Social intelligence and academic achievement as predictors of adolescent popularity

The Impression Management Consequences of Hiding Effort Among Adolescents: The Mediating Role of Authenticity

Hiding effort has become prevalent among adolescents; however, whether this behavior benefits or harms their social impression remains unclear. The study explored whether hiding effort is an effective impression management strategy to obtain high popularity, likeability, interpersonal trust, and cooperation intention from peers. Using hypothetical scenarios, Study 1 (N = 243) found that hiding effort led to lower popularity, likeability, interpersonal trust, and cooperation intention among adolescents. Study 2 (N = 176) replicated the findings of Study 1 and found that the hiding-effort adolescents did not realize these negative consequences. Furthermore, Study 2 revealed that authenticity mediated the effect of hiding effort on popularity, likeability, interpersonal trust, and cooperation intention. The findings provided theoretical and practical implications for educators and adolescents. Educators should foster environments where effort and authenticity are rewarded. Adolescents should understand the cost of hiding efforts from peers.

Social intelligence and pathological gaming: a longitudinal study of the associations among negative emotions, social intelligence, aggression, and pathological gaming in adolescents

Introduction

Pathological gaming continues to be highlighted as one of the most critical issues concerning adolescents. Numerous studies have aimed to elucidate the relationships between adolescents' negative emotions (e.g., peer stress, anxiety, loneliness) and social factors (e.g., social skills and relationships) with pathological gaming. Despite the recognition of social intelligence as a crucial factor related to social factors in adolescents, there is a paucity of research examining pathological gaming and social intelligence through longitudinal analyses.

Method

This study focuses on exploring the factors that induce or inhibit pathological gaming among adolescents by analysing three-year longitudinal data from Korean adolescent gamers (N=968). Using a structural equation model, the study examines the relationships between adolescents' negative emotions (e.g., peer stress, anxiety, loneliness), social intelligence, and pathological gaming to elucidate their associations.

Results

The results indicate that negative emotions can potentially reduce levels of social intelligence and increase aggression. Increased aggression, in turn, appears to be associated with higher levels of pathological gaming. Social intelligence was found to impact pathological gaming potentially negatively and may exert a significantly stronger influence on aggression compared to negative emotions.

Discussion

The study's findings suggest that bolstering adolescents' social aptitude and addressing mental health concerns could serve as beneficial interventions in tackling issues associated with excessive media engagement among youth. These findings suggest that, within the context of adolescent pathological gaming, social intelligence could significantly affect aggression and emerge as a key variable that may lead to pathological gaming.

Best Friend's Popularity: Associations with Psychological Well-Being and School Adjustment in China During Early Adolescence

Popularity has been empirically linked to psychological and several indices of school adjustment outcomes during childhood and early adolescence. Yet, best friend popularity in relation to the adjustment outcomes remains unclear, especially in more interdependent-oriented cultures. To address this gap, this study applied the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model (APIM) to simultaneously considering whether, and how, the popularity of youth (actor effects) and their best friends (partner effects) contribute uniquely to psychological well-being and school adjustment outcomes, after controlling for social preference. Age and gender differences were also examined. Participants were 162 same-gender best friend dyads (81 boys, M_age = 11.24 years, SD = 1.18) from Shanghai, P.R. China. Among the results, both youth's own and their best friends' popularity were positively related to self-esteem and school attitudes, and negatively related to depressive symptoms. In addition, results from multi-group analyses revealed both actor and partner effects did not vary across gender. Finally, exploratory analyses showed that only actor effects varied across age for the associations between popularity and self-esteem and school attitudes. These findings highlight the important role of the best friend's popularity in promoting Chinese youth's experiences of psychological and school adjustment.

