Peer Pressure Of Middle School Students:Construct, Characters And Influence

Worried about deviancy training of adolescents, psychologists began to focus on the influence of peer pressure on adolescents. Peer pressure is a subjective experience of pressure when people of your own age encourage you to do something or to keep from doing something else, no matter if you personally want to or not. It’s often used to explain the reason of adolescents’problem behaviors. But most of researches emphasis on the outcomes than the process of peer pressure, and there is few systemic and comprehensive researches referring this important effect on adolescents. As a result, this research reviewed literatures about peer pressure at home and abroad, discussed peer pressure in different fields, then defined the content of peer pressure. Meanwhile, after revising the significant measures of peer pressure (PPI), Peer Pressure Questionnaire was autochthonous with good qualities of reliability and validity through expert counseling, opening questionnaire investigating, probation, preparative test, formal test, analysis of exploratory factors and confirmatory factors. This questionnaire has six different dimensions including misconduct, peer social activities, family involvement, and involvement after school, interaction with the opposite sex, interpersonal interaction, studying involvement. On the basis of this inventory, we investigated the situation and character of peer pressure on1030middle school students from junior one to senior three in four different areas in Fujian Province.This research found that the level of peer pressure in Chinese middle school students was generally low, and they often felt pressured from being engaged in positive events. Girls felt more positive peer pressure while boys felt more negative one, Girls’total score was significantly higher than boys’. With the grades arose, the tendency of adolescents’ peer pressure showed inverted U-shaped age pattern, and significant differences existed between grades. Among different family rearing patterns, laissez-fairy rearing students felt obviously higher peer pressure than students of the other patterns. There was no significant difference between boarders and day students, except in some dimensions. So is the variable of resident areas.Exploring the effect of peer pressure, there was no obvious differences among ego identity status. Peer pressure was negatively correlated with the scores of future commitment expecting and in positive relation with problem behavior. Peer pressure only explained2.2%of problem behavior variability. Furthermore, problem behavior totally mediated the relationship of adolescents’ peer pressure and future commitment expecting.