Crowd Sourcing: Do Peer Crowd Prototypes Match Reality?

During the transition into high school, adolescents sort large sets of unfamiliar peers into prototypical peer crowds thought to share similar values, behaviors, and interests (e.g., Jocks). Often, such sorting is based solely on appearance. This study investigates the accuracy of this sorting proce...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Social psychology quarterly 2020-09, Vol.83 (3), p.272-293
Main Authors: Pivnick, Lilla K., Gordon, Rachel A., Crosnoe, Robert
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Academic achievement
Adolescents
Classification
Crowds
Crowdsourcing
Health behavior
Health problems
Membership
Mental health
Peer relationships
Peers
Prototypes
Risk behavior
Risk taking
Secondary schools
Social classes
Social factors
Social psychology
Social status
Strangers
Teenagers
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Summary:During the transition into high school, adolescents sort large sets of unfamiliar peers into prototypical peer crowds thought to share similar values, behaviors, and interests (e.g., Jocks). Often, such sorting is based solely on appearance. This study investigates the accuracy of this sorting process in relation to actual characteristics using video and survey data from a longitudinal sample of U.S. youths who attended high school in the mid- to late-2000s. To simulate this sorting process, we asked same-birth-cohort strangers to view short videos of youths at age 15 and to classify those strangers into likely crowd membership. We then compared the classifications they made to how adolescents characterized themselves at that same time point. Results show that peer crowd classification predicts aspects of unknown peers’ mental health, academic achievement, extracurricular involvement, social status, and risk-taking behaviors.
ISSN:0190-2725
1939-8999
DOI:10.1177/0190272520936228