Goal: To improve conflict management skills
Objective(s): The student will identify situations in which peers are trying to influence their decisions or behavior.
Process Steps:
1. Think about what the others are saying or doing.
2. Think about how you are feeling.
3. Ask yourself "are my friends trying to persuade me to do something?"
4. Decide if you want to be influenced (consider consequences).
5. Act on your decision.
Discuss
Definition: Peer pressure occurs when your peers are trying to influence your decisions or behavior.
Rationale: Your decisions should be thoughtful choices that consider potential outcomes, long and short term needs and goals, and are rational. While it is OK to listen to input from a variety of sources including peers, it is not OK to feel pressure to conform to the wishes of someone else. Anytime coercion, manipulation, or undue pressure are involved, utilize the skill steps to help make your own good choices.
Where/When/Comments:
• Provide situations in which one or more people are
pressuring another person. From these situations, have the
students arrive at a definition of peer pressure through
deductive reasoning.
• Brainstorm a list of situations in which students receive
peer pressure.
• Have a discussion in which students suggest ways of saying
"no" to various types of peer pressure.
• Have students identify times when peer pressure may be
beneficial.
Model/Role-play with Feedback
• Students are asked to watch or find television or magazine
advertisements which show children their own age. Students are to
identify how peer pressure is shown (words, actions, dress, etc.)
and what the purpose of the ad is. Students also identify whether
they view the message as beneficial or detrimental.
• Students are asked to keep track of any incident in which
they experience any form of peer pressure over an assigned
interval (2 days for example). Students give self report to class
in small groups.
Role play situations:
• Your friend wants you to try his alcoholic beverage.
• Your friends want to egg someone's house and car.
• Your friend wants you to steal a magazine.
• Your friend wants you to sneak out and meet him after
curfew.
• Your brother wants you to take money from your mother's
wallet to order a pizza.
• Your friend asks you to skip school and ride in his new
car.
• A friend wants you to take someone's lunch money for him.
• Your neighbor overpays you for a lawn job and forgets to
ask for the extra back; your friends want you to keep it.
• Your friends try to talk you into using your house for a
party when your parents are out of town.
• A group of kids want you to come to a party with no adult
supervision which is against your family rules.
Application with Feedback
• Half of the class are assigned to be "observers"
and the other half, "skill users". On the first day, if
an observer sees a skill user experiencing a form of peer
pressure, he verifies it with the student. Roles are reversed the
following day.
Social Skills Curriculum Guide, 1992
Special School District of St. Louis County