Journal of Quantitative Criminology

, Volume 23, Issue 2, pp 127–149 | Cite as

Reconsidering Peer Influences on Delinquency: Do Less Proximate Contacts Matter?

Original Paper
First Online:

Abstract

Much research on adolescent delinquency pivots on the notion of peer influence. The peer effect that is typically employed emphasizes the transmission of behaviors and attitudes between adolescents who are directly linked. In this paper, we argue that to rely solely on those direct social ties to capture peer influence oversimplifies the realities of adolescent society. We use data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to show that indirect peer relations can exercise independent influences on adolescent delinquency. Adolescents actively draw on the examples of friends of friends, and even more distal peers, as they develop their repertoires of action and identity. We argue, however, that this behavior actually reflects adolescents’ ongoing struggle to impress their closest friends and to preserve their social circle. Indeed, the extent to which adolescents are willing to model the behavior of indirect contacts seems to decline as that behavior becomes more dissimilar from that of their close friends. Our findings dovetail with an account of the adolescent as a rational actor who struggles for social acceptance in a complex peer environment which offers conflicting behavioral models.

Keywords

Peer networks Adolescent delinquency Social proximity Diffusion 
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Notes

Acknowledgments

We thankfully acknowledge the technical and editorial assistance of Ruth Peterson, Dana Haynie, and James Moody, as well as invaluable editorial suggestions for early drafts from Lauren Krivo, Lisa Keister, and Donna Bobbit-Zeher. We are also grateful to the editor and anonymous reviewers for comments on earlier drafts of the manuscript. This research uses data from Add Health, a program project designed by J. Richard Udry, Peter S. Bearman, and Kathleen Mullan Harris, and funded by a grant P01-HD31921 from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, with cooperative funding from 17 other agencies. Special acknowledgment is due Ronal R. Rindfuss and Barbara Entwisle for assistance in the original design. Persons interested in obtaining data files from Add Health should contact Add Health, Carolina Population Center, 123 W. Franklin Street, Chapel Hill, NC 27516-2524 (http://www.cps.unc.edu/addhealth/contract.html).

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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2007

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Department of SociologyOhio State UniversityColumbusUSA
  2. 2.Department of SociologyUniversity of ChicagoChicagoUSA

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