Did You Choose Your Path — Or Did Your Peers?
I was not the kid my high school was designed for. I just didn’t know that then.
My high school sent kids to Stanford and the Ivies. Nearly twenty National Merit finalists in my graduating class. My peers were destined for success. I was focused on something simpler: not being found out for the imposter I knew I was.
I perceived myself as less ambitious. I didn’t understand why things that seemed easy for everyone else were so hard for me. I wouldn’t find out until junior year that I was dyslexic. Until then I had a simpler explanation: I just wasn’t as smart.
But I had softball. I clung to it because it was the one place where I knew, without question, that I was good at something. Not the best. Just good. And when you spend your school days quietly convinced you’re the dumb one while everyone around you is thriving, a place where you feel capable matters enormously.
My world was small. And without fully realizing it, the education and career possibilities I imagined for myself were shaped entirely by the world I was standing in.
The research has a name for this.
Researchers call it the social norm effect. We look to the people around us to figure out what is appropriate, possible, and worth pursuing, often without realizing we are doing it at all. Studies on adolescent career development consistently show that peers socialize one another in terms of academic beliefs, behaviors, and career aspirations. Peer influence can be both positive and negative, either broadening career perspectives or reinforcing the paths that already feel normal.
We think we are making independent decisions. We are mostly making social ones.
I went to Occidental College, a small liberal arts school in Los Angeles. A good school. Some would say a great school. But I didn’t see it that way, because it wasn’t Stanford or an Ivy. It was, however, a school that fit neatly inside the expectations of what someone from my world was supposed to do after high school.
That is peer influence. It doesn’t announce itself. It just quietly narrows the frame of what feels possible or acceptable.
And it works in both directions.
Peers can open doors you never knew existed. Research shows that first-generation college students who knew peers or extended family members who had attended college had better access to a knowledgeable support system. College became something they could see, and therefore something they could imagine for themselves. A kid from a family of accountants whose classmate goes to trade school suddenly realizes that was an option too. Exposure is everything.
But peers can also close doors, making certain choices feel normal and others feel strange, risky, or simply invisible. In communities where a four-year university is the only path anyone talks about, trade school becomes unthinkable. In communities where nobody goes to college, university feels like someone else’s world. Research confirms that external influences, parents, peers, and social context, shape career interests and aspirations from childhood through adulthood, often in ways people never stop to examine.
The question worth sitting with.
In Career Compass: A Guide to Career Exploration, I dedicate an entire chapter to external influences, the forces outside of you that shape your career thinking before you ever sit down to make a conscious decision. Peer influence is one of the most powerful and least examined of those forces.
The question is not whether your peers have influenced your career thinking.
They have.
The question is whether you have ever stopped to examine how. Because the answer to that question, honestly examined, is the beginning of making a career decision that actually belongs to you rather than to the world you happened to grow up in.
Did you pick your career? Or did your peers?
FAQ
How do peers influence career choice? We look to the people around us to figure out what is appropriate, possible, and worth pursuing, often without realizing it. Researchers call this the social norm effect. It quietly narrows or widens the frame of what feels possible for our education and careers.
Can peer influence be a good thing? Yes. Peers can open doors you never knew existed. When you see a classmate or family member go to college or trade school, that path becomes something you can imagine for yourself. Exposure is everything.
How do I know if my career path is really my own? Start by examining how the people and world around you shaped your thinking. Peer influence is one of the most powerful and least examined external influences. Honestly looking at it is the beginning of making a career decision that actually belongs to you.