During the transition into high school, adolescents sort large sets of unfamiliar peers into prototypical peer crowds thought to share similar values, behaviors, and interests (e.g., Jocks). Often, such sorting is based solely on appearance. This study investigates the accuracy of this sorting process in relation to actual characteristics using video and survey data from a longitudinal sample of U.S. youths who attended high school in the mid- to late-2000s. To simulate this sorting process, we asked same-birth-cohort strangers to view short videos of youths at age 15 and to classify those strangers into likely crowd membership. We then compared the classifications they made to how adolescents characterized themselves at that same time point. Results show that peer crowd classification predicts aspects of unknown peers’ mental health, academic achievement, extracurricular involvement, social status, and risk-taking behaviors.

在向高中过渡的过程中，青少年将大量不熟悉的同龄人分类成典型的同龄人群体，这些群体被认为具有相似的价值观、行为和兴趣（例如，Jocks）。通常，这种分类仅基于外观。本研究使用来自 2000 年代中后期就读高中的美国青年纵向样本的视频和调查数据，调查这种分类过程与实际特征相关的准确性。为了模拟这种分类过程，我们要求同龄的陌生人观看 15 岁青年的短视频，并将这些陌生人分类为可能的人群成员。然后，我们将他们所做的分类与青少年在同一时间点如何描述自己进行了比较。结果表明，同伴人群分类可以预测未知同伴心理健康的各个方面，