Adolescence represents the period of development in which individuals display the greatest susceptibility to social pressure and engage in the greatest risk-taking. It is no coincidence that these two phenomena occur in tandem, as adolescents’ vulnerability to social influence is a strong predictor of adolescents’ risky behavior.
Research has predominantly focused on the negative effects of peer influence on adolescents’ problem behavior; however, parents remain an important source of influence during adolescence.
Dissertation research by April Gile Thomas, PhD, sought to disentangle the effects of parental and peer influence on adolescents’ risk behavior. Using a novel performance-based measure of social influence, her research directly compared the effects of maternal and peer influence on adolescents’ risk behavior.
To examine developmental differences in resistance to social influence during adolescence, 117 participants across two age categories [middle adolescence (13-14 years) and late adolescence (16-17 years)] were administered behavioral tasks and a battery of self-report assessments. To manipulate social influence, participants were randomly assigned to complete the study in one of four social influence conditions: alone, with a friend of the same grade and gender, with one’s mother or female guardian or combined (i.e., with both the friend and mother simultaneously). During social influence conditions, participants completed the behavioral tasks with their assigned social partner/s (i.e., mother and/or friend) sitting beside them. Participants assigned to the solo condition, on the other hand, completed the tasks independently.
While participants completed a behavioral task of risk behavior (i.e., the Stoplight Task), social partners exerted direct influence that was either positive or negative in valence depending upon the social influence condition. In mother influence and friend influence conditions, social partners were instructed to encourage greater risk behavior during the task. In the combined influence condition, mothers and friends gave contradictory influence across counterbalanced conditions. Specifically, half of all participants in the combined influence condition were encouraged by their mother to take risks by their mother while also being discouraged by their friend from taking risks. The other half of participants in the combined influence condition were discouraged by their mother from taking risks while also being encouraged to take risks by their friend.
A factorial analysis of covariance was performed to examine the main effects of direct influence condition and age group, as well as the interaction between the two on adolescents’ risk behavior on the Stoplight Task, controlling for race and gender. A statistically significant difference was found among the social influence conditions, revealing that adolescents in the solo condition took significantly fewer risks than those in the mother condition and friend condition, indicating that influence from a mother or friend that encouraged risk taking actually increased adolescents’ risk behavior.
Additionally, mothers’ discouragement of risk was found to buffer the effects of peers’ pro-risk influence, as adolescents in the peer condition (i.e., peers encourage risk only) took significantly more risks than those in the combined condition in which peers encouraged risk while mothers also discouraged risk. However, peers’ discouragement of risk did not reduce the effect of moms’ encouragement of risk, as there were no significant differences between the mother condition (i.e., mothers encourage risk only) and combined condition in which mothers encourage risk and friends discourage risk. There were no significant differences in risk taking between adolescents in the mother-only and friend-only conditions, suggesting maternal influence on adolescents’ risk behavior is equally as strong as influence from a friend. It was hypothesized that these effects would vary across developmental stage (i.e., middle to late adolescence); however, the interaction of age group and social influence condition was not significant in this sample.
Overall, this study supports the notion that mothers and female guardians continue to play an important role in the lives of their children during the adolescent period. Past research has demonstrated that mothers can positively influence their adolescents’ decisions and behavior; the present study demonstrates that mothers can also influence their adolescent children in a negative manner — specifically, to engage in risky behavior. Prior research on the negative influence of parents has largely been correlational in nature; however, the present study directly demonstrates that mothers can influence their adolescent children to take greater risks.
Although these results suggest that mothers and friends are equally influential on adolescents’ risky behavior, these findings also suggest that mothers may be in a unique position to weaken the effect of risky peer influence. Essentially, these results indicate that positive maternal influence has the potential to buffer against the effects of negative peer influence. Interestingly, the buffering effect was limited to mothers, as peers’ positive influence did not reduce the effect of negative maternal influence on adolescents’ risk behavior. Thus, mothers have the potential to influence their adolescent children in ways that peers cannot. These results have important implications for parenting practices, as they suggest that mothers can play an active role in keeping their adolescent children safe, even in the presence of negative peer influence.