"This is a Photograph of Me": Early Adolescent Girls, Peer Acceptance, and the Search for Self
Date
1997
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Haverford College. Department of Psychology
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Thesis
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Award
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eng
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Haverford users only
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Abstract
Girls encounter significant socio-psychological difficulties during adolescence, as they develop identities against a backdrop of conflictual cultural messages about female identity. The present study investigated the relationship between self-concept and peer relations for a group of girls in seventh grade. Specifically, the study looked at the peer group's ideal of "the popular girl" and girls' individual perceptions of and reactions to it. Subjects completed measures of self concept (PCSC), sex role attributes (CSRI), sex role attitudes (AWSA), and a series of projective questions, and then participated in an intervention, in which a control group read from a mainstream teenage girls' fashion magazine, and an experimental group read from Blue Jean, one of a growing genre of girl-centered, advertising-free magazines for teenage girls. The original measures were then adminstered again. It was predicted that subjects in the experimental condition would demonstrate more confidence and resistance to cultural stereotypes about women than they had exhibited earlier, and that subjects in the experimental condition would show little change. While the intervention produced only a handful of significant effects, the results are suggestive of the potential benefits to adolescent girls of programs designed to support their integrity and creative resistance to damaging cultural messages.