SALIENCE OF SOCIAL REFERENTS 901 ence individuals'percep ey.&Smith.2007)and follow a tradition of empirical research f collective soci 2004.d within main goal of this h was to re norms are accompanied by changes in the behaviors that are individuals in a networkon collective oms and behavioral pat- prescribed or proscribed by those norms tems through the course of everyday interaction Prejudice and Harassment in Schools We investigate the so ce of cues about a problematic norm ent harass cal in the Galvan,2008 social network of th scho sponse from the target and often from the targets ision a su cial refe lving a school ce.sexual har erbally in person and al refc po onen resist this abel and i cho like"ei mean and "making drama"(Faris Felmlee,2011:Marwick cial int ment behavior is not str gly related to and perso pe ng to nerally o tial cha for about collect h t the social n ork of a school Wher rchy participa u ying intervention that the n s.the on the throuhout the year to test the attitudes do not tra withd ted eve social interaction change their peer ial norms motivate haras ment and inhibit behaviors that de w collectiv e&Mille ,993 can more tolerant colled ure of through everyday social interactions.In doing so.in this research and to group members’ tightly knit and frequent interactions allowing for ongoing monitoring and reinforcement. Overall, understanding who can influence individuals’ percep￾tions of collective social norms may help us to understand how to change chronically perceived norms and behavioral patterns in a community. The main goal of this research was to understand whether and through what channels these theoretically identified social referents of a community can significantly shape their peers’ perceptions of collective norms in their community. Importantly, we also examine whether those changes in perceived collective norms are accompanied by changes in the behaviors that are prescribed or proscribed by those norms. The Present Research: Measuring Social Referents’ Influence Across a Social Network We investigate the source of cues about a problematic norm within a community, specifically, the norm of peer harassment in a high school. Using a saturated survey and social network analysis to map the entire social network of the school, we are able to identify social referents at the school, both widely known and clique leader social referents. We randomly assign a subset of these social referents to an intervention involving a schoolwide assembly in the fall and public reminders of the assembly for the rest of the year, in which the intervention social referents demon￾strate their opposition to harassment and support for behavior that can de-escalate conflict. The influence of the intervention social referents is measured net of the influence of the remaining control social referents. Specifically, we test whether the intervention social referents’ public behavior changes their peers’ perceptions of the school norm of harassment and behavior. We further predict that intervention social referents will influ￾ence their peers through the mechanism of everyday social inter￾action that is frequent and personally motivated. Specifically, interactions that students initiate with social referents should be the most influential channel for perceiving cues about collective norms, compared with incidental or institutionally driven interac￾tion. When students are personally motivated to interact with social referents in or outside of the classroom, social referents’ behavior should be noticed more and weighed more heavily in students’ inferences about the collective norm, relative to interac￾tions that are a consequence of a school administrator’s decision to put students in the same class or study hall. In addition, we hypoth￾esize that the more frequent the interactions with social referents, the stronger their influence on their interaction partners’ perceptions of the collective norm. Thus, we use reports of students’ self-selected social interactions at three points throughout the year to test the idea that the influence of ties to intervention social referents will be relatively greater if students are exposed to them in frequent and personally motivated everyday social interaction. In sum, our research questions are: Does greater social interac￾tion with intervention social referent students over the course of the school year significantly shape their peers’ perception of the school’s collective social norm regarding harassment? Does greater social interaction change their peers’ harassment behavior? In this research, we explored how collective norms are identified by testing whether the widely known and clique leader students’ behavior can communicate a more tolerant collective norm through everyday social interactions. In doing so, in this research we answer the more general call to understand the wider conse￾quences of social influence within social networks (Mason, Con￾rey, & Smith, 2007) and follow a tradition of empirical research attempting to understand peer influence within networks on be￾havior (e.g., Bearman & Moody, 2004; Coleman, Katz, & Menzel, 1957). To our knowledge, this is the first time that influence across a naturally occurring social network has been tested with an experiment, in which influence agents are randomly assigned to treatment on the basis of their position in the network. As such, the study is one of the first to measure the causal influence of certain individuals in a network on collective norms and behavioral pat￾terns through the course of everyday interaction. Prejudice and Harassment in Schools Many high schools in the United States and abroad report harmful and cyclical patterns of student-to-student harassment in schools (e.g., Graham, 2006; Juvonen & Galván, 2008). The harassment is often cyclical in the sense that harassment prompts a response from the target and often from the targets’ friends, which triggers a reaction from the initial student and her or his friends, thereby broadening and fueling the behavioral cycle. The type of harassment varies from school to school, but common themes include harassment on the basis of ethnic or racial identity, appearance, sexual orientation, or rumored sexual activity. Increas￾ingly, harassment takes place online, on social networking sites like Facebook, and through phone texting, but it also occurs verbally in person and sometimes physically. Although many intervention programs label such behavior bullying, adolescents often resist this label and instead choose descriptors like “being mean” and “making drama” (Faris & Felmlee, 2011; Marwick & Boyd, 2011). Crucially, harassment behavior is not strongly related to stu￾dents’ personal values or attitudes regarding tolerance generally or harassment specifically. Harassment is typically widespread throughout the social network of a school; students at almost all levels of the school hierarchy participate (Faris & Felmlee, 2011), despite variation in their personal orientations toward harassment. This suggests that changing patterns or levels of harassment in a school will not come from changing students’ private attitudes, values, or beliefs, which are the target of many existing anti￾bullying interventions. Instead, researchers have described high rates of harassment behaviors as stemming from perceptions of a social consensus concerning harassment behaviors at the school (e.g., Juvonen & Cadigan, 2002). For example, many students do not personally like or approve of harassment, but their private attitudes do not trans￾late into behaviors aimed at discouraging harassers, defending victims, or withdrawing from the cycle of harassment by refusing to engage in conflict or that of their friends. Students interpret their peers’ failure to take action as implicit endorsement of the harass￾ment. In other words, peer behavior communicates social norms regarding the acceptability of harassment and the unacceptability of standing up against it or withdrawing from it. These perceived social norms motivate harassment and inhibit behaviors that de￾escalate conflicts (see also Prentice & Miller, 1993). The chronic activation of harassment norms in schools is perhaps an important feature of what is frequently described as a schoolwide “culture of harassment” (Bradshaw & Waasdorp, 2009). SALIENCE OF SOCIAL REFERENTS 901 This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly