Everybody is NOT doing it.

When I was a kid I sat through all types of 1980s "Just Say No to Drugs and Alcohol" talks given by teachers and professionals at my school.  My movie and TV watching was often interrupted by public service announcements like this one by Nancy Reagan and Clint Eastwood.  They all warned about Peer Pressure - promising that even us "good kids" might be forced by "bad kids" to smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol, or use drugs.  It was drilled into our heads, "say NO to Peer Pressure!"

That experience led me to this week's meme:

Philosoraptor poses a good question that exposes why "peer pressure" - a negative term - is not used in Developmental Psychology.  Instead researchers use "peer influence" or "friends' influence" because influence can be positive or negative.  So research on peer influence would answer Philosoraptor's question:  your peers CAN influence you to make a good choice!  For example, teenagers whose friends do not drink alcohol are less likely themselves to drink alcohol.

One little plot TWIST in the discussion of peer influence is homophily:  or "liking the same."  As teens and adults we only become and stay close friends with people who share our values.  This would suggest that the reason I did not do drugs as a teenager was because a) I was personally against doing drugs, and b) I only chose other teens to be my close friends if they were also against doing drugs.  Looking back I can confirm that not one single friend of mine in middle school or high school used drugs or offered me drugs.  I never needed to "just say no."

Another plot TWIST is that we may not only resemble our friends in values, we may also be more likely to share similar genetic histories.  In 2014 Christakis and Fowler found that certain genotypes tend to be shared by friends "at the level of fourth cousins (p. 10796)."  Because traits like addiction and alcoholism can have genetic roots, it may also be that we are not only choosing friends who share our values but also friends who share our genetic risk for those issues.  So maybe I never had to "just say no" because my friends and I were all lacking a genetic urge toward addiction?

A 2012 study by Cruz, Emery, and Turkheimer addressed these issues.  They examined data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health that included sibling, identical twin, and friendship information.  They were interested in teen drinking behavior and how that behavior might change as those teens became young adults.  These researchers looked at the effects of shared genes, shared environments (such as growing up in the same home), and friends' drinking behaviors.  Their results suggest that, although genes may have some effect, the link between how much you drink as a teen or young adult matches up with how much your friends drink.  For example, even identical twins who share 100% of the same genes and live in the same household could differ in drinking:  the twin whose friends drank the least would be the twin who drank the least.

Cruz et al. noted that friends choose friends who share the same values, but they also pointed out that the quality of the friendship and what seems to be expected from the larger peer group also matter.  You are more likely to do the things that a close friend does; and what seems normal to you is often driven by what all of the people in your friendship network think is normal.

So just say YES to positive peer influence!  And if you are trying to change your ways, look for new friends who are already living the way you would like to be living.  They will encourage that new, healthier behavior.

Further Reading:

You can read the entire study here:  Cruz, J. E., Emery, R. E., & Turkheimer, E. (2012). Peer network drinking predicts increased alcohol use from adolescence to early adulthood after controlling for genetic and shared environmental selection. Developmental Psychology, 48(5), 1390-1402.

Listen to a nice NPR story on the work by Christakis and Fowler, or you can look up their study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in your local university library.

If you are worried about your own alcohol or substance abuse, the Department of Health and Human Services runs a national website that includes a toll-free hotline (1-800-662-4357) for information on substance abuse and can give you treatment referrals in your state.  They also have an online treatment locator.