Peer Pressure, Mental Health, And The Theory Of Identity Versus Role Confusion

As human age, there are a multitude of steps and factors that come into play as the developmental process occurs. Some of these steps have been described by theorists’ and have been described in vast amounts of research and other factors are shown within societal trends that occur at different ages. In order to find out how a specific individual has these concepts play out throughout their life I thought it would be best to interview a senior girl in high school who is on a turning point of relying on her parents and also beginning to make a future for herself. Throughout the interview process we discussed many different topics but the three most influential topics were about peer pressure, mental health, and the theory of identity versus role confusion. The first concept that I discussed with this adolescent girl was the idea of peer pressure. Peer pressure as defined by the textbook is, “When people of the same age group encourage particular behavior, dress, and attitude” (Berger, 2016, p. 360). I thought that it would be interesting to ask this adolescent what she defined peer pressure as to see if she thought it was a negative or positive influencer. She defined it as an intimidation by friends either indirectly or directly to do something and thought it was a negative influence. What was an interesting finding with this individual was that she defined peer pressure negatively but felt that her friends affected her in a positive way when it came to what they did both in