Test Your Knowledge Flash Cards 🔒Play Lemonaire 🔒Play Last Stand

Addiction » Peer Influence and Addiction

What you'll learn this session

Study time: 30 minutes

AQA spec: 3.2.4.7

The psychological explanation of addiction: the influence of nurture through peer influence
How friends model, offer and pressure people to use substances, and how social norms play a part
Why adolescence is a time of extra risk
Evidence for and against peer influence, and how it compares with the genetic explanation

🔒 Unlock Full Course Content

Unlock This Course

Where do you learn your habits?

The last two lessons looked at nature: genes passed down in families. This lesson looks at nurture. The psychological explanation says that addiction is shaped by what happens to us and who we spend time with. For teenagers, one of the biggest influences is the people around them.

Key terms:

Peer influence: the way friends and people of a similar age affect what a person thinks, feels and does.
Peer group: a group of people of a similar age who spend time together, such as friends at school or a sports team.
Modelling: copying the behaviour of someone you look at or look up to.
Direct pressure: being openly pushed to do something, such as being offered a drink and told to take it.
Indirect pressure: feeling pushed to do something without anyone saying a word, just because everyone else is doing it.
Social norm: what people in a group see as normal behaviour.
Adolescence: the teenage years, when a person grows from a child into an adult.

How peers can lead to addiction

The explanation says that friends and social groups can lead a person towards substances in four main ways.

💬 Shaping attitudes

If your friends think smoking or drinking is fun and harmless, you are more likely to think so too. Time spent with a group slowly changes what seems acceptable.

👀 Modelling use

You see friends using a substance and it looks normal, even cool. You may copy them, especially if they are popular or have a status you admire.

🍻 Offering

Friends make a substance easy to get. A first try is much more likely when someone hands you a drink or a vape at a party than when you have to find one alone.

😥 Pressure to fit in

Direct pressure sounds like "Go on, everyone's having one". Indirect pressure is silent: you worry about being left out or laughed at if you say no, so you join in.

Trying a substance is not the same as being addicted. But the explanation says that peers help a person to start, and repeated use with the group can build up into the cravings and tolerance you met in Characteristics of Addiction.

Social norms

People pay close attention to what others do. A social norm is a kind of unwritten rule. If a teenager believes that "everyone does it", then using a substance feels normal, and not using it feels odd.

Often the belief is wrong. A teenager may think far more people their age drink or vape than really do, because the ones who do are the most noticeable. Even so, a false belief can still change behaviour. The pressure to fit in is the same one behind normative influence in Social Factors in Conformity: people go along with the group to be liked and accepted.

Why adolescence?

Peer influence is thought to be strongest in the teenage years. At this age:

friends become more important, and teenagers spend more time with them and less with family
being accepted by the group matters a great deal
teenagers are working out who they are, and copying a group can feel like a way to belong
many people try substances for the first time

Worked example

Mia, 15, has never smoked. She joins a new friendship group. Everyone vapes at the park after school. Nobody forces her, but one friend offers her a go, and she thinks that saying no will make her look childish. She tries it. Over several months she starts to vape on her own as well.

Applying the explanation:

Modelling: she sees the whole group doing it.
Offering: a friend hands her one.
Indirect pressure: nobody forces her, but she fears looking childish.
Social norm: it seems normal because "everyone" does it.
Adolescence: the group matters a lot to her at 15.

Evaluating peer influence

✅ Strengths

Surveys of teenagers often find that those whose friends use substances are more likely to use them too.
It explains why many people first try a substance with friends, and why use often starts in the teenage years.
It leads to useful ideas for prevention, such as teaching teenagers how to say no and showing that fewer people use substances than they think.

❌ Weaknesses

It may be the other way round: people who already use substances choose friends who use them too, so the friends did not cause it.
Many teenagers are around friends who use substances and never become addicted, so peers cannot be the whole story.
It explains how people start more than how they become addicted. It ignores other things such as genes, stress and family.

Nature versus nurture

The genetic explanation is about nature: inherited genes make some people more vulnerable. Peer influence is about nurture: the people around us shape what we do.

🧬 Nature (genetic)

Inherited. Present from birth. Supported by family and twin studies.

👥 Nurture (peer influence)

Learned from the people around us. Strongest in adolescence. Supported by surveys of friends' behaviour. Cannot explain why some teenagers with heavy-using friends never become addicted.

Key point

Each explanation has gaps that the other can fill. Most psychologists say that nature and nurture work together: genes may make someone more vulnerable, and the peers around them may decide whether they ever try the substance.

Common mistakes

Saying peers make someone addicted. Peers influence the person, and that is not the same as forcing them.
Thinking pressure always means someone saying "do it". Indirect pressure is silent.
Forgetting to link to the question. In an application question, name the type of influence and point to the detail in the story.
Mixing up the two explanations. Peer influence is nurture, and genetic vulnerability is nature.
Only describing. For an evaluation question, make a point and then say why it matters.

Exam-style question

Leo is 16. He has never smoked, but his new friends all smoke. They offer him a cigarette and say, "Go on, everyone has one." He takes it and soon smokes every day.

(a) Using the psychological explanation, explain why Leo started smoking. [3 marks]

(b) Give one weakness of peer influence as an explanation of addiction. [2 marks]

Model answer

(a) Peer influence: his friends all smoke, so Leo sees it as normal and may copy them through modelling (1). They offer him a cigarette, which makes it easy to try (1). They tell him "everyone has one", which is direct pressure to fit in with the group (1).

(b) Many people have friends who use substances and never become addicted (1), so peer influence cannot explain addiction on its own (1). Another correct weakness is that people who already smoke may pick friends who smoke.

(c) The biological explanation says addiction comes from inherited genes, which is nature (1), whereas the psychological explanation says it comes from the people around us, which is nurture (1).

Exam tip

In a "using the psychological explanation" question, each mark is usually one named type of influence linked to a detail from the story, so use the story's words, such as "offer" and "everyone has one".

Test Your Knowledge