Personality Development

I have come across a research done by Anne K. Reitz et. al (2014). This research has been published in special issue on “Personality Development” which fascinates me the most when the discussion is all about peers. Both of the researchers used PERSOC framework to determine the individual differences development within groups.

Education is a process of socialization of a student. It provides a colour to the youth’s social life in society and the future. Education need to be mastered in adolescent development as it has always been influenced by family, community and rules in society. School is the first place where the students will start their journey into the new world of reality. There, they will accommodate themselves as their second home

Peers can be defined in many ways. In Merriam-Webster.com (2015), peers mean ‘belonging to the same societal group especially based on age, grade or status. However, they are likely to resemble each other concerning individual characteristics that pose the notion of “birds of a feather flock together”. For example, we rarely see the 7 years old child hangs around with 15 years old teen. Yet, we always see teenagers with same age with same interest will clique themselves together. Those criteria are needed as long as it can adapt to the behaviour of each other in terms of interests and goals of similar behaviours. This is what we called as homophile that would be one of peer characteristics. Another characteristic that has been discussed by Anne et. al (2014) is Dyadic Peer Relationship. This relationships influence the personality development through interaction patterns and relationship characteristics that increase individual differences. All in all, when it comes to peers, Kinderman (1993) and Ryan (2001) have the same opinion that peers are likely to influence many outcomes, including student’s motivation and engagement in

Peers are considered as individuals who are very important to a teenager as a catalyst either positive or negative and as a role model too. They also share friendship, hang around and talk to each other as well as doing the activities together. This is why teenagers choose school as their best place to find their peers. In 1974, Csikszentmihalyi & Larson found out that teenagers spent most of the time with their peers compared to their family. Although the study was conducted in 1974, but at present the same findings are still obtained. When students are asked to write about their best friend, they could write more than two pages with lots of descriptive sentences. However, when asking them to write about their family, they will ponder for quite some time just to get the ideas what to write. From these two examples, we can say that the finding from Csikszentmihalyi & Larson (1974) is remarkably true though it was studied before I was born. This is happening now in every school and even in every