The Importance of Being Fun: A Cross-National Comparison

• In Event: Poster Session 13
  In Poster Session: PS 13 Topic - Social Relationships

Abstract

Everyone likes to have fun, but little is known about the importance of being fun on peer status. Well-liked Adolescents tend to be outgoing, assertive, prosocial, and academically competent, and they are neither aggressive nor withdrawn (McDonald & Asher, 2018). Popular adolescents are outgoing, assertive, and prosocial or aggressive (or both); not withdrawn (Hart et al., 2019). Absent from these lists are markers that describe someone as fun to be around, which is curious because considerable attention and energy are devoted to the pursuit of fun. The present study examines whether peer status and reputations are linked to being fun among adolescents from Colombia and the USA.
Participants from the USA were 134 sixth-graders (60% female; M=11.4 years old) who attended a public-school representative of the state of Florida in terms of ethnicity and family income. Participants from Colombia were 144 sixth-graders (59% female; M=12.2 years old) from 5 schools in the country’s Northern region. Participants completed a roster-based, peer nomination questionnaire (Bukowski et al., 2012) to identify classmates who best fit the following descriptors: fun, popular, likeable, physically aggressive, verbally aggressive, academic achievement, prosocial, fairness/justice, leader, and athletic. Scores were standardized by class size using a regression-based procedure that accounts for potential biases in scores due to variations in group size (Velasquez et al., 2013).
There were no mean-level differences between students in the USA and Colombia on any variable, except relational aggression (d= 0.32). Main effects for gender emerged on likeability, justice, and relational aggression. In each case, girls were rated higher than boys (d= 0.29 to 0.48). Path analyses exploring concurrent associations between fun, popularity, and likeability (see Figure 1) indicated that being fun was concurrently associated with popularity and likeability. There were no differences between the USA and Colombian samples on any path, so paths were constrained to be equal. Correlations (see Table 1) examined associations between fun and peer reputation variables, for both samples. In each case, fun was positively associated with academic achievement, athletic, fairness/justice, and prosocial characteristics. Fun was negatively associated with aggression among USA adolescents but not among Colombian adolescents. These were the only associations that differed (p<.05) across samples.
Strong positive associations emerged between fun and peer status in both the USA and Colombia. Fun was also linked to several positive peer reputation attributes. What makes a child fun? Some, undoubtedly, are equipped with traits such as extraversion and emotional stability, which have been linked to popularity and likeability (van der Linden et al., 2010). Fun children are also likely socially adept. Classroom observations indicate that well-liked children are rewarding interaction partners, who surpass classmates on experimental assessments of perspective-taking and social skills (Gottman et al., 1975).
Although fun was positively linked to positive attributes in both locations, cross-national differences emerged in the association between fun and aggression. Differences in school system organization may have contributed to the decoupling of fun from aggression. Cultural differences are thought to moderate the relationship between aggression and status (Salmivalli et al., 2000) as well as differences in peer characteristics (Vaillancourt & Hymel, 2006).

Authors

• Robert Altman, Florida Atlantic University
  Presenting Author

• Mary Page Leggett-James, Florida Atlantic University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Luz Stella Lopez, Universidad del Norte
  Non-Presenting Author

• William M Bukowski, Concordia University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Brett Laursen, Florida Atlantic University
  Non-Presenting Author