The Pull of the Group: teacher key

Peer Pressure, grade 8 edition, written for 8th grade. Teens spend more time with peers than ever, and a 1951 test showed how groups can sway people. See what research says and what helps.

Read the book. Print this page for the key.

Questions and answers

1. About what share of people on the critical trials went along with the group's wrong answer?
   • About all of them
   • About one in a hundred
   • About one third (answer)
2. What is a clique, compared with a group of friends?
   • Leaders decide who is in or out (answer)
   • Everyone is free to hang out with others
   • It has no leader at all
3. Why might teens be more open to peer pressure?
   • They have fewer friends than children
   • They worry more about what others think of them (answer)
   • They spend less time with peers
4. What do peers more often do with family values, according to researchers?
   • Work against them
   • Reinforce them (answer)
   • Ignore them
5. What does the word gravitate mean here?
   • Push away
   • Fall down
   • Drift toward (answer)

Words

• adolescence: the teen years
• clique: a closed group
• confederates: secret helpers
• gravitate: drift toward
• abstract: in the mind