Adolescents’ Characteristics and Peer Relationships in Class: A Population Study

Background: This study aimed to investigate differences in adolescents’ social relationships with classmates of diverse gender, socioeconomic status, immigrant background, and academic achievement. Methods: A population of 10th-grade students (N = 406,783; males = 50.3%; M_age = 15.57 years, SD_age = 0.75) completed the Classmates Social Isolation Questionnaire (CSIQ), an instrument specifically designed to measure two distinct but correlated types of peer relationships in class: peer acceptance and peer friendship. To obtain reliable comparisons across diverse adolescent characteristics, the measurement invariance of the CSIQ was established by means of CFAs and then latent mean differences tests were performed. Results: Immigrant background, academic achievement, and socioeconomic status all proved to be important factors influencing relationships with classmates, while being a male or a female was less relevant. Being a first-generation immigrant adolescent appears to be the foremost risk factor for being less accepted by classmates, while having a low academic achievement is the greatest hindrance for having friends in the group of classmates, a finding that diverges from previous studies. Conclusions: This population study suggests that adolescent characteristics (especially immigrant background, socioeconomic status, and academic achievement) seem to affect social relationships with classmates.

Association between the Perceived Household Financial Decline Due to COVID-19 and Smartphone Dependency among Korean Adolescents

This cross-sectional study identified the association between COVID-19-related perceived household financial decline and smartphone dependency among adolescents in South Korea. Data from the 2020 Youth Risk Behavior Survey of Korea was used and 54,809 middle and high school students were included. COVID-19-related perceived household financial decline was categorized as no financial decline, mild, moderate, and severe. Smartphone dependency was calculated by 10 questions and was largely categorized as yes and no, and as normal, low, and high (prevalence rate: 25.0%). Binary and multinomial regression analyses were performed to analyze the association. The more severe the financial decline, the more pronounced the risk of high-risk smartphone dependency (mild financial decline: odds ratio (OR) 1.11, 95% CI 0.96-1.28; moderate: OR 1.22, 95% CI 1.04-1.43; severe: OR 2.56, 95% CI 2.06-3.17). Poor family relationships (OR 1.06, 95% CI 1.03-1.10) and severe social conflict (OR 2.99, 95% CI 2.50-3.58) were also related to smartphone dependency. The ORs were 2.63 with more than three bathrooms and 1.63 with their own bedroom. Smartphone dependency among adolescents is closely related to COVID-19-related perceived household financial decline. As smartphone dependency relates to complicated psychological issues, further evaluation is necessary, especially for vulnerable adolescents.

Immigrant Status and the Social Returns to Academic Achievement in Adolescence

Social scientists have long debated whether high-achieving students of color are socially sanctioned. This discussion has rarely focused on immigrant students, who are exceptionally diverse in their educational performance and face challenges in social integration at school. This article assesses whether the effect of academic achievement on U.S. adolescents' popularity among peers varies by immigrant status. Further, we investigate whether the same pattern holds for immigrant students across racial/ethnic groups. While theoretical frameworks led us to expect that some immigrant groups would be socially punished for their school achievement, we did not find evidence for a negative effect of achievement (GPA) on popularity (number of alters nominating ego as a friend) for any group. Instead, the effect of achievement on popularity is positive but smaller among second-generation and foreign-born students than among white students from native-born families. This social penalty is observed across Black and most Hispanic immigrant subgroups, applies to some Asian immigrant subgroups, and does not apply to white immigrant students.

Relationship between Parental Involvement and Mathematics Achievement of Chinese Early Adolescents: Multiple Mediating Roles of Mental Health and Mathematics Self-Efficacy

This study conceptualized the multidimensional construct of parental involvement, including cognitive involvement, behavioral involvement, and personal involvement, and examined the mediating effects of student's mental health and mathematics self-efficacy. Questionnaires were administered to 2866 early adolescents and their parents in China; structural equation modeling and bias-corrected bootstrap methods were used. The results show that different dimensions of parental involvement had different effects on mathematics achievement. Additionally, results indicate that the influences of the multidimensional construct of parental involvement on mathematics achievement were either partially or completely mediated by student's mental health and mathematics self-efficacy. The findings also offer insight into possible interventions designed to explore how parental involvement promotes students' mathematics achievement through their children's mental health and mathematics self-efficacy.

