Nonverbal Peer Pressure Teaches Adolescents to Avoid Risk

Abstract

The teaching of nonverbal com munications, which would help build better social skills in adolescents, needs to be added to schools’ health curriculum. In their article, Duryea, Herrera, and Parkes (2002) cite research that suggests that peer resistance interventions can help adolescents better understand, identify, and manage nonverbal messages that exert health-compromising pressures. These past studies indicated that students are taught very little, if anything, about nonverbal message transmission and decoding.