A comparative study on the impact of positive peer pressure on adolescents with special reference to Kamrup districts of Assam

Pages:501-503
Bijoyeta Das (Department of Psychology, Gauhati University, Guwahati, Assam)

When adolescents move to higher educational institutions, they exhibit distinctive behavioral changes. These changes are more due to accumulated feelings rather than an outburst of a single incidence. Peer pressure, change in class environment, campus environment, extracurricular activities, parental guidance and school administration each one or all of these play a significant role in moulding the behavior of a student in high school or college. Peer pressure is influence on a peer group, observes or individual exerts that encourages others to change their attitudes, values or behaviors to conform to groups. When an adolescent moves to a higher educational institute there is a distinct change in environment in way of peers and how they interact with the adolescent. There are a large number of studies on the negative impact of peer groups on the behavior of an adolescent. At the same time, there are few selected studies on the positive impact of peer group on the behavioural development of adolescents. Peer conformity in young people is mostly pronounced with respect to style, taste, appearance, ideology and values. Peer pressure is commonly associated with episodes of adolescent risk taking behaviors because these activities commonly occur in the company of peers. Peer pressure also has few positive effects when youth are pressured by their peers towards positive behavior v.i.z. volunteering for charity or excelling in academics. Such studies are found to be very rare in India, but very selected studies were conducted in Assam. This study throws light on the various positive aspects of peer pressure. It was conducted on 30 adolescents (both boys & girls) of CBSE Schools of Kamrup metro and Kamrup rural areas of Assam. The students of class xi and class xii were selected in order to fulfill the criterion. The major tools used for gathering related information were Self Devised Questionnaire and Observation. In this study, it was seen that most of the male adolescents easily fall as a prey to peer pressure in comparison to female adolescents. In this study, the factors contributing towards the impact of positive peer pressure on the behavioral development of the adolescents would be discussed. Most of the adolescents in Kamrup rural area are found to be aware of the increasing competition and had adopted such behaviors necessary to cope with competitive pressures. Some positive changes in the adolescents were observed due to peer pressure were reading habits, creative and different ways of learning etc.