Dual Peer Processes in Adolescent Smoking Initiation and Frequency: Close-Friend Modeling and Anti-Smoking Influence

Peers' attitudes and behaviors are among the most robust determinants of adolescents' smoking behaviors. Although researchers have largely examined the negative role peer influence plays, this study examined how the larger peer group can play a prosocial role in advocating for reductions in smoking, even after accounting for the behavioral modeling of adolescents' closest friends. This study examined how closest friends' actual smoking behavior and perceived peer influence to reduce smoking were associated with adolescents' smoking initiation and frequency from ages 13 - 17. Data were collected from 1999 - 2004 in the United States, where participants (N = 184; 54% female; 58% White, 29% Black) reported annually on their own cigarette use and their peer group's influence not to smoke, while participants' best friends reported on their own cigarette use. Discrete time survival analyses assessed predictors of initiation, while a bivariate latent curve model assessed predictors of cigarette smoking frequency. Having a best friend who smokes was prospectively associated with roughly triple the odds of adolescents' own smoking initiation, while influence not to smoke was unrelated to initiation. However, the latent curve model revealed that adolescents who perceived greater peer influence not to smoke tended to smoke less over time throughout adolescence. Best friends' smoking frequency was also positively associated with adolescents' own smoking frequency, Results suggest that neither knowing the specific best friendship norms nor the greater peer group norms is sufficient, but rather both additively contribute to shape adolescents' cigarette use patterns.