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Autism and Accuracy in Adolescent Perceptions of Friends' Sexual Attitudes and Behavior
Author(s) -
Wilcox Steven,
Udry J. Richard
Publication year - 1986
Publication title -
journal of applied social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.822
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1559-1816
pISSN - 0021-9029
DOI - 10.1111/j.1559-1816.1986.tb01146.x
Subject(s) - normative , psychology , perception , autism , normative social influence , human sexuality , component (thermodynamics) , sexual behavior , social psychology , developmental psychology , peer group , neuroscience , gender studies , philosophy , physics , epistemology , sociology , thermodynamics
This study uses data from adolescents matched with data from their friends to examine whether reference group effects on adolescent sexuality should be thought of as operating through the sharing of norms or the modeling of behavior. We observe that perception of attitudes has such a trivial reality component and such a strong autistic component that it cannot serve as a mechanism of peer influence. Perception of sexual behavior has a reality component which is as large as its autistic component, and large enough to serve as a route of influence. We reach two conclusions: (1) Reference group effects on adolescent sexual behavior probably work through behavior modeling rather than through normative influence. (2) Studies which infer peer influence on sexual behavior using only perception of peers will arrive at erroneous conclusions.