Influence And Mechanism Of Seventh Graders’ Autonomy On Peer Conformity

Peer conformity refers to the phenomenon that individuals take the same views and behaviors as their peer groups due to real or unreal pressure.Being forced to follow the peers,adolescents may develop prosocial behaviors but may also engage in antisocial activities such as swearing,theft and vandalism.However,adolescents are not completely influenced by their peers in a passive manner as their autonomous development may affect their conformity.The focusing point of previous studies is mainly the assessment of the relationship between the overall level of individual autonomy and conformity.This study attempts to explore the influence of the type of autonomous development on peer conformity of junior high school students and the conformity formation mechanism of students with emotional autonomy.Based on the scores of 609 seventh graders in the "Adolescent Autonomous Development Questionnaire",we have found that there are three main types of autonomous development among the students: cognitive autonomy,behavioral autonomy,and emotional autonomy.Among them,262 students are with cognitive autonomy(43%);179 students with behavioral autonomy(30%)and 142 students,emotional autonomy(23%).Study 1 involves a single-factor between-subjects experimental design to assess the differences in conformity tendency among junior high school students with different types of autonomous development.The independent variable is the type of autonomous development(cognitive autonomy behavioral autonomy and emotional autonomy)and the dependent variable is the score of conformity tendency.According to the result,The difference is mainly that compared with the students with cognitive autonomy and behavioral autonomy,the peer autonomy tendency of the students with emotional autonomy is more obvious.At the same time,the number of students with emotional autonomy,who develop informational and normative conformity,is higher than that of the students with other two types of autonomy.Based on the result of Study 1,Study 2 involves a two-factor within-subjects experimental design to assess the influence of peer relationships and stress level on the conformity of junior high school students with emotional autonomy.The independent variables are peer relationships(familiar/unfamiliar)and stress level(level 1/level 2/level3/level 4),and the dependent variable is the rate of change in the subjects’ decisions.According to the result,The main effect of peer relationships is significant,that is,compared the relationships with unfamiliar peers,the pressure exerted by familiar peers will intensify the peer conformity of the students with emotional autonomy;the main effect of peer stress level is significant,that is,compared with those under the first and second stress levels,junior high school students with emotional autonomy have a higher incidence of developing conformity under the third and fourth stress levels.In summary,this study has found that peer conformity tendency of junior high school students with emotional autonomy are obvious,and such tendency can be affected by peer relationships and stress level.In saying so,this result is of great significance for future educators to guide the students with emotional autonomy to correctly understand and respond to the pressure of peer conformity and to establish mature peer relationships.