Then we're very inclined to emulate those behaviors.
This is why there is celebrity endorsers for so many products in marketing.
Because the idea is that if we identify with that celebrity, or
if there is someone that's very high status that we think,
I'd like the be more like them and they engage in a behavior,
or buy a product, or have a belief, then we're very likely to follow.
Here's the problem, though.
When it comes to adolescence, and
when it come to health risk behaviors, adolescents are trying to
do what they think those really popular kids in their school are doing.
But there's really good evidence to suggest that what they
think the popular kids are doing is wrong.
They're totally overestimating how much it is that popular kids really engage in
health risk behavior.
And that's what we're about to talk about.
We did a study where we were specifically looking at that, trying to understand how
much kids might overestimate their peers engagement in health risk behaviors.
So in a paper that was authored, first authored by Sarah Helms,
we looked at different crowds that you usually see in a lot of high schools,
particularly here in America.
And really interestingly, this is a way of understanding popularity
that matches the way that kids talk about popularity.
So, of course, adolescents in high school don't talk about social preference or
social reputation, but they do, especially in America, talk about peer crowds.
The groups of kids that are athletically oriented,
they're referred to as the Jocks.
The groups of kids that are really high status, like the mean girls,
they're the Populars or the Preps.
Or in that movie the Plastics,
the group of kids that are really academically oriented, like the Nerds or
the Geeks or the Brains, and the ones that engage in deviant behavior, the Burnouts.
This doesn't happen as often in other cultures, and it might be because in many
other cultures, we see that high schools are tracked.
So by the time the kids get to secondary education, they've all ready placed into
university oriented schools versus more trade schools, or non-university tracts.
And, because there's more homogeneity in terms of academic achievement, these very
disparate groups, based on their interests and habits, are less salient.
We do see this though very much in America and
it's depicted in our movies which then, people see in other countries as well.
So no matter where you live,
you probably know what I'm talking about with these peer crowds.
Really interestingly, these peer crowds have been around for decades and decades.
They might have different names but back in the 50's, all the way to today,
there has been some form of Jocks, and Populars, and Nerds, and Burnouts,
as well as some other groups as well.
Well what we did, is we asked kids to tell us, using a pier nomination assessment,
who are the kids in your school who are the most quintessential,
stereotypical Jocks, of all the Jocks, and
who are the most quintessential Populars, same for the Brains and the Burnouts?
And this was very easy to do among adolescents, because these were the words
that they use, and this is the way that they think about it.
And they love talking about all these crowds, so we got all that information.
And then we ask them all to fill out a measure to tell us about
the health risk behaviors they engaged in, all kinds of health risk behaviors.
I'll talk about just a few.
Now what we were able to do with this information is we were able to look
at how much do people who are not a part of the Jocks,
think that the Jocks engage in a health risk behavior?
For instance, let's say, how many partners do they have,
that they engage in sexual intercourse with?
Now, because this was Non-Jocks, or lets say Non-Populars,
perceiving what it is that the Populars did, we refer to that as out-group norms.
So what do people outside of the group think is normal,
among those, in that group?
We were also then able to look at in-group norms.
So what did the Populars think, the other Populars did?
How often did they engage in a behavior, or
how many sexual intercourse partners did they have?
And then, because we knew who the real quintessential Populars were, and
they had all filled out our measure, we're able to look at how much they
self-reported that they had actually engaged in these behaviors.
So, how many sexual intercourse partners did they really say that they had?
