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Open Thesis.Pdf The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School Department of Sociology DELINQUENTS AND THEIR FRIENDS: THE ROLE OF PEER EFFECTS AND SELF-SELECTION A Thesis in Crime, Law, and Justice by Jeffrey M. Ackerman Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy August 2003 The thesis of Jeffrey M. Ackerman has been reviewed and approved* by the following: Richard B. Felson Professor of Sociology and Crime, Law, and Justice Thesis Advisor Chair of the Committee D. Wayne Osgood Professor of Sociology and Crime, Law, and Justice Michael P. Johnson Associate Professor of Sociology, African and African-American Studies, and Women’s Studies Joseph L. Schafer Associate Professor of Statistics Glenn Firebaugh Professor of Sociology and Demography Head of the Department of Sociology * Signatures are on file in the Graduate School. iii ABSTRACT This project examines the close behavioral similarity between adolescent friends, a finding that scholars have consistently observed in prior research. Ostensibly, the similarity suggests that friends mutually influence one another through the reinforcement of pro- delinquent values, the modeling of skills necessary to commit criminal offenses, and/or the normative conformity to behavioral expectations. An alternative interpretation, however, is that the behavioral similarity reflects the reality that adolescents prefer friendships with like-minded peers. In other words, adolescents self-select friends who already behave as they do. Measurement artifact is another explanation of the similarity, which occurs because researchers have often obtained information about an adolescent’s friends from survey respondents themselves rather than from the friends directly. Survey respondents, however, often fail to report their friends’ behaviors accurately. This project also examines the relative degree to which males and females conform to their peers, a long-standing issue in social psychology. The social psychological evidence often suggests that females are more conforming than males are; however, evidence also exists that group differences and other aspects of conformity are behavior specific. Therefore, research suggesting that females conform more to group opinion about light movement or innocuous behaviors may not generalize to delinquent outcomes. In order to more fully examine these issues, this thesis uses data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health, a recently available data set based upon a large, nationally representative sample of high school students. Using these data, this project examines how closely changes in adolescent delinquency correspond to changes in the behavior of their friends. It also examines the role that delinquency plays in friendship selection and termination. The major findings include: (a) correspondence between changes in male respondent delinquency and changes in male friend delinquency, (b) little to no evidence for the importance of delinquency for friendship termination decisions, (c) evidence of same-gender rather than opposite-gender short-term effects, and (d) a modest delinquent similarity among adolescent friends measured prior to the formation of the friendship that may be explained by similarity in characteristics associated with delinquency. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Tables............................................................................................................................viii Acknowledgements.................................................................................................................... ix Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 1 Chapter 1 Intepersonal Influence in the Criminological Literature ..................................... 4 The Antecedents of Peer Influence Research: The Chicago School .................................... 4 Sutherland and Differential Association .............................................................................. 5 Countercultures and Subcultures: Miller, Cohen, Wolfgang, and Curtis............................. 7 Justifications versus Subculture: Sykes and Matza.............................................................. 9 Social Learning: Burgess and Akers .................................................................................. 11 Attitudes versus Behavior: Warr and Stafford ................................................................... 12 Short-term Social Influence................................................................................................ 13 Social Selection versus Influence....................................................................................... 17 Deselection and Rejection .................................................................................................. 20 Reciprocal Processes .......................................................................................................... 21 Shared Environment ........................................................................................................... 22 The Inadequacy of Cross-sectional Data in Interpersonal Influence Research.................. 23 Problems Associated with Measurement Artifact .............................................................. 23 Projection, Assumed Similarity, and Similar Phenomenon ........................................... 24 The Inaccuracy of Respondent Perceptions of Friends’ Behavior ................................. 24 Perceptions versus Reality.............................................................................................. 26 Response Sets ................................................................................................................. 28 Problems Associated with Governmental Records of Offending................................... 29 Problems Associated with Confounding of Offense- and Offender-level Statistics ...... 30 Disentangling Selection, Shared Environment, Influence, and Artifact ............................ 31 Notes on Stability and Change ........................................................................................... 34 Peer Influence and Change................................................................................................. 35 Chapter 2 Interpersonal Influence in the Social-Psychological Literature ....................... 37 Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 37 Social Learning – Albert Bandura...................................................................................... 38 The Early Work of Sherif and Asch................................................................................... 39 Compliance, Acceptance, and Reference Groups .............................................................. 40 Different Functions of Reference Groups ...................................................................... 40 Private Acceptance versus Public Conformity ............................................................... 41 Criticisms of Reference Group Theory .............................................................................. 45 An Additional Mechanism of Interpersonal Influence....................................................... 46 Raven and Colleagues’ Social Influence Model ................................................................ 47 Evolutionary Bases for Normative and Informational Influences...................................... 48 Chapter 3 Factors That Moderate the Influence of Friends ................................................ 50 Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 50 Investigating Influence Moderators.................................................................................... 50 Status .................................................................................................................................. 52 Status Criteria ..................................................................................................................... 53 Gender ................................................................................................................................ 54 v Reviews and Meta-analyses of Gender Differences in Conformity and Influence from the Experimental Social-psychological Literature ......................................................... 54 Gender Differences in Modeling Research .................................................................... 58 Findings from Survey Research ..................................................................................... 59 Confounding Source and Target Gender in Survey and Experimental Research .......... 62 Age ..................................................................................................................................... 64 Race and Culture ................................................................................................................ 66 Parents ................................................................................................................................ 67 Initial Delinquency Levels ................................................................................................. 68 Homogeneity .....................................................................................................................
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