Peers and Homophobic Attitudes in Adolescence: Examining Selection and Influence Processes in Friendships and Antipathies

Abstract

Homophobic attitudes and behavior are a widespread problem among adolescents, but what the role of peer relationships such as friendships and antipathies is in shaping these attitudes remains unclear. Therefore, this study examined to what extent homophobic attitudes are influenced by friends’ and foes’ homophobic attitudes, and whether homophobic attitudes serve as a selection criterion for the formation of friendships and antipathies. Participants came from three Dutch high schools across two waves (wave 1 November 2014, wave 2 March/April 2015, ages 11–20, N = 1935, 51.5% girls). Stochastic actor-oriented models were estimated for testing hypotheses. The results showed that adolescents adjusted their homophobic attitudes to their friends’ homophobic attitudes, but homophobic attitudes were not consistently related to friendship selection. Further, findings indicated that being dissimilar in homophobic attitudes increased the likelihood to dislike cross-sex peers. Together, the findings suggest that adolescents’ homophobic attitudes were to some extent subject to peer influence, but homophobic attitudes did not steer who adolescents befriended or disliked.

Disentangling contact and socialization effects on outgroup attitudes in diverse friendship networks.

“…They found that friends significantly influenced each other’s attitudes over the 2-year study so that friends’ attitudes became more similar over time. Similar studies of friendship networks have provided evidence for the socialization of anti-immigrant sentiment (Hjerm et al, 2018), homophobic attitudes (la Roi et al, 2020; Poteat, 2007), and attitudes toward ethnic minorities (Zingora et al, 2020).…”

Friendships

“…Research also has shown that adolescents tend to befriend peers with similar levels of religiosity (Cheadle and Schwadel 2012;Leszczensky and Pink 2020). By contrast, a recent study found no evidence that adolescents befriend peers with similar levels of homophobic attitudes (La Roi et al 2020). Finally, adolescents with ethnic prejudice have been shown to avoid befriending inter-ethnic peers (Binder et al 2009;Stark et al 2013).…”

Selection homophily and peer influence for adolescents’ smoking and vaping norms and outcomes in high and middle-income settings

“…Peer influence is a social process by which a focal individual's behavior or attitudes are affected by peers acting as reference points for the individual within social networks (Montgomery et al, 2020;. Whether it is due to peer influence or selection homophily processes (the tendency for individuals to form friendships with others of similar characteristics and behaviors (Krupka et al, 2016;), research shows that adolescent smokers usually have more smoking friends, whilst non-smokers have more non-smoking friends (Liu et al, 2017;. This correlation between an individual's smoking and the smoking behaviors of their peers has been shown to differ according to cultural characteristics (i.e., to be stronger for adolescent samples drawn from collectivistic, versus individualistic, cultures) (Liu et al, 2017).…”

“…This paper aims to explore the behavioral mechanisms underlying the influence of social norms on adolescent smoking and vaping by examining whether changes in the experimentally elicited norms measures over time are correlated amongst friendship cliques, and broadly within the larger school community (e.g., school classes and school year groups). Our statistical approach draws upon the work of Krupka et al (2016), who studied selection homophily and peer influence effects for university freshmen's economic preferences (and related self-report outcomes), and our study's power calculation was also based on the work of Krupka et al, to detect changes in these effects (Hunter et al, 2020). Specifically, we examine selection homophily processes using mixed-effects logistic regressions to investigate whether similarity with another pupil on the smoking and vaping outcomes increases the likelihood of nominating them as a friend (objective 1).…”

“…Subgroup analyses also showed that the proportion of pupils who changed their norms to be "against smoking" was higher for ASSIST schools compared to Dead Cool (Montes et al, 2023). The current paper adds to our previous work by providing a broader overview of selection homophily and peer influence for our experimental smoking and vaping norms measures (in terms of pupils' observed scores on the scales, and individual 'norms' items), comparing statistical methods used to address these questions in behavioral economics (regression, e.g., Krupka et al, 2016) and network sciences (SIENA, e.g., Mercken et al, 2012), examining peer influence from proximal (e.g., nominated friends) versus distal (e.g., school classes and school year groups) peers, and also examining selection homophily and peer influence for our study's other (self-report) smoking outcomes and objectively measured smoking behavior.…”