Being Popular and Being Liked: Goals, Behaviors, and Norm Salience

Youth’s social status (popularity and likability) relates with social status goals as well as bullying and prosocial behaviors within the context of classroom norms for bullying and prosocial behaviors, but less clear is how each of these factors interrelates with each other. The current study empirically analyses the concurrent relationships among social status goals, bullying and prosocial behaviors, and classroom norms with social status. Participants were a nationally representative sample of 6,421 Slovenian early adolescents (50% females; M_age = 13 years; SD = 6 months). Findings indicated that popularity goals were related to bullying behaviors and bullying behaviors were related to popularity. In contrast, likability goals are related to prosocial behaviors, and prosocial behaviors are related to popularity and likability. The role of classroom norm salience was complex as bullying increased popularity in low-bullying environments, whereas prosocial behaviors enhanced likability in high prosocial classroom contexts. Students high on both bullying and prosocial behaviors (bistrategic controllers) demonstrated higher popularity and likability compared to their peers., but had similar relationships among their social status goals, bullying, prosocial behaviors, and social status as all other peers. The findings demonstrate a clear relationship among social status goals, bullying and prosocial behaviors, and social status (popularity and likability), while suggesting that classroom norms may differentiate how bullying/prosocial behaviors might align with social status.