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A group or individual may be encouraged and want to follow their peers by changing their attitudes, values or behaviors to conform to those of the influencing group or individual. For the individual affected by peer pressure, this can result in either a positive or negative effect, or both.
What strategies can help handle negative peer pressure?
- Pay attention to how you feel.
- Plan ahead.
- Talk to the person who is pressuring, let him or her know how it makes you feel and tell the person stop.
- Have a secret code to communicate with parents.
- Give an excuse.
- Have friends with similar values and beliefs.
What kinds of pressure do you experience in your life?
There are two kinds of pressure – internal and external. Internal pressures stem from pushing yourself too hard, or from worrying about your ability to meet others’ expectations of you and those that you have of yourself.
Carrie stated, “negative peer pressure can be detrimental to self-esteem, influence clear decision-making, and increase stress. In the worst cases, it can lead to harmful or dangerous behaviors that could result in death, such as car accidents involving alcohol, accidents, drug overdose, and more.”
The finding that social pressure also elicits proactive control and enhances performance contrasts with studies, which found that social anxiety and psychological pressure adversely affect performance (Hickman and Metz, 2015; Schmid et al., 2015).
How do you live without pressure?
Here are a few of the things you can do to accomplish that.
- Don’t listen too much to others.
- Forget about perfectionism.
- Focus on the process, not on the outcome.
- Be OK with mistakes and failure.
- Just do it!
- Cut down on busywork and unimportant stuff.
- Don’t take things too seriously.
- Take 30 belly breaths.