Prosocial tendencies predict friendship quality, but not for popular children

Abstract

Is prosocial behavior a prerequisite for having good-quality friendships? This study (N = 477, mean age = 12.2 years) examined whether the link between children’s prosocial tendencies and their perceived friendship quality was dependent on children’s level of popularity in the peer group. Children’s prosocial tendencies were assessed both as observed behavior in a standardized setting and as a self-reported predisposition to act in prosocial ways. Across measures, the results showed that prosocial tendencies are associated with higher perceived friendship quality among nonpopular children (i.e., children holding average or lower levels of popularity), but not among popular children. Thus, even if they lack prosocial qualities, popular children are still able to hold good-quality friendships. Popular children may have other compensating characteristics, such as popularity by association, that make them attractive for peers to be friends with.

Introduction

Prosocial behavior—behavior intended to benefit other people—plays an important role in our social lives (Eisenberg, Fabes, & Spinrad, 2006). If humans were unable to show prosocial behaviors such as helping, sharing, and cooperating, it would be difficult to live in social groups, as humans do from the minute they are born. Nevertheless, children show pronounced individual differences in their tendencies to act in prosocial ways (e.g., Eisenberg et al., 1999, Eisenberg et al., 2006). These individual differences are likely to be consequential for the quality of their interpersonal relationships and their peer relationships in particular. Because prosocial behaviors benefit other people, it seems plausible to assume that these behaviors will typically be valued and rewarded by others (Asher & McDonald, 2009). Indeed, numerous studies have shown that prosocial children are better liked and accepted by their peers than less prosocial children (e.g., Asher and McDonald, 2009, Coie et al., 1990, Newcomb et al., 1993, Rubin et al., 2006).

Perhaps surprisingly, then, relatively little is known about how children’s prosocial tendencies relate to the quality of the friendships they hold. Friendships are a quintessential part of children’s social lives, satisfying basic needs of companionship, intimacy, and affection (Buhrmester, 1996, Furman and Collins, 2009). Friendships are dyadic, mutually rewarding bonds between children. They are defined by reciprocity: Peer bonds can be called friendships when both children gain benefits, or “social provisions” (e.g., intimacy, affection), from them (Bukowski, Newcomb, & Hartup, 1996). Such reciprocity is what distinguishes friendships from other peer bonds. The degree to which children obtain social provisions from a particular friendship is reflected in how they perceive the quality of that friendship (Furman & Buhrmester, 1992).

How may children’s prosocial tendencies be related to the quality of their friendships? According to the classical equity theory (Adams, 1965, Walster et al., 1976), people seek to maintain equity, or a just balance in provisions, in their relationships. In an equitable relationship, both partners receive commensurate benefits from the relationship relative to the contributions they invest. Because prosocial children have much to offer to their friends in terms of social provisions (e.g., instrumental aid, emotional support), they are likely to obtain many social provisions in return, and this should result in high levels of perceived friendship quality. Supporting that view, research shows that prosocial children’s friendships are of higher quality than those of less prosocial children (Cillessen et al., 2005, McDonald et al., 2011, Markiewicz et al., 2001).

Yet there is more for children to value in their friendships than their friends’ prosocial behavior alone. Children also attach great importance to being popular, especially during late childhood and adolescence (LaFontana & Cillessen, 2010), and so they typically prefer to associate with children high in popularity (with popularity defined as peer status based on prestige and visibility in the peer group, also referred to as perceived popularity; Cillessen, 2011). Popular children have many characteristics that make them attractive to be friends with. They tend to have fun and exciting social lives, they engage in many cross-gender interactions, they are socially powerful and visible, and they typically get much attention from teachers and classmates (Adler and Adler, 1998, Cillessen, 2011, Closson, 2009, Hawley et al., 2007, Vaillancourt and Hymel, 2006). Because peer status is contagious and mere association with a popular peer raises a child’s status (Dijkstra et al., 2010, Marks et al., 2011; cf. “basking in reflected glory effect,” Cialdini et al., 1976), it is not surprising that many children want to be friends with popular peers (Eder, 1985, Hawley et al., 2007). In fact, it may have so many benefits for children to befriend popular peers that they will require relatively little in return from such friendships in terms of reciprocated prosocial behavior. Thus, it is possible that popular children are able to attain good-quality friendships even when they show relatively low levels of prosocial behavior. Nonpopular children, by contrast, have less to offer in terms of “popularity by association,” and so it may be more important for them to show prosocial behavior to attain good-quality friendships—“you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.”

The few studies that were conducted in this area of research found positive correlations between popularity and friendship quality both in children and in adolescents (Litwack et al., 2010, Rose et al., 2004). To our knowledge, no previous work has examined whether children’s prosocial tendencies differentially impact their friendship quality, depending on whether they are popular or not. However, there is some preliminary evidence that the friendship quality of popular versus less popular children is dependent on different behavioral dispositions. One study found that children’s disposition to engage in relationally aggressive behaviors (e.g., gossiping, excluding others) may have a negative impact on the quality of their friendships, but only for nonpopular children, not for popular children (Rose et al., 2004). Similarly, we propose that the impact of children’s prosocial behavior on their friendship quality will depend on their level of popularity.

Indirect evidence for the notion that popular children should be able to attain good-quality friendships, even when showing relatively low levels of prosocial behavior, comes from Hawley’s research on adolescents’ resource control strategies. Popularity is positively related to the use of resource control strategies, which are strategies to get what you want in either a nice (“prosocial”) way or a not so nice (“coercive”) way. Hawley et al. (2007) found that both prosocial and bistrategic controllers experience high friendship quality compared with typical controllers. Thus, to the extent that bistrategic and prosocial controllers are usually popular in their peer group, Hawley’s work suggests that for popular children it is not necessary to be prosocial all of the time to hold high-quality friendships.

The aim of the current study was to examine to what extent the presumed link between children’s prosocial tendencies and their perceived best friendship quality is moderated by individual differences in popularity. We predicted that prosocial tendencies would be less strongly related to friendship quality for popular children because these children have multiple other resources and qualities that make them attractive to be friends with.

We measured prosocial tendencies using procedures from two fairly independent research traditions. Research in experimental social psychology has relied mainly on behavioral measures of prosocial behavior, typically obtained by observing helping behavior in controlled settings (Penner, Dovidio, Piliavin, & Schroeder, 2005). Research in personality psychology has relied mainly on self-report measures of one’s generalized tendency to act, feel, and think in prosocial ways, indexed by the Big Five trait of agreeableness (Penner et al., 2005). We used a controlled laboratory procedure to measure actual prosocial behavior. In a computerized task, participants ostensibly received e-mails from younger children who asked them for help, and the prosocial quality of participants’ responses was coded as a measure of prosocial behavior. We also administered a standard self-report measure of agreeableness.

Popularity and the related construct of likeability (i.e., how much children are liked by their classmates) were measured using peer ratings. The inclusion of likeability allowed us to assess the specificity of the predicted effects for popularity. Friendship quality was indexed by children’s perceptions of the social provisions they obtain from their friendships (Furman & Buhrmester, 1985). Because these provisions (e.g., companionship, affection, enhancement of worth) are subjective, we measured them using self-reports (Berndt and McCandless, 2009, Furman, 1996, Ladd, 2009).