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Considering the influence of peers is important for understanding adolescents’ behavior and has been of scientific interest for decades. Thanks to scientific progress, new theoretical developments are advancing. The aim of my dissertation was to test whether those can add to our knowledge on two outcomes that are very prominent in adolescence and set the course for adult life: Educational attainment and delinquency in the school context. To do so, I conducted three self-contained papers that seek to fill two important research gaps. Turning to educational attainment, the first research gap I address is the role of peers in the realization of educational aspirations (Study 1). I invoke the concept of cultural heterogeneity to find out whether the aspirations of peers in the classroom affect the realization of Abitur aspirations for adolescents on the non-standard educational pathways in Germany (i.e. students attending Haupt-, Real- or Gesamtschulen). Using panel data of CILS4EU, I do not find convincing evidence that heterogeneity in classmates’ aspirations hampers the realization of Abitur aspirations. This contrasts findings from the U.S., where more culturally heterogeneous neighborhoods were related to a lower likelihood of realizing adolescents’ college aspirations. This suggests that the concept of cultural heterogeneity cannot be readily applied to the German school context. The second research gap my dissertation addresses, is the lacking integration of peer influence into a comprehensive, mechanism-based, action-theory in the study of delinquency in the school context. Situational Action Theory (SAT) has the potential to fill this gap and is therefore applied to two outcomes that are connected to educational attainment: Cheating in school (Study 2) and truancy (Study 3). While the value of SAT for explaining actions of rule-breaking defined in law has largely been supported by empirical tests, little is known about its ability to explain rule-breaking that

Wikstrom's Situational Action Theory (SAT) explains rule-breaking by reference to the cognitive perception-choice process, which indicates how a person's propensity to break rules interacts with the setting's criminogeneity. SAT's situational model claims that the interaction between personal morality and the moral norms of the setting, the so-called moral filter, is critical in the explanation of rule-breaking, and that the influence of self-control is subordinate to this process. Self-control becomes relevant when individuals whose personal morality discourages rule-breaking are exposed to settings in which the moral norms encourage rule-breaking, that is, if the moral filter is conflicted. Whereas most previous studies have equated the moral filter with personal morality, we consider the moral norms of the setting as well. This allows for a more rigorous test of the moral filter, and thus the conditionality of self-control. Here, we investigate student cheating, using data from two waves of a large-scale German school panel study, and we conceptualise the setting's moral norms by reference to the descriptive norm: other students' cheating behaviour. This ensures the spatio-linkage between the setting's criminogeneity and rule-breaking, which is necessary for investigating SAT. Additionally, our estimation strategy - person and school fixed-effect models - controls for alternative explanations by the selection of people into settings with different levels of criminogeneity. Moreover, it controls for heterogeneity across persons and schools. The findings are in line with SAT's predictions. In cases of a correspondence between personal morality and the moral norms of a setting, students with rule-abiding morality are least likely to cheat, whereas students with a rule-breaking morality are the most likely to cheat. Also, in line with SAT, self-control only matters for students with rule-abiding morality when they are exposed to moral norms that encourage rule-breaki

Wikstrom's Situational Action Theory (SAT) explains rule-breaking by reference to the cognitive perception-choice process, which indicates how a person's propensity to break rules interacts with the setting's criminogeneity. SAT's situational model claims that the interaction between personal morality and the moral norms of the setting, the so-called moral filter, is critical in the explanation of rule-breaking, and that the influence of self-control is subordinate to this process. Self-control becomes relevant when individuals whose personal morality discourages rule-breaking are exposed to settings in which the moral norms encourage rule-breaking, that is, if the moral filter is conflicted. Whereas most previous studies have equated the moral filter with personal morality, we consider the moral norms of the setting as well. This allows for a more rigorous test of the moral filter, and thus the conditionality of self-control. Here, we investigate student cheating, using data from two waves of a large-scale German school panel study, and we conceptualise the setting's moral norms by reference to the descriptive norm: other students' cheating behaviour. This ensures the spatio-linkage between the setting's criminogeneity and rule-breaking, which is necessary for investigating SAT. Additionally, our estimation strategy - person and school fixed-effect models - controls for alternative explanations by the selection of people into settings with different levels of criminogeneity. Moreover, it controls for heterogeneity across persons and schools. The findings are in line with SAT's predictions. In cases of a correspondence between personal morality and the moral norms of a setting, students with rule-abiding morality are least likely to cheat, whereas students with a rule-breaking morality are the most likely to cheat. Also, in line with SAT, self-control only matters for students with rule-abiding morality when they are exposed to moral norms that encourage rule-breaki