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No One is Safe: Victimization Experiences of High-Status Youth

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Abstract

Traditionally, victims were seen as weak, disempowered youth who typically had low-status in the peer hierarchy. However, accumulating evidence suggests that victimization experiences are not limited to those with low-status and that high-status adolescents may also be at risk. This review outlines a theoretical framework that explains high-status youth’s risk for victimization using evolutionary psychological, social dominance, and related perspectives which suggest that those with access to desirable resources may be targeted by peers who want those resources for themselves. Next, the review summarizes the empirical research demonstrating that high-status youth are targets of their peers’ aggressive behavior. Specific attention is given to the forms of aggression most often used to target high-status youth as well as the methods used to identify victims with high social status. Lastly, the review concludes with recommendations for future work on this burgeoning area of research.

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Notes

  1. Although this review focused on popular and central victims, there is evidence that even well-liked youth are victimized.  Graham and Juvonen (1998) were some of the first to identify youth with high-status (high peer acceptance and low rejection) who indicated that they were victimized frequently via self-report. They were the first to examine the convergence and divergence in self-reports and peer-reports of victimization, identifying a group called paranoids who were high in self-report but low in peer-report. The term paranoid came from Perry et al. (1998) and to their credit, Graham and Juvonen questioned whether such a name was fair to these youth simply because they did not fit the classic stereotype of a victim and stressed that such a term should not be used to discredit their experiences. Indeed, current research refers to these youth as self-identified victims which exemplifies the shift in understanding of these victims and recognition of their experiences (see Scholte et al. 2013; Dawes et al. 2017). As far as the particulars of their study, using a sample of 6th and 7th graders, they assessed peer nominations of victimization (i.e., nominations for youth who are picked on/ pushed around and put down/ made fun of) and aggression (i.e., nominations for starts fights/ pushes others and puts others down). Peer acceptance was the number of liking nominations and peer rejection was the number of disliking nominations. From self-reports, they asked youth to indicate how true statements were for them, whether they were called bad names, pushed around, laughed at, or picked on. They found that self-identified victims had high peer acceptance and low peer rejection on par with nonvictims yet they suffered high levels of loneliness and social anxiety and lower feelings of self-worth compared to nonvictims. Indeed, their levels of social anxiety were similar to convergent victims (i.e., those with high self- and peer-reports of victimization). See also Peets and Hodges (2014) for another example of well-liked youth being targets of aggression.

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Acknowledgements

This review was inspired by a paper symposium presented at the 2018 biennial meeting of the Society for Research on Adolescence (SRA) organized by Dr. Hongling Xie (Temple University) with presentations by Marianne Hooijsma (University of Groningen), Michelle Rosie (Temple University), Sarah Malamut (University of Southern California), and Dr. Naomi Andrews (Mothercraft/ York University). We wish to express our gratitude to these colleagues for sparking this conversation, especially our mentor Dr. Hongling Xie.

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MD conceived of the review, conceptualized the framework presented in the article, conducted the literature review, and drafted the manuscript. SA helped conceive the review, contributed to the development of the conceptual framework, participated in the literature review, and helped draft the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Molly Dawes.

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Dawes, M., Malamut, S. No One is Safe: Victimization Experiences of High-Status Youth. Adolescent Res Rev 5, 27–47 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40894-018-0103-6

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