Why are adolescents so sensitive to their peers' behavior? And is this sensitivity necessarily negative, as the term peer pressure often implies? In his Ph.D. dissertation, UvA behavioral scientist ...

As children enter adolescence, peers become a dominant force in their lives. With adult supervision waning, teens look to agemates for guidance on how to act, think, and fit in. But who matters ...

To what Extent does Peer Group Smoking Predict Adolescent Smoking? The tendency for adolescent peer group members to share common characteristics such as smoking, termed alternatively as peer group ...

Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner states in his book Changing Minds that by about age 10 a child’s peers rather than the parents assume primary importance in the child’s decisions about what to do, ...

As parents, we cannot pick our child’s friends, but we can teach them how to filter A teenager once told me, “I know my parents love me, but if my friends reject me, it feels like the end of the world ...

For decades, a debate has brewed over whether parents or peers exert a greater influence on children's development. Judith Rich Harris reignited this controversy in 1998 with The Nurture Assumption, ...

Best friends primarily shape a child’s internal emotional state and academic behavior, popular peers set the standard for public image and social media engagement. As children enter adolescence, peers ...