Peer pressure is the influence exerted by a peer group, encouraging individuals to change their attitudes, values, or behaviors in order to conform to group norms. Social groups affected include membership groups, in which individuals are "formally" members (such as political parties and trade unions), or social cliques in which membership is not clearly defined. 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.
Peer pressure is most commonly associated with youth, in part because most youth spend large amounts of time in schools and other fixed groups that they do not choose and are seen as lacking the maturity to handle pressure from friends. Also, young people are more willing to behave negatively towards those who are not members of their own peer groups.
Peer pressure can also have positive effects when people are pressured toward positive behavior, such as volunteering for charity or excelling in academics or athletics, by their peers. This is most commonly seen in youths who are active in sports or other extracurricular activities where conformity with one's peer group is strongest.
Read more about Peer Pressure: Risk Behavior, Asch Conformity, The Third Wave, Neural Mechanisms, Explanation
Famous quotes containing the words peer pressure, peer and/or pressure:
“Most literature on the culture of adolescence focuses on peer pressure as a negative force. Warnings about the “wrong crowd” read like tornado alerts in parent manuals. . . . It is a relative term that means different things in different places. In Fort Wayne, for example, the wrong crowd meant hanging out with liberal Democrats. In Connecticut, it meant kids who weren’t planning to get a Ph.D. from Yale.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)
“The Peer now spreads the glitt’ring Forfex wide,
T’inclose the Lock; now joins it, to divide.”
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744)
“Under the pressure of the cares and sorrows of our mortal condition, men have at all times, and in all countries, called in some physical aid to their moral consolations—wine, beer, opium, brandy, or tobacco.”
—Edmund Burke (1729–1797)