Popularity

As children enter middle childhood, they become increasing focused on navigating the peer system, which provides an acute awareness of the social hierarchy and their place in it (Gottman & Mettetal, 1986; Parker & Gottman, 1989). Some children even prioritize attaining social status over maintaining friendships (LaFontana & Cillessen, 2010). Status matters because it describes an individual’s ability to compete for and control both physical and social resources (Hawley, 1999). Previous studies have identified two forms of affective regard, separate from the peer group and behavioral reputation, that predict popularity and unpopularity: acceptance and rejection (Marks et al., 2021). However, their relative importance has been unclear because previous studies have not included both in the same model and because most studies have been concurrent, not longitudinal. Affective markers of peer regard and behavioral markers of peer group reputation are moderately correlated, making it difficult to draw conclusions from separate studies of each. Studies which incorporate measures of each are few and limited in scope. The current study was designed to examine the origins of popularity and unpopularity by disentangling affective regard from behavioral reputation using a sample of 292 students enrolled in grades 4 to 6 (ages 9-13) of a university-affiliated school.

It is well documented that friends influence adaptive behaviors (Brechwald & Prinstein, 2011). However, it remains unclear how influence manifests itself. The current study investigated the role of likeability and popularity in determining the relative influence that a child exercises on his or her friend’s prosocial behavior and academic achievement in a sample of elementary schooled children (N=679). The results suggest that more liked friends have more influence over their less liked friends’ prosocial behavior and academic achievement. Both more- and less-popular friends influenced each other’s academic achievement. Residualized analyses, however, which take into account the shared overlap between likeability and popularity, suggest that the more-liked friend continued to influence the prosocial behavior and academic achievement of the less-liked friend, whereas more-popular children had no influence over their less-popular counterparts.

In this short- term longitudinal study (N=428), the unique predictive association
between the positive peer nominated characteristic of being fun and peer status (peer
preference and popularity) was assessed in a sample of fourth through sixth grade
students. Concurrent hierarchical regression analyses and longitudinal structural equation
modeling analyses found that peer nominated fun positively predicted preference and
popularity, after accounting for the contribution of predictors potentially confounded with
being fun, such as prosocial behavior, academic achievement, relational aggression, and
physical aggression. The longitudinal association between fun and preference was
qualified by grade in school, such that being fun predicted increases in preference for
younger children but not for older children. There were bidirectional associations
between peer status and fun; fun predicted increases in peer preference and popularity,
but peer preference and popularity also predicted later increases in fun. The findings
point to the need to expand existing conceptualizations of the antecedents of peer status beyond known predictors and to examine the developmental shifts in the landscape of
children’s peer interactions that make certain characteristics more desirable at different
ages.