This study investigates friendship selection and influence processes in relation to popularity, aggression, and prosociality among 613 fifth graders in 26 classrooms within one academic year. Results showed that youth tended to select their friends based on similarity in popularity more than similarity in aggression or prosociality. Aggressive youths tended to select prosocial peers as friends given similarity in popularity, but prosocial youths did not disproportionately nominate aggressive peers. Socialization within friendships was evident for aggressive and prosocial behavior and popularity. Discussion considers the importance of social status as a grouping mechanism in peer social ecologies, and as a malleable factor that can impact student adjustment.
This study examined features of classroom peer ecologies and teaching practices that may attenuate the prevalence of victimization and its connection to peer rejection. Participants were 1020 elementary school students from 54 classrooms and their teachers followed for one academic year. In the majority of classrooms students who were rejected in fall tended to be victimized in spring, but the strength of this association varied across classrooms. The positive relationship between rejection in the fall and victimization in the spring was stronger in classrooms where victimization was strongly centralized around specific victims in the fall. In addition, victimization in the spring was higher in classrooms that had higher levels of peer rejection in the fall, where victimization was strongly centralized in the fall, and where teachers reported making fewer efforts to reduce social status inequality. This study contributes to a growing body of research into contextual factors that may attenuate negative outcomes associated with peer rejection and reduce levels of peer harassment in elementary school.
High social status youth are often influential in the peer system. Thus, they may serve as agents of cultural socialization if they exhibit characteristics that reflect cultural values (e.g., interdependence). This research examined the behavior that contributes to high social status in the United States and China. At each of 3 waves, 934 early adolescents (M = 12.7 years at Wave 1) made behavioral (i.e., prosocial behavior and academic engagement) and social status (i.e., likability, perceived popularity, and admiration) nominations of their peers. Positive behavior was predictive of higher social status in both the United States and China, but this was stronger in China. In the United States, there was a tendency for positive behavior to be less predictive of perceived popularity than other forms of social status (e.g., likability); however, this tendency was not evident in China. (PsycINFO Database Record
This research evaluated the role of high-status peers in youth's academic engagement. Youth (mean age ϭ 12.7 years) in the United States and China (N ϭ 934) made social status (i.e., sociometric popularity, perceived popularity, and admiration) nominations of their peers in the fall and spring of their first year of middle school. They also reported on their academic engagement at these two time points. The academic engagement of peers that youth nominated as high in sociometric and perceived popularity, but not of peers they admired, was predictive of youth's own academic engagement over time. Notably, this effect was evident over and above any initial similarity youth had with high-status peers they nominated (e.g., youth tended to nominate peers as high in sociometric popularity when they were similarly academically engaged to youth). It also did not differ in size in the United States and China. The results underscore the importance of high-status peers in youth's academic engagement in two countries that differ in terms of their cultural and educational systems.
Educational Impact and Implications StatementThis study highlights the importance of high social status peers to youth's academic engagement during early adolescence in the United States and China. Because youth's academic engagement becomes more similar over the course of the school year to that of the peers they personally like and think are popular, consideration should be given to either (a) how to couple such aspects of high social status with high academic engagement or (b) how to uncouple them from academic engagement all together.
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