ABSTRACT
Peer affiliations during adolescence tend to fall into two broad categories: peer cliques and peer crowds. Whereas the former are defined by mutual personal relationships among a small group of adolescents, most often manifested in frequent social interactions and shared activities, the latter are of a different nature. According to Brown (1990), crowds are “reputation-based collectives of similarly stereotyped individuals” (p. 177). More specifically, the affiliation among members of a crowd is not dependent on their actual interaction, but on common attitudes and behaviors ascribed by peers in school or from the neighborhood.