Examining Social Status Profiles with Gender, School Attended, SES, Academic Achievement and Wellbeing in Urban China

Previous research has produced inconsistent findings about the relationships between aggressive and prosocial behavior with likeability and popularity. This study utilized latent profile analysis to identify naturally occurring social status profiles with these indicators and to explore their associations with gender, school attended, subjective social status, academic achievement, and wellbeing. The study recruited 818 (aged 12-15 years, 46% girls) Chinese adolescents and revealed four unique social status profiles: high aggressive-low likeability, low social status, average, and high prosocial-high social status groups. A bi-strategic profile did not emerge. The low social status and high aggressive groups exhibited the lowest academic achievement and wellbeing suggesting that more attention should be devoted to these students both in school and in future research.

Social costs to trying hard in high school: Differences by race-ethnicity

There is debate whether social costs to trying hard in school are more widespread among black and Latino students than white or Asian students. Studies assessing a burden of "acting white" among black and Latino students have examined how the correlation between GPA and popularity or harassment varies across racial-ethnic groups. Yet, there has been little attention to whether students are aware of these costs or if social costs deter achievement. Using data from the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009, we investigated students' perceptions of whether they would be harassed or unpopular for trying hard in their mathematics and science classes. We found black, Latino, and Asian students perceived lower risk of experiencing social costs for trying hard than white students. Perceptions of social costs in 9th grade were associated with less rigorous mathematics course-taking, but not lower mathematics test scores or STEM GPA, later in school.

Preference and popularity as distinct forms of status: A meta-analytic review of 20 years of research

INTRODUCTION

A systematic meta-analysis was conducted of the association between preference and popularity across childhood and adolescence. The role of development, sex, and region of the world were examined.

METHOD

The analysis was conducted on 135 samples including 136,014 participants. The samples were divided by age (upper grades primary school, k = 41; lower grades secondary school, k = 72; upper grades secondary school, k = 22) and region (North America, k = 54; Europe, k = 66; China, k = 10).

RESULTS

Across all samples, a moderate positive association between preference and popularity was found (r = 0.45). The association was significantly weaker in the upper grades of secondary school (r = 0.37) than in the lower grades of secondary school (r = 0.47) or the upper grades of primary school (r = 0.47). The association was weaker for girls (r = 0.26) than for boys (r = 0.38) in the upper grades of secondary school. The association was weaker in European samples (r = 0.41) than in those from North America (r = 0.50) and China (r = 0.57).

CONCLUSIONS

The results confirmed that preference and popularity are related but distinct dimensions of adolescent peer status. The association differed significantly by age, sex, and region of the world. Further research should examine additional factors that explain the variability in the association between preference and popularity.

Variability in Positive and Negative Affect Among Adolescents with and without ADHD: Differential Associations with Functional Outcomes

INTRODUCTION

This study examined whether adolescents with and without attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) differed in affect variability and whether variability in positive and negative affect was associated with functional outcomes.

METHOD

Participants were 302 adolescents (12-14 years, Mage=13.17, 55% male; 54% diagnosed with ADHD; 82% white) and their caregivers who each completed the 10-item Positive and Negative Affect Scale via daily diaries for approximately two weeks. Multi-informant ratings of emotional, behavioral, social, and academic outcomes were assessed.

RESULTS

Adolescents with ADHD were found to experience greater variability in self- and parent-reported positive affect, fear, and distress. For adolescents with ADHD, greater variability in self- and parent-reported positive affect, fear, and distress were associated with more internalizing symptoms, greater variability in parent-reported positive affect was associated with worse social functioning, and greater variability in self- and parent-reported fear was associated with more externalizing symptoms. In contrast, greater variability in self- and parent-reported positive affect, fear, and distress were associated with better social functioning in adolescents without ADHD.

LIMITATIONS

Future work should examine affect variability in adolescents with ADHD within the same day rather than across days. The limited age range and demographic diversity of our sample may limit generalizability of findings.

