Peer Contagion

Peer contagion refers to the mutual influence that occurs between an individual and a peer, including behaviors and emotions that potentially undermine one's own development or cause harm to others, and specifically to the transmission of deviant behavior from one adolescent to another. It can take many forms, including aggression, bullying, weapon carrying, disordered eating, drug use, self-harm and depression, and it occurs both in natural peer settings and within intervention and education programs. Awareness of the influence being exerted is uncommon and often unintentional, since those involved are typically seeking an audience or companionship to satisfy an immediate need rather than deliberately spreading the behavior; researchers have proposed several processes to explain it, including deviancy training.