TEENS MISJUDGE HOW WILD
THEIR PEERS REALLY ARE
Posted by Stanford on January 12, 2015Because teens have dramatic misconceptions about their peers’ sex lives, drug use, and studying habits, it’s possible they’re conforming to social norms that don’t exist.
A new study shows that adolescents overestimate the amount of drug and alcohol use and sexual behaviors that many of their peers are engaging in. At the same time, they underestimate the amount of time their peers spend on studying or exercise. (this links to the study this article is based on)
“THIS QUEST FOR IDENTITY CAN SOMETIMES LEAD ADOLESCENTS IN THE WRONG DIRECTION”
We use to call this Judging your Insides by Other Peoples Outsides...
“When they are judging the popular crowd, the jocks, the burnouts, or the brainy kids at school, the gist is that students in these crowds are misperceived,” says Geoffrey Cohen, a professor at Stanford Graduate School of Education who coauthored the psychology study along with researchers at Tilburg University in the Netherlands, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, including lead investigator Professor Mitchell Prinstein.