CONCLUSIONS

Findings suggest the significant affect variability found among children with ADHD is also present in adolescents with ADHD and is associated with social and behavior impairment. Interventions for adolescents with ADHD should target emotion regulation abilities to help reduce the extremes of and shifts in affective experiences in this population.

Associations between Ethnic Minority Status and Popularity in Adolescence: the role of Ethnic Classroom Composition and Aggression

Although there are theoretical reasons to expect an association between ethnic minority status and popularity, research on this topic is scarce. Therefore, this association was investigated including the moderating role of the ethnic classroom composition and the mediating role of aggression. Data from the longitudinal Dutch SNARE (Social Network Analysis of Risk behavior in Early adolescence) project were used among first-year students (comparable to 5th grade) (N = 1134, N_classrooms = 51, M = 12.5 years, 137 non-Western ethnic minority students). Popularity and aggression were assessed with peer nominations. Multi-level Structural Equation Models showed that ethnic minority status was indirectly associated with higher popularity, through higher aggression. Moreover, with increasing numbers of ethnic minority students in the classroom, popularity levels of both ethnic majority and ethnic minority students decreased. Only when differences in aggression between ethnic minority and majority students were included in the analyses, while the ethnic classroom composition was not included, lower popularity levels were found for ethnic minority than ethnic majority students. Scientific and practical implications of this study were addressed in the discussion.

It's Lonely at the Top: Adolescent Students' Peer-perceived Popularity and Self-perceived Social Contentment

Popularity is highly desired among youth, often more so than academic achievement or friendship. Recent evidence suggests being known as "popular" among peers (perceived popularity) may be more detrimental during adolescence than being widely well-liked (sociometric popularity). Thus, this study sought to better understand how two dimensions of popularity (perceived and sociometric) may contribute to adolescents' own perceptions of satisfaction and happiness regarding their social life at school, and hypothesized that "being popular" would have a more complex (and curvilinear) association with adolescents' social contentment than previously considered by linear models. Adolescents' peer popularity and self-perceived social contentment were examined as both linear and curvilinear associations along each status continuum in a series of hierarchical regressions. Participants were 767 7th-grade students from two middle schools in the Midwest (52% female, 46% White, 45% African American). Perceived and sociometric popularity were assessed via peer nominations ("most popular" and "liked the most", respectively). Self-reported social satisfaction, best friendship quality, social self-concept, and school belonging were assessed as aspects of social contentment. The results indicated that both high and low levels of perceived popularity, as well as high and low levels of sociometric popularity, predicted lower perceptions of social satisfaction, poorer best friendship quality, and lower social self-concept than youth with moderate levels of either status. Implications to promote adolescents' psychosocial well-being by targeting popularity's disproportionate desirability among youth are discussed.

Attitudes Toward Deafness Affect Impressions of Young Adults With Cochlear Implants

This study continues a project on speech-based impressions of early-implanted cochlear implant (CI) users. It examined relationships between listeners' attitudes or personal traits and how they judged CI users upon hearing their speech. College students with typical hearing (TH) listened to speech samples from CI users and TH young adults and rated the speakers' personalities and attractiveness as friends. CI users varied in speech intelligibility (proportion of words recognized by transcribers in prior work). Overall, listeners rated TH speakers most positively, CI users with high intelligibility (CI-Hi) as intermediate, and CI users with lower intelligibility (CI-Lo) most negatively. Listeners also completed questionnaires about their personalities, values, and attitudes toward deafness. Listeners with more positive attitudes toward deaf people rated both CI user groups more positively, and listeners whose personality and values questionnaires showed more tolerance and openness to interpersonal differences rated CI-Lo speakers more positively. These patterns underline the social importance of CI users' speech intelligibility while bringing to light the role of listeners' pre-existing attitudes in forming negative first impressions, which could impact CI users' friendships with TH peers. Because listeners' attitudes reflected ignorance about deaf people's abilities, this study calls for increased education about deafness for TH students.

