Emerging Adults’ Self-Identified Peer Crowd Affiliations, Risk Behavior, and Social–Emotional Adjustment in College

Abstract

Although peer crowd affiliations have been studied extensively in adolescence, less is known about the crowd structure of emerging adults. The current study tested whether college students’ self-reported crowd affiliations were uniquely associated with a broad range of adjustment indices. Participants were 588 emerging adults at a small liberal arts college in the Western United States ( Mage = 20.07, SD = 1.34; range = 18–26; 411 women). Exploratory factor analysis revealed that the peer crowds examined were best described by four underlying crowd dimensions (i.e., social, athletic, scholastic, and counterculture). Regression analyses showed that scholastic and athletic affiliations predicted social–emotional adjustment and low-risk-related behaviors. Social and counterculture identification predicted risk-related behaviors. However, while social affiliation predicted social–emotional adjustment, affiliation with the counterculture crowd predicted high levels of loneliness and low belongingness. The results highlight the importance of crowd affiliations in emerging adulthood and their implications for college students’ adjustment.