Susceptibility to Peer Pressure – Self-Assessment of Students of Primary School and Preschool Education,

Abstract

People are known to change their behavior and decisions to conform to others i.e., to be accepted by peers. Peers play a significant role in adolescent growth. This study shows the findings of the research of which the point was to gain insight into students’ – future school and preschool teachers’ – self-assessment of their own relationships with peers i.e. to determine the areas and differences in susceptibility to peer pressure and in relationships with peers. The research was conducted on students of the Faculty of Educational Sciences Pula, Croatia and the Faculty of Education in Jagodina, Serbia (N=411).

The results we obtained show that the area of greatest susceptibility to peer pressure on the observed sample of students supports the interpersonal theory. Variability in self-assessment of certain areas of responsiveness to peer pressure and relationships with peers according to place of study of the observed groups of students at the latent and the manifested level were also found. It can be concluded that the observed cities have different degrees of social and also psychological relations. The value of these results is that they enable insight into students’ various areas of susceptibility to peer pressure and differences with respect to different environments or places of study, which opens space for improvements.