Increasing resilience against group pressure

This study examined the effectiveness of boosting as an intervention to make young adolescents more resilient to peer pressure. The research was done in collaboration with the Risk Factory Limburg-Noord. The Risk Factory is an experience center where children experience health and safety challenges in a safe environment and learn how to act in certain situations. To help them in making the right decisions when it really comes down to it. Learning through experience is key. 

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Boosting = 

Forming or strengthening competencies by providing new knowledge and learning new skills, so that people can make their own well-considered choices. 

 

Peer pressure is a problem that poses one of the greatest threats to the well-being of adolescents in society. Many social problem behaviours and risk behaviours, such as drinking too much alcohol, smoking and unsafe behaviour in traffic, arise from the pressure of the group to which adolescents want to belong. Peer pressure is especially a problem when adolescents cannot handle this pressure well and therefore exhibit riskier or undesirable behaviour. Adolescents between the ages of 10 and 15 are especially susceptible to peer influence and therefore peer pressure. This makes them more likely to conform to the group.

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Conform =

Adjusting your own opinion or behaviour to follow the social norms of the group, even if this majority decision or opinion goes against your personal opinion or behaviour.

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The project aimed to investigate whether children become more resilient to peer pressure through a short individual intervention. The ultimate goal is that the children dare to follow their own feelings more and adapt their own behaviour less to that of the group. 

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The intervention focused on increasing the feeling of competence, to give children more control and make them more resilient in situations with peer pressure. This was done by:

1.    Raising the sense of self-efficacy:

The child feels that he or she is capable of displaying the correct behaviour;

2.    Raising the sense of response effectiveness:

The child is convinced that the right behaviour is actually effective.

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A greater sense of self-efficacy and response effectiveness increases the likelihood that someone will actually exhibit the desired behaviour.