A group of person's who share similar values and circumstances influence each other's thoughts and behaviors. The collective membership's beliefs become the group's stand. The group's position carries more weight than the view's of any individual members. Then the group's beliefs seem forceful enough to persuade individual members to think and act as the group wants.
Peer pressure also means the attraction that prospective and present group members feel toward a group's characteristics. These persons desire what the group offers. They behave in ways that the group approves in exchange for group membership.
Groups offer independence from parents by providing an intimate personal life outside the family. They offer acceptance and approval from persons in the larger world and help young people feel confident and worthy. Groups offer social rules for interacting with others, thereby providing confused young people with acceptable guides for action and a sense of security.
To adolescents with little solid sense of who they are or what they're worth, the peer group's expectation that the members think and behave in "appropriate" ways brings relief. Through group membership, the young people do not have to decide how to think or act. They allow the group to influence how they behave.
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