Popular kids and likeable adults

There are few things more energising than feeling connected, part of a group, accepted, liked; and there are few things as dispiriting as feeling rejected, isolated, excluded.  As parents and teachers, we see this play out time and time again with our children and students, sometimes heartbreakingly so.  In schools, some of this can centre around talk of the 'popular kids', who can seem to define the in - and out-groups.   It has often struck me as deeply ironic that as far as I can tell the 'popular' kids are not actually very popular!  When I put this to a few students, they responded with 'like, duh!', and so it's hardly a new idea.  But it is intriguing, and the title of psychologist Mitch Prinstein's new book The Popularity Illusion jumped out at me.

Prinstein makes a fundamental distinction between two types of popularity.  The first type, he argues, is closely related to status; that is whether someone is widely known, often emulated and able to bend others to their will.  That's status popularity.  The other type, he suggests, is do do with how likeable someone is - it's about people to whom we feel connected and whom we trust; the people we want to spend time with.  That's likeability popularity.

In-group and Out-group behaviour appears in most social networks   source

So in fact, 'popular kids' have one type of popularity, but not necessarily the other.   They may be influential and have high status, but they may not be trusted, or very likeable.  This simple distinction, Prinstein argues, is not just a school thing; it echoes across the adult social hierarchies as well and reflects our culture’s current relationship with popularity. Society has become fixated on status and all its trappings, fame, power, wealth and celebrity.  

Prinstein's survey of the literature and his own research indicates that seeking high-status is the wrong game to be in;  it seems to be inversely related to health, happiness and career success, and he is blunt in his warning: Much as we might warn them about the dangers of substance-abuse, or risky driving, we should also offer our strongest cautionary messages to teens about the perils that come with excessively pursuing high status popularity in high school. 

Prinstein suggests a plausible explanation as to why 'popular kids' do not seem to enjoy corresponding status after they leave school; because while the 'most popular' might enjoy power and influence in high school, [they] will quickly face a world where their aggressive tactics, their use of others to elevate their own standing, and their incessant focus on their popularity, ultimately lead to a lifetime of unsuccessful relationships.    Conversely, the 'non-popular' kids rise up because the social struggle that many teens experience in high school does offer lifelong advantages, as we need adversity to grow and to deal with the hardships in order to learn new skills. Because popular teens escape so many of the normal travails of adolescence, they pay the price in adulthood.

There are lots of nuances in Prinstein's work.  It is, for example,  possible to have high status popularity and high likeability popularity - but it's not common; only 35% on those with high status are also high in likeability.  There are also interesting cultural aspects - in the USA status and likeability were very distinct; whereas in China adolescents with high status were far more often judged to be the most likeable.  One might speculate that the individualist / collectivist paradigms might go a long way to explain this; this is certainly consistent with the finding that in the USA high status is often associated with high aggression whereas in China, high status is more often associated with low aggression.

A critical part of the book was where Prinstein turns to parenting.  He's a bit anodyne here, but the advice is sound:

Perhaps most important is that parents teach their children empathy as [a way to] embrace likeability instead of, or in addition to status. Teaching moments can present themselves routinely by asking children each day how they made others feel welcome happy or valued. Talking with your kids about the way you felt when you were a child also can help them understand emotions of others, as well as how short-term experiences evolve over a lifetime.

Interestingly, he notes that while supportive parenting is the key here, it can be too supportive - having parents who are hypersensitive to their child’s emotions and over protective is a strong predictor of unpopularity.

So this is a readable and thought provoking book; with the initial distinction about popularity being the big takeaway, because popularity is somewhat of a paradox; it is fundamental to human nature to desire to be popular, but that doesn’t mean that being popular is always good for us.

References

• Li, N et al (2015) Popularity and Social Preference in Chinese Adolescents: Associations with Social and Behavioral Adjustment. Social Development 25:4
• 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