Peer group

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A peer group (from peer 'equal, equal or older' ) is a group with great influence to which an individual feels a part. The peer group is particularly important in adolescence, where the feeling of belonging often results from age equality. Peer groups can also create a level of development, skills, interests or other characteristics . In general, peer group is used for a group of friends with a great influence. The term is used in educational and sociological terms. Psychologically , a peer group can serve as a substitute for the family and help stabilize the personality . The peer group , for example, defines standards of behavior and creates role models .

Youth Sociology

Peers playing

Peergroup as a technical term from sociology , pedagogy and social pedagogy goes back to Charles H. Cooley (1864–1929), who developed the concept of primary groups . In today's specialist literature, peer groups denote reference groups that are composed of people of similar age and whose members are linked by a friendly relationship. These reference groups could also be described as cliques , which above all illustrates the elementary importance in adolescence, or they could be called a circle of friends, which emphasizes the presence of the peer groups in every person's everyday life. Peer groups are characterized less by the common age of their members than by the principle of equality that constitutes the exchange processes. It is therefore of crucial importance for every interaction in peer groups that it is composed of members who meet on an equal footing and do not differ appreciably in terms of knowledge, skills and decision-making powers.

The term summarizes the observations that, especially in childhood and adolescence, the orientation of individuals towards group standards takes place more on people of similar age than on their own parents and that later on, people's views are often shaped by people in their immediate surroundings. As a peer group group also similar social scene are mostly with members. Peers , e.g. B. Classmates in a class are called age mates in English .

Teens tend to spend more time with their peers than with adults. There are also differences in the topics of conversation. While adolescents talk to like-minded people about intercourse and other relationships within their peers, they talk to parents about school and career. Children prefer to join peer groups that they accept, even if they are exposed to conflicts there.

Peer groups are to be defined as an instance of informal education and socialization and serve, among other things, for emancipation from the parental home. The young people “practice” social patterns together with their friends, who mostly come from a similar age group, try out social behavior among each other. Peers are, so to speak, a playing field on which it is possible to test your own limits, to learn how to deal with others, to experience the transition to adulthood first in the protected space of friends. In addition, they also serve as a mutual exchange, for example about problems. Especially when there are conflicts with the parents, these groups can become reference groups for the adolescents and exert a dominant influence. In a problematic environment, peer groups can induce young people to engage in violent acts, drug use and risk behavior and, through admission rituals , tests of courage and blackmail, exert a damaging influence, especially on less self-confident young people. In social work , street work tries to gain access to peer groups (gangs, group members) and to have a preventive, educational and controlling effect.

A common socio-educational approach to initiate educational and socialization processes in peer groups in a targeted manner are the so-called peer education strategies or peer education, which can be viewed as a form of personal-communicative prevention. This concept originated in the United States and England in the mid-1970s, where it was used primarily in health and sex education.

While the parents have an educational mandate and the balance of power between child and parent is asymmetrical, relationships with their peers are voluntary and symmetrical. The living environment of the parents determines the size and type of the peer group.

Interest group

The term peer group is also used synonymously for “interest group”. Participants in a training, learning or working group ( peer education ) are often referred to as a peer group; they practice peer learning . They may well belong to different groups socially, but for a certain period of time they are linked by the same interests. In learning didactics ( action-oriented learning ), peer groups have a special status because similar interests generate group dynamics that promote learning .

Capital market

In the capital market, a peer group or peer group is generally referred to as a group of companies that are comparable in terms of certain economic characteristics. E.g. a company is compared with a group of equivalent companies in terms of industry, size and activity in order to be able to evaluate it. A peer group can be compared to an individual fund in order to evaluate its performance against the other funds from the peer group.

literature

  • Lothar Beinke (Ed.): Career orientation and peer groups and the forms of the role of teacher specific to the choice of career . Bock, Bad Honnef 2004, ISBN 3-87066-927-6 .
  • Erving Goffman : We all play theater, self-portrayal in everyday life (original title: The presentation of self in everyday life , 1959), translated by Peter Weber-Schäfer. Foreword by Ralf Dahrendorf, 10th edition, Piper, Munich / Zurich 2003, ISBN 978-3-492-23891-5 .
  • Manfred Günther : Dictionary youth - age: from Abba to zygote . With caricatures by Klaus Stuttmann , a foreword by Austrofred and an afterword by Ernst Volland , RabenStück-Verlag, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-935607-39-1 .
  • Marius Harring, Oliver Böhm-Kasper, Carsten Rohlfs and Christian Palentien: Peers as educational and socialization bodies - an introduction to the topic ; in: Mariua Harring u. a .: (Ed.): Friendships, cliques and youth cultures, peers as educational and socialization bodies , Wiesbaden: VS-Verlag 2010

University publications

  • Kai-Christian Koch: Peer relationships in elementary school age: a sociometric time change study in a 25-year comparison 2005, DNB 976560836 (Dissertation Bielefeld University 2005, 253 pages full text online PDF, free of charge, 253 pages, PDF 5.6 MB).

Web links

Wiktionary: Peergroup  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. Peter Noack: hogrefe.com/dorsch/peergroup : Peergroup in Dorsch - Lexicon of Psychology . Retrieved September 22, 2019.
  2. Spektrum.de/lexikon/psychologie/peergroup , Spectrum of Science website. Retrieved September 22, 2019.
  3. cf. Literature: Günther, pp. 14 and 90.
  4. Laurence Steinberg: Adolescence . 2010.
  5. Kienbaum, Jutta, Schuhrke, Bettina: Developmental Psychology of the Child From Birth to the Age of 12, Verlag W. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart, 2010, p. 134.
  6. ^ Adolf G. Coenenberg, Wolfgang Schultze: The multiplier method in company valuation: conception and criticism. In: Finanzbetrieb 12/2002. 2002, accessed August 11, 2015 .