How to be likeable, happy and healthy

I wrote in a previous post about Mitch Prinstein's book, which suggests that seeking high status in school or work is a misplaced ideal.  Prinstein argued that that being a likeable person, rather than in the popular crowd, was more likely to lead to happiness and success, but a colleague raised the issue that likeability may well carry expectations of gendered behaviour.  It's certainly the case that males and females may be (regrettably) liked for different things - in particular, girls for being submissive and hiding their intelligence, boys for being aggressive and always getting the last word.  If that's right, then perhaps being likeable isn't such a good thing after all.

I was relieved to see that the research does not seem to point entirely this way.  Experiments undertaken by psychologist John Coie et al involved giving students a list of all their classmates names and then asking two simple questions:

• Who do you like the most?
• Who do you like the least?

You might think these two are (inverse) measures of the same thing; but it turns out that the two are actually independent.  


Coei and his colleagues found that the largest proportion of students ended up in the middle, as a blend - that is, there was no pattern to their popularity (the Averages).  A small proportion was both highly likeable and highly dislikeable (the Controversials), and some simply did not feature as either disliked or liked (the Neglected).  

The most interesting groups, however, were those who got high likeability scores and low dislikeability scores (the Accepteds), and those who got low likeability scores and high dislikeability scores (the Rejected).  And they are interesting because the stark contrasts tells us a lot about how to, and how not to, be likeable.

Prinstein notes video evidence shows that Accepted and Rejected kids spoke far more than others. When Accepted children spoke, they were setting norms, gently reminding others of the rules, suggesting new games and coming up with innovative ideas. When Rejected children spoke, they were more likely than others to insult, tease, threaten and boss around their peers. They were also least likely to listen to directions.

Subsequent research shows that these factors that cause us to be accepted by peers are fairly universal and enduring - they have the potential to make us liked or disliked again and again, for the rest of our lives.

These characteristics do not seem to me to be gender laden, and I am not entirely sure how to square this with other research which shows that makes and females do often tend to be held to different standards here.  Further thought needed here - but I am encouraged that the likeable characteristics here seem to be ones that would  transfer well beyond school, right into physical health.  Prinstein  quotes a  swedish study involving 10,000 people over 4 decades [which] shows that after controlling for a host of psycho-social variables, likeability predicts happiness, employment and income decades later. Likeable children even grew up less prone than others top be diagnosed with diabetes, obesity, high cholesterol or high blood pressure. 

The take-aways here are optimistic, I think.  It means that the things that make you likable are learnable skills, that tend to lead to health and happiness.  We should be teaching more of this.

References

• Coie, J. D., Dodge, K. A., & Coppotelli, H. (1982). Dimensions and types of social status: A cross-age perspective. Developmental Psychology, 18(4), 557-570.
• Almquist Y. B. and Brännströmb, L. (2014) Childhood peer status and the clustering of social, economic, and health-related circumstances in adulthood Social Science & MedicineVolume 105, March 2014, Pages 67-75
• Prinstein, M. (2019) The Popularity Illusion