About this session

Saturday, 2:00 PM - 3:30 PM

Reducing adolescent engagement in risk-behaviors: Harnessing the power of peer influence

Decades of psychological research suggest that peer influence effects are among the most robust determinants of adolescent risk behaviors (e.g., substance use) yet several critical questions remain unanswered. It is largely unknown whether peer influence effects vary in magnitude at different points of development, how adolescents reconcile influence from multiple peer sources to engage in or abstain from substance use, and how practitioners can leverage the decades of peer influence research to reduce engagement in risk-behaviors among teens. This symposium consists of three independent longitudinal multi-informant studies examining; 1) whether similarities among friends (e.g., selection effects) are greater in magnitude at later developmental periods among American and Lithuanian youth; 2) if adolescents’ best friends’ actual cigarette smoking and peer group norms towards abstinence from cigarettes simultaneously predict onset and frequency of cigarette smoking from ages 13-17; and 3) if adolescents’ friends’ nicotine use reduces the efficacy of a randomized control trial (RCT) to support quitting vaping. These works further our understanding of elusive peer influence topics by explicating when and how peer influence is most relevant to adolescent risk behavior, and how we as practitioners, parents, and researchers can leverage this knowledge to improve developmental outcomes. Study findings are further discussed and synthesized by an expert in peer influence research.

Paper #1
Title	School Structure Explains Age Group Differences in Friend Selection Similarity
Presenting author	Brett Laursen, Ph.D., Florida Atlantic University, United States

Paper #2
Title	The relative effects of two peer influence mechanisms on cigarette use onset and frequency
Presenting author	Nathan Field, Ph.D., University of Virginia, United States

Paper #3
Title	Characterizing the Social Landscape of Nicotine Vaping Among Adolescents Attempting to Quit Vaped Nicotine
Presenting author	Meghan Costello, Ph.D., Harvard Medical School, United States

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Session chair
Mr. Nathan Field, University of Virginia, United States

Discussant
Mitchell J. Prinstein, Ph.D., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, United States

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