Peer Relations Research Research Articles

Implicit associations with popularity in early adolescence: An approach–avoidance analysis.

This study examined 241 early adolescents' implicit and explicit associations with popularity. The peer status and gender of both the targets and the perceivers were considered. Explicit associations with popularity were assessed with sociometric methods. Implicit associations with popularity were assessed with an approach-avoidance task (AAT). Explicit evaluations of popularity were positive, but implicit associations were negative: Avoidance reactions to popular peers were faster than approach reactions. Interactions with the status of the perceiver indicated that unpopular participants had stronger negative implicit reactions to popular girls than did popular participants. This study demonstrated a negative reaction to popularity that cannot be revealed with explicit methods. The study of implicit processes with methods such as the AAT is a new and important direction for peer relations research.

Group identity and peer relations: A longitudinal study of group identity, perceived peer acceptance, and friendships amongst ethnic minority English children

This research examined whether peer relationships amongst ethnic minority status children reflect the social groups to which children belong and the degree to which they identify with these groups. A longitudinal study was conducted to investigate the influence of group identities (i.e., ethnic and national) on children's perceived peer acceptance and preference for same-ethnic friendships. Measures of ethnic and English identification, perceived peer acceptance, and friendship choice were administered to 207 south-Asian English children, aged between 5 and 11, at two time points 6 months apart. In line with predictions, longitudinal analysis showed that bicultural identification (i.e., higher ethnic and English identity) was related to higher perceived peer acceptance and less preference for same-ethnic friendships. Importantly, as hypothesized, this finding was limited to the older children with more advanced social-cognitive abilities. The results suggest that older children who adopted a bicultural identity were able to strategically 'flag' their multiple group identities, within their multicultural peer groups, to obtain acceptance amongst the maximum number of peers and show less preference for same-ethnic friendships. This study extends previous peer relations research, which has typically focused on individual social deficits or classroom norms, by showing that group identities influence peer relationships amongst ethnic minority status children.

Experimental analysis of preschool playmate preferences as a function of smiles and sex

AbstractDifferential emotions theory (DET) (The face of emotion. Appleton‐Century‐Crofts: East Norwalk, CT, 1971) posits that the smile functions in part to communicate and/or reflect social affiliation and plays an important role in children's social development. While children's positive emotion expressions have received attention from peer relations researchers in observational studies and within correlational designs, there is almost no experimental evidence for the impact of the smile. Building on existing studies, the present study examined DET predictions within an experimental design. More specifically, we examined the impact smiles have on lower‐income preschool children's nominations for preferred playmates. Both boys and girls tended to nominate unfamiliar playmates who smiled. Additionally, some evidence suggested that preference for smiling playmates seemed more critical to girls' than boys' social functioning. Unlike among boys, teachers rated girls who exhibited a greater preference for smiling playmates as higher in social competence. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Predictors of dyadic friendship quality in adolescence

Five dimensions of friendship quality (conflict, closeness, companionship, helping, and security) were predicted from self-reports and peer reports of physical aggression, relational aggression, and prosocial behaviour, using the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model (Kenny & Acitelli, 2001). Participants were 224 adolescents aged 15–17 years (142 girls, 82 boys) who formed 112 unique same-sex best friend dyads. Significant actor and partner effects were found for both self-ratings and peer nominations of social behaviour and the five friendship qualities. Aggression was associated with self and partner perceptions of friendship conflict and low positive friendship qualities. Prosocial behaviour was associated with self and partner perceptions of positive friendship qualities and low conflict. The findings of this study were mostly consistent between male and female dyads. The importance of examining dependence due to dyads in peer relations research was discussed.

Mediating Teacher Liking and Moderating Authoritative Teachering on Chinese Adolescents' Perceptions of Antisocial and Prosocial Behaviors.

The authors present a model of adolescents’ peer relations in the classroom that integrates 3 social processes involving the adolescent students, the classroom teacher, and peers. One of the hypotheses was that teacher liking of students mediated the relation between students’ social behaviors (e.g., antisocial disruption and prosocial leadership) and peer acceptance. This mediating teacher influence was also hypothesized to be moderated by the extent to which adolescent students perceived their teacher to be authoritative in teachering. These hypotheses were tested and supported on the basis of a sample of 659 Chinese middle school students. A discussion of these results focuses on the classroom teacher as a social context in the study of children’s social interactions in the classroom. Social developmental research is often approached in one of two ways. One focuses on age-related developmental processes internal to children and adolescents. In peer relations research, the investigation of peer perceptions of antisocial and prosocial behaviors, for example, constitutes an internal approach. The other approach emphasizes how these internal processes interact with social settings that contextualize development. An examination of

Assessing Children’s Representations of their Peer Group Using a Multidimensional Scaling Technique

The goal of this research was to examine whether multi-dimensional scaling (MDS) is a potentially reliable and valid method for assessing children’s perceptions of their peer group. A total of 162 fourth- and fifth-grade students participated in two studies. MDS-derived depictions of the peer group were generated based on children’s unconstrained (i.e., implicit) similarity judgments of same-sex dyads in their peer group. Overall, fit indices indicated that two-dimensional MDS solutions accounted for most of the variability in group members’ similarity ratings, demonstrating considerable agreement between group members’ implicit representations of their peer group. Furthermore, classroom teachers’ perceptions of peer group organization were highly similar to their students’ perceptions. Finally, the social network pattern in the peer group was related consistently to the organization of peer group members in the MDS similarity space; additional variance in the MDS space was accounted for by behavioral and nonbehavioral characteristics, most notably prosocial behavior. The results of this two-part study show the promise of using MDS methods to assess, and thus investigate, children’s perceptions of their peer group’s organizational structure. It was argued that implicit approaches to understanding children’s perceptions of their peer group would be a useful addition to findings derived from the explicit methods typically employed in peer relations research.

Peer relationships and social competence during early and middle childhood.

This review demarcates major periods of empirical activity and accomplishment (i.e. "generations") in research on children's peer relations and social competence during recent decades and identifies the investigative agendas that were dominant or ascendant during these periods. A sampling of studies that were conducted during the most recent generation of peer relations research is organized and reviewed in relation to two types of research objectives: (a) enduring agendas--aims from past research generations that have continued to serve as an impetus for empirical investigation during the 1990s--and (b) innovative agendas--newly emergent objectives that are predicated on novel conceptual issues or ongoing research controversies and deficiencies. This profile of continuity and change in investigators' research agendas provides a platform for delineating and analyzing recent empirical accomplishments in the field of peer relations research.

Operationalizing the Construct of Friendship among Children: A Psychometric Comparison of Sociometric‐Based Definitional Methodologies

Peer relations researchers generally agree that friendship involves a close, mutual, dyadic relationship. However, the lack of consensus on how to operationalize this construct has limited our understanding of the role of friendship in social adjustment. The present study directly compared the psychometric properties (i.e., number of friendships identified, concordances, and stability) of the five major different definitions of friendship used in the literature. Fourth‐ and fifth‐grade students (N = 90) completed a battery of sociometric measures at two different times separated by eight weeks. Friendship dyads were then identified using the following definitional criteria: (1) mutual positive nominations; (2) mutal high ratings (i.e., 4 or 5 on a five‐point Likert‐type scale); (3) one positive nomination reciprocated by a rating of 5; (4) one positive nomination and mutual high ratings; and (5) one positive nomination and mutual ratings averaging at least 4. Frequency and concordance analyses indicated differences across the five definitions. In addition, the friendships identified by each of the five definitions were similarly moderate in their stability. Explanations for, and the possible implications of, these differences are discussed.