Social Status and Status Motivations: The Association between the Wish for Popularity and Social Status in Late Childhood

Abstract

This study investigated the association between prioritising popularity and how important children deemed popularity generally, and actual social status. It was expected that popularity and likeability would both be associated in their own specific ways with either prioritising popularity or finding popularity generally important. Participants were eight to thirteen year old primary school children. 452 children (50% girls) from eight primary schools in the Netherlands filled in several questionnaires on peer relations and prioritising popularity. Correlational tests and multiple regression analyses were conducted. Results indicated that both prioritising popularity and the general importance of popularity were positively associated with popular status, whereas likeability was only associated with prioritising popularity. Furthermore, the general importance of popularity was less related to popularity for well-liked children than for less- liked children. Implications of the results and suggestions for further research are discussed. The results contribute to knowledge on status motivations, and can contribute to improving simulations of human social intelligence to create interactive trainings, serious games, or intelligent agents that can obtain a high social status in a human-like fashion.