young Adults

"In this, I’m reading about peer influence among adolescents and young adults. There has been a big concern about the influence on adolescents for a number of reasons. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (2007) is that adolescents and young adults maintain the highest arrest and victimization for rates of violent crimes. As the adolescents get older they developmental period where their peers have a strong influence with each other. This is when their identity comes into play they trying to figure out where they stand with their life and relationship.

One example would be Sebastian Viding, Williams, and Blakemore (2010) conducted an ostracism experiment with adolescents from 11 to 15 years old and adults 22 to 47 years old. When they compared the adults it showed that adolescents had stronger negative emotional reactions to the social exclusion which means they were “hypersensitive” to social rejection.

There is much research that show that social influence plays a big role in peer influence. The study looked at 11 to 21 years old. They wanted to see if the influence was most likely from the memory conformity effects found in the study. There were individual in a private setting where they were pressured to fit in was absent. While doing the study they had the adults participants make their responses to the other person could see what they had or had the other person write something but another person couldn’t see it. They found out that if the participants were conformity in the public when they were told they had to be careful about making false alarms. When they were put in the private condition was a different outcome but when you really look at it. Adolescents and adults display different reactions when they are placed in public and private. The study had 252 participants from 11 to 21 years old but there were three participants that had to be removed from the study which made it 249. They used a short video that was only 40 seconds long with no sound it was about the theft of a mobile phone. With the video, there were 14 questions to see if they remember where the man did. After watching the video with no sound they had to go into separate rooms they were asked questions, later on, they had to do a list-listing that was about 10 minutes they had to listen they had to take it to the next person then retrieved a video questionnaire to fill out. When they completed everything were debriefed and if they thought something was unusual about the study they were involved in but the only thing they could not do was tell anyone about the study. The article goes on to say that the debriefing was not done with the adolescent participants because they had a small group. When reading the article it gives a lot of great information on how they did the study and what they had each person do while it was going on."

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