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Article Excerpt
This study examined associations between sociometric status and friendship quality using observational and questionnaire data from 139 fourth-grade girls and their friends. Multivariate analyses of covariance (controlling for ethnicity and socioeconomic status) showed that rejected girls and their friends did not differ in their reported friendship quality compared to average or popular girls. However, coded behavioral observations revealed that compared to other girls, rejected girls displayed more negative affect, bossiness, and deviance but less positive gossip, negative gossip, prosocial behavior, and social competence. Furthermore, as a dyad, compared to other girls, rejected girls and their friends exhibited less behavioral maturity and poorer conflict resolution skills. These results are important in advancing understanding of ways in which rejected girls may perpetuate their problems in peer contexts.
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The main purpose of the present study was to examine associations between status in the peer group and children's behavior and quality of relationships with friends, with a particular focus on girls. In the peer relations literature, researchers have made the theoretical and empirical distinction between children's relationships with friends versus with peers in the broader peer group (Asher, Parker, & Walker, 1996; Bukowski & Hoza, 1989; Gest, Graham-Bermann, & Hartup, 2001; Ladd, 1999; Parker & Asher, 1993). Whereas friendships are inherently dyadic, characterized by reciprocal affection, intimate disclosure, validation, and support between two individuals, relationships with peer group members involve inclusion in or acceptance by a larger group (Asher et al., 1996; Bukowski & Hoza, 1989; Ladd, Kochenderfer, & Coleman, 1997). Because these two types of relationships share some features, children who struggle in one relationship domain may also struggle in the other; however, it is also possible that the unique features of each type of relationship confer benefits on children in one but not the other relationship type.
The Role of Gender
Gender differences have received substantial attention in the peer relations literature. For example, in her account of how gender affects development from infancy through adulthood, Maccoby (1998) suggested that there are qualitative differences in the nature and significance of friendships for boys and girls, with friendships playing a more meaningful role in the lives of girls. Maccoby (1998) also contended that girls' interactions place priority on the building of interpersonal connections, whereas boys' interactions focus more on the development of individual status or standing within a group. There is evidence that during early childhood girls enjoy dyadic interactions with friends more than do boys (Benenson, 1993) and that during the fourth and fifth grades girls value attributes that are important in relationships with a select group of friends, whereas boys value attributes that are important to standing within the larger peer group (Benenson, 1990). In work with third- through fifth-graders, Parker and Asher (1993) found that girls were more likely to report intimate exchange, validation, caring, help, guidance, closeness, and security within their friendships than were boys. Hence, one can infer that friendships may offer an important source of social support for girls to buffer against various social stressors.
In light of such research, friendship may be an especially important developmental niche to explore among girls. To date, there are gaps in our knowledge of the benefits of girls' friendships in particular, and the distinct relations between friendship quality and sociometric status have not been carefully investigated for girls specifically. Recent work by Zarbatany, Conley, and Pepper (2004) suggests that boys (M age = 11.87) and men (M age = 19.5) are more likely than girls and women to use friendships to gain status within the larger peer group. Thus, it is possible that these two peer domains may be more strongly linked for boys than for girls, suggesting that it may be especially important to study the domains separately for girls. For the purpose of studying rejection, we chose girls because previous observational work on peer rejection has been predominantly with boys.
Links between Status in the Peer Group and Dyadic Friendships
Most researchers who examine the influence of peers on children's development study either sociometric status within the peer group as a whole or dyadic friendship qualities rather than both contexts together. Some exceptions reveal that important information can be gained by investigating these contexts jointly. For example, although most rejected children do have friends, albeit fewer than nonrejected children (Attili, Vermigli, & Schneider, 1997; Ray, Cohen, Secrist, & Duncan, 1997), there is evidence that these friendships differ from those of other children. George and Hartmann (1996) found that friends of low-accepted children were likely to be younger, from outside of school, and less accepted themselves than were the friends of more accepted children. In addition, over time the friendships of high-accepted children were more stable than were the friendships of low-accepted children (George & Hartmann, 1996). There is some evidence that low-accepted children also report that their friendships are more conflictual than do other children (Parker & Asher, 1993). However, other evidence suggests that although aggressive-rejected children report more conflict in their friendships than do nonaggressive-rejected or average children, nonaggressive-rejected children do not differ from average children in perceptions of the qualities of relationships with friends (Patterson, Kupersmidt, & Griesler, 1990).
