Effects of Popularity and Friendship on Perceptions of the Personality and Social Behavior of Peers

Abstract

To examine the relations of popularity and friendship to children's and adolescents' perceptions of a classmate's personality, 90 fourth and eighth graders were asked in the fall of a school year to describe one of their friends. The students were asked to describe the same classmate again in the spring of the school year, whether or not they were still close friends. Changes in friendships between the fall and the spring were associated with changes in the frequency of positive and negative comments about the partner's personality and ratings of the partner's prosocial and aggressive behavior. These comments and ratings were not correlated with the partner's popularity. By contrast, ratings of the partner's academic ability were not related to changes in friendship but were related to the partner's popularity. Less popular and more rejected children and adolescents were judged to be less able academically.