Popularity and its effects on lives of children to the adulthood.
I have recently finished an (academic) course on the psychology of popularity. Peer rejection affects kids all the way into adulthood, and it's critical for children to thrive in their social environment, so I am sharing my notes here.
Why is popularity important to kids
- Children typically spend more time with other kids than adults starting from age 3, and therefore if those interactions are stressful it will have a significant impact on their lives.
- Starting from the age of 3, they can tell which kids in their environment are most popular, which kids are the least popular and which kids are not affiliating with their peers at all.
- Adolescents brains are wired to orient them toward their peers since this is the way they are developing autonomy and independence.
- Popularity matters to adults for its nostalgic value (people remember their past through the lens of how popular they were), but it also affects how happy, and successful someone is, and how successful they are in their relationships.
- There is popularity dynamics in the workplace as well, and it affects power and influence you have.
- The way someone experiences popularity is related to the what kind of parent they become. It also affects their own children's level of popularity and whether they do well at school and with their peers.
Evolutionary perspective on popularity (why is peer acceptance important to us)
- Living with offers advantages, and staying in a group maximizes chances of survival, therefore it is important to pay attention to the others
- People experience physical symptoms from social rejection. MRA studies have shown when people are socially excluded, the same regions of the brain light up as when experiencing physical pain.
- Our social experiences even influence our body's on a cell level (social rejection activates inflammatory responses in cells).
How popularity affects us:
- It determines how we think about our social experiences. Scientists can predict how someone will encode social cues and respond in social situations based on how popular they were as children.
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We all have social information processing biases, which are rooted in childhood popularity. Most common biases are:
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Hostile Attribution Bias (HAB):
- Kids that are rejected by others have increased tendency to develop hostile attribution bias.
- People with HAB have distorted way of processing social information, perceiving innocent interactions as aggression and they are more likely to have aggressive responses to interaction.
- HAB has intergenerational effect: mom's with HAB tend to think that others are hostile toward their children and even that their children are hostile towards them.
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Rejection Sensitivity bias (RSB)
- Kids with RSB tend to internalize rejection, get depressed and blame themselves for it.
- These kids tend to be more passive and withdrawn and at higher risk of depression and anxiety.
- Not all kids who get rejected develop depression (peer rejection is quite common), but the kids with RSB are especially at risk.
- Adults with rejection sensitivity never grow out of using social feedback for a sense of self-concept; they only feel good about themselves when others are saying good things about them.
- If you have this bias, if you can identify it, you can change it (unlike hostile attribution bias).
There are five categories of sociometric popularity. Kids can be:
- Popular - these are frequently picked by other kids as most liked, and infrequently picked as least liked (15-20 % of all kids).
- Rejected - these are frequently picked as least liked, infrequently picked as most liked (15-20 % of all kids).
- Neglected - not picked at all (15-20 % of all kids)
- Controversial - they are frequently both liked most and liked least (5% of kids)
- Average - about 35-50% of kids
These categories are very stable. Kids are likely to stay in the same category from early childhood to high school, but some kids do change. Change is not huge; popular kids can become controversial, but rejected kids won't become popular.
When kids switch context (change school), they are likely to reestablish their level of popularity in the new environment. Neglected kids are most likely to change their popularity level, but most likely everything will stay the same.
With small kids (up until about 11), most popular peers are also most liked. With adolescents, popular peers are not necessarily liked (this is true especially for girls).
Determinants of popularity
- When you put a group of kids to play, rejected kids initiate play with others, but fail to understand group norms. They are also aggressive, but not sociable.
- Controversial kids are also aggressive, but they are sociable.
Therefore, main determinants of popularity are aggressiveness, withdrawal, and sociability.
Other determinants of popularity:
- For popular kids: athletic ability, cooperativeness, leadership, friendship skills, and positive social interactions.
- Rejected: easily angered, physically aggressive, unhappy, tense, anxious
- Neglected: unhappy, less disruptive than others.
- Controversial: tend to be funny (class clowns), but often in aggressive ways (make fun of others, disrupt class, etc.)
There are two forms of popularity:
- Social preference - relates to likeability
- Social reputation - relates to dominance and status
Reactive aggression is negatively associated with social preference, and proactive aggression is positively related to social reputation
Attractiveness and popularity
- Popular and controversial kids (especially girls) tend to be a lot more attractive than average when it comes to social preference. In terms of social reputation in adolescence, physical attractiveness is an even stronger predictor of this type of popularity.
- Even infants show a preference for attractive faces. There is even some evidence that parents treat their attractive children differently from unattractive.
- Young children with asymmetrical faces are more likely to be rejected/disliked (we perceive symmetrical faces as beautiful).
Intelligence and popularity
- Among young children smarter the kids are, more popular they are. Why is this? There are three theories: they have excellent social problem-solving skills, teachers like them more (and small kids look up to the teachers), they have low aggression.
- This somewhat changes in adolescence. With adolescents, it's ok to be smart, but not ok to seem as if you try hard to earn good grades.
- Smart kids start with high self-esteem when they are young, but it plummets by adolescence, and social anxiety grows.
Parent influence on child's popularity
- Parent social competence, parent psychopathology and additional factors influence child's social behavior and child peer relations.
- Parents who are more socially skilled have children who are more socially competent.
- Parents who believe that social skills and making friends are important, instill those value in their kids.
- Parents who have large social networks will have more socially skilled kids.
- Parents can coach their children through social experiences and help them improve their social interactions.
- Children that are securely attached tend to do much better with their peers.
- Parents who play with their children, have kids who do better.
- Authoritative style of parenting does better than authoritarian or permissive.
What can parents do:
- Monitoring: It is useful to monitor the social behavior of small children directly, but later should back off.
- Initiation (of activities): Look for a good balance of structured (sign them up for classes) and unstructured activities.
- Coaching: as their go through interactions.
Later outcomes
- People who were rejected as children are more likely to suffer from psychological difficulties, 1 in 4 have clinically severe levels of symptoms (this is around 5% for average and popular kids). Of course, it could be that these kids were rejected in the first place because they manifested psychopathology back then, and they continue to show it into adulthood.
- Rejected and controversial kids are more likely to get arrested.
There are three types of rejected kids
- aggressive (about 50% of all rejected kids)
- withdrawn
- other (kids who act inappropriately in some other way)
Aggressive kids are the ones that have issues in later life. Their rejection tends to be stable, and they continue to be rejected as they grow up. Aggressive rejected kids tend not to be aware that they are being rejected, they think they are liked. This lack of awareness is why aggressive-rejected have a hard time changing.
Likable children are least likely to have low education, be unemployed or on public assistance.
Interestingly, more popular adolescents use more alcohol in adulthood, but least popular adolescents are more likely to have metabolic syndrome (obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure). Likeability has protective.
Note:
These are notes from the course Psychology of Popularity by The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Course goes into much greater detail on agressive-rejected psychopathology.