Interestingly, Brendgen, Little, and Krappmann (2000) found that the concordance between second- through fifth-grade friends' reports of their friendship quality varied as a function of the children's sociometric status, with rejected children's and their friends' perceptions diverging more than the perceptions of average or popular girls and their friends. In addition, rejected children perceived their friendships more positively than did their friends, whereas popular children perceived their friendships less positively than did their friends; average children's and their friends' perceptions did not differ (Brendgen et al., 2000). Brendgen and her colleagues (2000) suggested that these findings might reflect social skill deficits and less interpersonal understanding on the part of rejected children (leading to the lower concordance across friends in perceptions of the relationship if a rejected child was a member of the dyad). It is also possible that these findings reflect ceiling effects for popular children and floor effects for rejected children.
Gest and his colleagues (2001) presented a cogent discussion of how status within the peer group and dyadic friendships may be related. Friendships may help teach children social skills that affect acceptance by the peer group, but acceptance by the peer group may provide opportunities for children to form friendships. Indeed, short-term longitudinal data suggest that popularity in the peer group temporally precedes friendship; that is, status within the peer group may afford opportunities for dyadic friendships (Bukowski, Pizzamiglio, Newcomb, & Hoza, 1996). However, children's status in the peer group is affected not only by their own personal characteristics but also by the characteristics of their friends. For example, Sabongui, Bukowski, and Newcomb (1998) reported that being friends with a popular child was related to increased popularity for the friend during a six-month period.
How might behaviors exhibited in the peer group translate into behaviors exhibited with friends? A sample of children identified through peer nominations as being socially withdrawn was found to be less verbally communicative and less competitive when observed with a reciprocal friend than was a sample of nonwithdrawn children, but in other respects the friendship quality of withdrawn children did not differ from the quality of other children's friendships (Schneider, 1999). If a withdrawn child had a nonwithdrawn friend, however, the withdrawn child perceived the friendship as being closer and more helpful than did the nonwithdrawn friend, which Schneider (1999) suggested could be because the withdrawn child derived more benefit from the relationship than did the nonwithdrawn child. Although the Schneider (1999) study did not include rejection as a variable, it suggests that some behaviors might generalize across dyadic and peer group contexts whereas others might not.
With respect to peer rejection specifically, behavioral differences in the peer group are well documented for rejected children compared to others (for a review see Newcomb, Bukowski, & Pattee, 1993). For example, compared to average or popular children, rejected children have been found to be more aggressive (Dodge et al., 2003), withdrawn (Harrist, Zaia, Bates, Dodge, & Pettit, 1997), and aversive (Coie & Kupersmidt, 1983) as well as less prosocial (Attili et al., 1997) when interacting in peer groups. What is less well understood is how rejected children, compared to average or popular children, behave when they are with friends.
Although there is little observational data on the behavior of friends with one another, in a notable exception Phillipsen (1999) observed interactions of friendship dyads of 8-13-year-old boys and girls who varied in sociometric status within the peer group. She compared dyads in which both children were highly accepted, dyads in which both children were not accepted, and dyads in which one member was highly accepted and the other was not accepted and found that low-accepted dyads were less positive, coordinated, and sensitive than were high-accepted dyads. Other observational studies of dyads of unacquainted children have shown similar findings of less positive behavior in low status dyads (e.g., Putallaz & Sheppard, 1990).
Asher et al. (1996) hypothesize ten social skills that children must possess to be successful in friendships, but they acknowledge that research has not yet clarified which skills are specific to the formation and maintenance of friendships versus those that are important for acceptance by the broader peer group as well. Three of the skills described by Asher et al. (1996) seem to us to be especially crucial for friendships per se. First, children must recognize the "spirit of equality" that characterizes friendships. That is, friendships depend on an equal balance of power and reciprocity. This is likely a different dynamic than is characteristic of interactions within larger peer groups, which may be characterized by hierarchies of power and leadership. Second, children must...
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