Poster #219 - Adolescents’ Popularity Goal and Adjustment: Examining the Moderation Effects of Parental Popularity Goal and Popularity Status

• In Event: 3-159 - Poster Session 12
  In Poster Session: PS 12 Section - Social Relationships

Integrative Statement

As peer status becomes increasingly important to adolescents, they tend to form social status goals to promote popularity and use behavioral strategies to attain such goals (Li & Hu, 2018; Li & Wright, 2014). Recent research has shown that the popularity goal is influenced by the expectation of popularity status from their parents, namely, parental popularity goal (Li & Long, 2015). Although we have gained some knowledge about the behavioral implications of adolescents’ popularity goals, little research has considered the moderating effect of the parental popularity goal and adolescents’ popularity status on the behaviors exhibited by adolescents’ when they have the popularity goal. Adolescents may use different behavioral strategies to attain this goal depending on their levels of popularity status and parental popularity goal. Furthermore, past research has given little attention to internalizing symptoms as outcomes of popularity goal pursuit. This study will examine how parental popularity goal and adolescents’ own popularity goal jointly predict later behaviors and internalizing symptoms for adolescents with different levels of popularity status.

There were 445 adolescents (248 girls) in 7th and 8th grades from a public middle school in Southeast China that participated in the study. Six months later, they participated in the study again. Adolescents reported their own and perceived parental popularity goal. Adolescent relational and overt aggression, and prosocial behavior were assessed via peer nomination and self-reports (Crick & Grotpeter, 1995, 1996). Adolescents also reported their internalizing symptoms, including anxiety, depression, and loneliness. Their attained popularity was measured via peer nominations.

Hierarchical regressions were conducted with adolescent popularity goal as the independent variable and behaviors and internalizing symptoms as the dependent variables and perceived parental popularity goal and attained popularity status as moderators. The interaction between adolescent popularity goal and perceived parental popularity goal predicted Time 2 anxiety (β = .10, p < .05). Follow up analysis shows that popularity goal was positively related to later anxiety when perceived parental popularity goal was very high, whereas, when perceived parental popularity goal was very low, the association turned negative (β = .24, SE = .11, p < .05, at + 3SD; β = -.23, SE = .11, p < .05, at -3SD). Also, the three-way interaction of popularity goal by perceived parental popularity goal by popularity status predicted Time 2 self-reported relational aggression (β = .16, p < .01). Specifically, for adolescents with higher popularity, their popularity goal longitudinally predicted relational aggression when the perceived parental popularity goal was also high; but when perceived parental popularity goal was low, the relationship was negative (B = .37, SE = .13, p < .01, at + 3SD; β = .25, SE = .10 p < .05, at + 2SD; β = -.20, SE = .09, p < .05, at -2SD; β = -.31, SE = .12, p < .05, at -3SD). This pattern was not significant among adolescents with low popularity.

The findings highlighted the joint effects of parental social goal and popularity status on adolescents’ behavioral and mental health adjustment during their status pursuit.

Authors

• Yunyi Long, DePaul University
  Presenting Author

• Yan Li, DePaul University
  Non-Presenting Author