Mimicking and anticipating others' actions is linked to Social Information Processing

It is widely known that individuals frequently imitate each other in social situations and that such mimicry fulfills an important social role in the sense that it functions as a social glue. With reference to the anticipated action effect, it has recently been demonstrated that individuals do not only imitate others, but also engage in anticipated action before the observed person starts engaging in that action. Interestingly, both phenomena (i.e., mimicry and anticipated action) rely on tracking others’ social behavior. Therefore, in the present research we investigated whether mimicry and anticipated action are related to social abilities as indicated by measures of social intelligence. The results demonstrate for the first time that mimicry as well as anticipated action is correlated with an important aspect of social intelligence—namely the ability to process social information. Theoretical implications and limitations are discussed.

Speech Intelligibility and Personality Peer-ratings of Young Adults With Cochlear Implants

Speech intelligibility, or how well a speaker's words are understood by others, affects listeners' judgments of the speaker's competence and personality. Deaf cochlear implant (CI) users vary widely in speech intelligibility, and their speech may have a noticeable "deaf" quality, both of which could evoke negative stereotypes or judgments from peers. In this study, college students with typical hearing (TH) used semantic differential scales to rate speech samples of highly-intelligible TH young adults and age-matched CI users with high or low intelligibility (CI-Hi, CI-Lo) on personality traits related to competence (intelligence, achievement), friendship skills (friendliness, popularity), and attractiveness as a friend (extraversion, dependability). Judges rated TH positively, CI-Lo negatively, and CI-Hi as intermediate, even though CI-Hi were as intelligible as TH. Both CI user groups were rated as friendly but unattractive as friends (insecure, shy, boring, unpopular, does not "sound like someone who could be my friend"), underlining the role of deaf speech quality in peer judgments. Such negative first impressions are likely to affect CI users' social interactions and friendships, highlighting the importance of speech intelligibility and quality for CI users and calling for education on deafness and deaf speech for TH peers.

New Students' Peer Integration and Exposure to Deviant Peers: Spurious Effects of School Moves?

School moves during adolescence predict lower peer integration and higher exposure to delinquent peers. Yet mobility and peer problems have several common correlates, so differences in movers' and non-movers' social adjustment may be due to selection rather than to causal effects of school moves. Drawing on survey and social network data from a sample of 7th and 8th graders, this study compared the structure and behavioral content of new students' friendship networks to those of not only non-movers, but also of students about to move schools; the latter should resemble new students in both observed and unobserved ways. The results suggest that the association between school moves and friends' delinquency is due to selection, but the association between school moves and peer integration may not be entirely due to selection.

Social Consequences of Academic Teaming in Middle School: The Influence of Shared Course-Taking on Peer Victimization

This study examined the influence of academic teaming (i.e., sharing academic classes with the same classmates) on the relationship between social preference and peer victimization among 6^th grade students in middle school. Approximately 1,000 participants were drawn from 5 middle schools that varied in their practice of academic teaming. A novel methodology for measuring academic teaming at the individual level was employed, in which students received their own teaming score based on the unique set of classmates with whom they shared academic courses in their class schedule. Using both peer- and self-reports of victimization, the results of two path models indicated that students with low social preference in highly teamed classroom environments were more victimized than low preference students who experienced less teaming throughout the school day. This effect was exaggerated in higher performing classrooms. Implications for the practice of academic teaming were discussed.

Adolescent resource control

This study examined adolescent coercive and prosocial resource control strategies in relation to various indices of peer-reported behaviors and peer regard ( N = 384; 12–14 years). Coercive control was uniquely positively related to physical and relational aggression and peer disliking, and negatively to prosocial behaviors when controlling for prosocial control, which, in turn, was uniquely negatively related to physical aggression and social withdrawal, and positively to prosocial behaviors, peer liking, and popularity. Findings from person-centered analyses augmented these findings, indicating that bi-strategic, coercive, prosocial, typical, and non-controllers exhibit divergent patterns of social adjustment among peers. Implications for the study of adolescent social adjustment are discussed, including increased understanding of adolescent resource control and aggression among peers at school.