Learning Goals

A. Peer Group Functions

1.1 What are peers, and how are they important to adolescent social development?

1.2 How do peers provide a basis for social comparison and a source of information about the world outside the family?

1.3 Why are good peer relations necessary for normal social development?

1.4 What do adolescents do when they are with their peers?

1.5 How can peer relations be either positive or negative?

1.6 What did Jean Piaget and Harry Stack Sullivan stress about peer relations?

1.7 According to Willard Hartup, in what ways do peer relations vary?

B. Family-Peer Linkages

1.8 How do healthy family relations promote healthy peer relations?

1.9 What are some of the ways in which the worlds of parents and peers connected?

1.10 What is the main difference between the quality of adolescent's relations with their peers and parents?

1.11 How does culture affect the influence peers have in relationships with parents?

A. Peer Conformity

2.1 What is the difference between conformity, nonconformity, and anticonformity?

2.2 At what point does conformity to antisocial peers peak?

B. Peer Statuses

2.3 How would you describe popular children?

2.4 What is the peer status of neglected children?

2.5 How well do rejected children fare among their peers?

2.6 Where do controversial children fit in with their peer group?

C. Social Cognition

2.7 How is social knowledge associated with improved peer relations?

2.8 How do good information processing skills improve peer relations?

2.9 What are the five steps children go through in processing information about their social world?

D. Emotional Regulation in Peer Relations

2.10 What part does the ability to regulate emotion in successful peer relations?

E. Conglomerate Strategies for Improving Social Skills

2.11 How do conglomerate strategies improve social skills?

F. Bullying

2.12 What are the short-term and long-term effects of bullying on its victims?

2.13 What are some strategies that teachers can use to reduce bullying?

A. Importance of Friendship

3.1 What are the six functions that friendship play in adolescence?

B. Harry Stack Sullivan's Ideas

3.2 How does research support or refute Sullivan's ideas?

C. Intimacy and Similarity

3.3 What are the key aspects of friendship?

3.4 Are friendships of adolescent girls more intimate than the friendships of adolescent boys?

D. Mixed-Age Friendships

3.5 What happens to adolescents who become close friends with older individuals?

3.6 Are there gender differences in mix-group friendships and their effects on younger adolescents?

A. Group Function and Formation

4.1 How do groups satisfy adolescents' personal needs, reward them, provide information, raise their self-esteem, and give them an identity?

4.2 How do norms and roles play a part in any group?

4.3 What are group norms?

4.4 What are group roles?

B. Children Groups and Adolescent Groups

4.5 In what ways do children's groups differ from those of adolescents?

4.6 What did Dexter Dunphy learn about adolescent groups?

C. Ethnic and Cultural Variations

4.7 What are some features of lower-socioeconomic status groups?

4.8 Why do ethnic minority adolescents often have two sets of peers?

4.9 Why do ethnic minority adolescents turn to peer groups more than White adolescents?

A. Cliques and Crowds

5.1 What is the difference between a clique and a crowd?

5.2 What different cliques are found in most secondary schools?

5.3 With what type of cliques is membership associated with high self-esteem?

5.4 What is the main feature distinguishing a crowd?

5.5 What are Brown's conclusions about adolescent crowds?

B. Youth Organizations

5.6 In what way do youth organizations influence adolescent development?

5.7 What is the mission of Boys' Clubs and Girls' Clubs?

A. Functions of Dating

6.1 What is dating and what are its functions?

6.2 What eight functions can be served by dating?

B. Types of Dating and Developmental Changes

6.3 At what age do adolescents start to hang out together in heterosexual groups?

6.4 What is the difference between hooking up, seeing each other, and going out?

6.5 What is cyberdating?

6.6 With what problems is early dating associated?

6.7 How much time do young adolescents spend thinking about the opposite sex as opposed to actually being with them?

C. Culture and Dating

6.8 What special problems do immigrant adolescents face with their families in relationship to dating?

D. Male and Female Dating Strategies

6.9 Do male and female adolescents bring different motivations to the dating experience?

6.10 What are the differences between male and female dating scripts?

E. Emotion and Romantic Relationships

6.11 How do romantic relationships affect an adolescent's life?

6.12 What emotions are associated with adolescent romantic relationships?

A. Romantic Love and Its Construction

7.1 What is the difference between romantic love and affectionate love?

7.2 How does the relationship of the adolescents parents impact their own dating relationships?

7.3 What role does secure attachment play in adolescent relationships?

7.4 What is the developmental construction view of romantic love?

7.5 What is Sullivan's conceptualization of collaboration in dating?

7.6 How important are peers and friends in adolescent romantic relationships?

7.7 What is the relationship between group leadership and dating?