Abstract
Objective: The aim of this research was to obtain the views of young children regarding their reasons for rejecting a peer.Method: To achieve this goal, we conducted a qualitative study in the context of theory building research using an analysis methodology based on Grounded Theory. The collected information was extracted through semi-structured individual interviews from a sample of 853 children aged 6 from 13 urban public schools in Spain.Results: The children provided 3,009 rejection nominations and 2,934 reasons for disliking the rejected peers. Seven reason categories emerged from the analysis. Four categories refer to behaviors of the rejected children that have a cost for individual peers or peer group such as: direct aggression, disturbance of wellbeing, problematic social and school behaviors and dominance behaviors. A further two categories refer to the identities arising from the preferences and choices of rejected and rejecter children and their peers: personal identity expressed through preferences and disliking, and social identity expressed through outgroup prejudices. The “no-behavior or no-choice” reasons were covered by one category, unfamiliarity. In addition, three context categories were found indicating the participants (interpersonal–group), the impact (low–high), and the subjectivity (subjective–objective) of the reason.Conclusion: This study provides researchers and practitioners with a comprehensive taxonomy of reasons for rejection that contributes to enrich the theoretical knowledge and improve interventions for preventing and reducing peer rejection.
Highlights
Maintaining a minimum number of meaningful, positive and lasting interpersonal relationships (Baumeister and Leary, 1995), and belonging to groups (Nesdale, 2007) are persistent motivations for people
Supracategory: Behavior (Cost) (74.1%) The reasons of this category express rejection of the other because of what s/he does, says, or tries to do and these behaviors represent threats to or attacks on social and school expectations and norms (“She takes things away,” “He’s bad at reading”), personal and group wellbeing (“He bothers”, She speaks when we’re working”), autonomy (“He bosses people about,” “She pushes me around”), and physical and emotional safety (“He hits,” “She makes fun of everybody”). When these behaviors are interpreted as costs for the personal and groups norms and functioning, or do not contribute to satisfy the individual and group needs, the child becomes the object of rejection
It major part of reasons refers to what the rejected does, in line with the studies of the correlates of rejection and the social attribution (Earn and Sobol, 1984; Coie et al, 1990; Bierman, 2004). In contrast to those studies, rejection here does not appear to be the direct result of what the rejected does, but of the relational evaluation of this behavior done by the rejecters (Leary, 2001), of how they interpret that this behavior affects their needs and the group functioning (Levine and Moreland, 1994; Asher and McDonald, 2009), and its degree of typicality in comparison to the behavior of the own group or of other groups (Nesdale, 2007; Abrams and Rutland, 2008)
Summary
Maintaining a minimum number of meaningful, positive and lasting interpersonal relationships (Baumeister and Leary, 1995), and belonging to groups (Nesdale, 2007) are persistent motivations for people. Most studies using peer assessment, attributional approach or social exclusion have been descriptive of children aged 8 or older, as younger children’s assessments of their classmates have been considered little reliable (Nesdale and Duffy, 2011). Selman (2003), in his interpersonal coordination theory, stated that most children aged 6–8 years are cognitively aware of their own thoughts, motives and feelings in social interactions. We used open-ended questions to collect the reasons given by the rejecters. Working with 6-and-7-year old children will provide valuable information to implement specific actions designed to prevent and reduce peer rejection at early ages (García Bacete et al, 2014)
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