Peer acceptance and social behavior during childhood and adolescence: How important are appearance, athleticism, and academic competence?

Abstract

Efforts to identify factors associated with peer acceptance have historically focused on behavioral and social cognitive processes, whereas less empirical attention has focused on the impact of children's other personal attributes and competencies that are not inherently a component of social competence. The current study examined the association of three such nonsocial attributes — physical attractiveness, athleticism, and academic competence — with peer acceptance and whether these associations vary as a function of gender and development. In addition, we examined the extent to which peer perceptions of these attributes were associated with positive and negative patterns of social behavior and whether child attributes accounted for unique variance in peer acceptance above and beyond indices of social behavior. Use of a large ( N = 3183) sample of students in grades 2—10 allowed examination of whether the associations of child attributes, social behavior, and peer acceptance varied as a function of development or gender. All three attributes consistently accounted for unique variance in social acceptance and behavior, although their relative importance varied. Child gender and grade level were significant, but not universal, moderators of these associations.