Remember your first cigarette? How about your first beer? First puff on a fatty? What about jumping off the old bridge into the creek? What/who convinced you to do it? Friends…Right? Peer Pressure: Influence from members of one’s peer group (and a hard thing to resist if you ask me). Well, studies show that I am not alone. Peer pressure is a condition of the brain! The human brain values achievement in social settings over achievements performed alone. Two parts of the brain linked with rewards, the striatum and the medial prefrontal cortex, showed much more activity in success amongst friends than success by oneself.
In the article, Infographic: The Science of Peer Pressure, the author calls friendship, magic. Group support can have the power to help you tolerate pain, stay healthy, make you more kind-hearted, raise your math scores, and discourage terrorism (http://1bog.org/blog/infographic-the-science-of-peer-pressure/). The article goes on to talk about power in numbers and how people are more likely to take a sort of action if they know their neighbors have done it already. Another article says that no social support network equals doom and that animals also experience peer pressure (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/09/110906164312.htm).
These articles, of course, focus on the positive type of peer pressure and good influences in ones peer group or neighborhood. But is it really healthy to rely so heavily on friends, for their approval and for ones own actions? Think about college; who you were before it and who you are now. It shouldn’t take research to show that students are at least somewhat negatively influenced by their fellow classmates. Obviously there is research, and it shows that 80% of college students drink an alcoholic beverage at least every other week, and of this group 40% binge drink. This heavily exceeds the drinking rate of their non-college peers. Research suggests that this is mainly due the college environment. It is essential for students to be allied with the ‘in-group’ in order to be accepted socially. People not in the ‘in-group’ may lack necessary social support during their transition into college because they do not fit in with the majority of their peers. Alcohol in college has become a social norm and looked at positively by many students. But look at the 400,000 college students who have had unprotected sex because of drinking, and how 1/4th of them do not remember giving consent. Look at the leading cause of death for adolescents, which is alcohol related motor accidents.
(http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/opus/issues/2011/fall/peer).
My conclusion:
If you don’t give into negative peer pressure, you’re more likely to be an outcast.
If you do give into it, you’re taking a dangerous risk.
Either way, there will be pressure… in your brain.
Sources:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/09/110906164312.htm
http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/opus/issues/2011/fall/peer
http://1bog.org/blog/infographic-the-science-of-peer-pressure/
This is a great blog! It’s really sad how people need to always drink to feel “socially accepted.” I’m a freshman and at summer session every single night there was so many people going out. If you didn’t go out, you basically only had the option to sit in your room alone for the night, which is the last thing people want when they get to a new college and desperately want to make friends. So many people feel obligated in college to drink, because if they don’t no one is going to be around. I made friends that told me they had maybe drank several times in their life and by the end of summer session, were going out and drinking a couple nights a week. It’s too bad the way college is set up with respect to alcohol. Also, it’s very likely for young drinkers to get depression. Here’s a link to a website from the University of Michigan and how badly depression affects people’s schooling. Then again, people seem to forget that’s the reason they’re even here.
http://www.ur.umich.edu/0809/Jul13_09/13.php