Gender differential in deviant friends' influence on children's academic self-esteem

Social cognitive theory predicts that deviant friends are likely to impair children's academic self-esteem through the children's cohesiveness with friends. This process is consistent with the expectation of greater susceptibility to deviant friends' adverse influence on the girl, because of the girl's higher cohesiveness with deviant friends. These possibilities are sustainable in the present study of 566 primary school children in Hong Kong, China. Results indicate that the effect of association with deviant friends on academic self-esteem was more negative for a child who was a girl and more cohesive with friends. As expected, cohesiveness was higher in a girl than in her male counterpart, when associating with deviant friends. Importantly, the interaction between cohesiveness and association with deviant friends explained some of the gender differential in susceptibility to deviant friends' influence.