Popularity and Popularity Goals as Predictors of Adolescents' Behaviors in Cooperative and Competitive Tasks

• In Event: 3-045 - Popularity goals and power values: Social cognition about popularity and its relations to behaviors and popularity status

Abstract/Description

Popularity with peers becomes increasingly important to youth as they get older (LaFontana & Cillessen, 2010). In the first years of secondary school, the goal of striving for popularity – together with actual popularity status – has been shown to be associated with aggressive behavior (Cillessen et al., 2014; Dawes & Xie, 2014; Kiefer & Wang, 2016). We do not know whether these effects only emerge in secondary school or are already present in primary school. Therefore, the current study examined how popularity goals and actual popularity status relate to aggressive and prosocial behaviors in the last two years of primary school. Moreover, in addition to peer nominated behavior, observed behavior during small group competitive and cooperative sessions with peers were examined as outcome variables.
Participants were 185 Dutch 5th and 6th grade students in the final two years of primary school (109 girls, M age = 10.65 years, SD = 0.81). In a classroom session, popularity (most popular; least popular), aggressive behavior (bullying, excluding others, physical aggression, proactive aggression, reactive aggression), and prosocial behavior (helping, showing interest) were measured with peer nominations, and popularity goals were measured with a self-report vignette task (LaFontana & Cillessen, 2010). In a follow-up session with groups of four same-sex peers, participants were observed when planning a party (cooperative setting) and when playing a card game (competitive setting). From recordings of the interactions, trained observers coded the occurrence of negative behavior, coercive resource control, prosocial resource control, skillful leadership, and positive behavior. Hierarchical regression analyses were conducted predicting each behavior from popularity goals, actual popularity, and their interaction (see Table 1).
For peer nominated behaviors, popularity goals positively predicted physical and proactive aggression and negatively predicted showing interest and helping others. Actual popularity positively predicted bullying, excluding, physical aggression, and helping others and negatively predicted reactive aggression. No significant interaction effects emerged.
For observed behavior in the cooperative setting, popularity goals negatively predicted positive behavior. Actual popularity positively predicted negative behavior, prosocial resource control, and coercive resource control, but also skillful leadership and positive behavior. No significant interaction effects emerged. For observed behavior in the competitive setting, popularity goals negatively predicted prosocial resource control, skillful leadership, and positive behavior. Actual popularity predicted negative behavior and coercive resource control. A significant interaction emerged for prosocial resource control.
The results demonstrate that already in elementary school, both popularity goals (prioritizing popularity) and actual popularity status were related to peer nominated and observed behaviors with peers. Whereas actual popularity was associated with more positive and more negative behaviors in interactions with peers, wanting to be popularity was associated with more negative and less positive behaviors. In contrast to findings for older adolescents (Cillessen et al., 2014; Kiefer & Wang, 2016), in the current early adolescent sample popularity goals and popularity status did not interact in predicting social behavior.

Authors

• Tessa Lansu, Radboud University
  Presenting Author

• Toon Cillessen, Radboud University