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Article Excerpt
The effect of the type of a clique to which a child belongs on his or her social and emotional adjustment was examined in a sample of 473 fourth- and fifth-grade elementary school students. A cluster analysis identified five types of cliques based on clique members' aggregated scores on seven behavioral characteristics (i.e., prosocial, bully, reactive aggression, athletic, withdrawn, bright, fun): average, withdrawn, tough, incompetent/aggressive, and competent cliques. On average, children in average, tough, and competent cliques were higher in their social status than children in withdrawn and incompetent/aggressive cliques. With regard to self-reported adjustment outcomes, children in competent and average cliques displayed higher levels of adjustment (e.g., high interpersonal competence, low anxiety, and low dissatisfaction with network participation) than children in withdrawn and incompetent/aggressive cliques. Children in tough cliques reported lower levels of dissatisfaction with peer influence than those in incompetent/aggressive cliques.
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Research on children's peer relations has suggested that children's peer experiences at different levels of the peer system (i.e., individual, dyadic, group) make unique contributions to their overall social and emotional well-being (Rubin, Bukowski, & Parker, 1998). First, social status research focuses on the degree to which a child is accepted by peers (e.g., Coie, Dodge, & Coppotelli, 1982). The association between peer acceptance and psychological adjustment has been widely cited, particularly with regard to children who are disliked or rejected by peers (see review by Deater-Deckard, 2001; Kupersmidt, Coie, & Dodge, 1990). Second, dyadic approaches are concerned with children's friendships. Evidence suggests that a child's ability to form friendships is fairly distinct from his or her acceptance by peers. That is, Parker and Asher (1993) found that some highly accepted children have no close relationships, whereas over half of low-accepted children were found to have a reciprocated friendship.
More recently, developmental researchers have argued that attempts to understand the complexity of children's social lives are incomplete without the consideration of the social network in which children are embedded (Cairns, Xie, & Leung, 1998; Haynie, 2001; Kindermann, 1998; Ryan, 2001). Specifically, children begin to form social groups, or cliques, as they enter middle childhood (Crockett, Losoff, & Petersen, 1984). By definition, cliques are well-defined and rather exclusively connected networks in which clique members are often friends with each other (Hallinan, 1980). Cliques usually consist of same-gender and same-race children, ranging in size from three to nine children (see review by Gifford-Smith & Brownell, 2003). By the late elementary school years, most children report that they are a part of a clique, and cliques appear to be an important context where the majority of a child's peer interactions occur (Crockett et al., 1984). In this study, the terms "peer groups" and "cliques" are used interchangeably.
Group approaches are conceptually and methodologically complex but, arguably, provide important information that may be missed by individual or dyadic approaches of peer relations. For example, from a status approach, aggressive children are often viewed as socially unsuccessful in that many of them are rejected by peers. Employing a social network approach, however, Cairns and colleagues (1988) have shown that aggressive children tend to be included in networks with other aggressive children, perhaps leading to acceptance of and support for aggressive behaviors. Thus, research on children's peer relations that neglects the peer context provides only a partial outlook on a child's peer experience (Cairns et al., 1998).
Despite the significance of group membership in children's developmental outcomes, little is known about behavioral configurations, or types, of cliques and whether membership in a particular type of clique affects children's adjustment. In this study, we attempted to identify different types of cliques based on members' aggregate behavioral characteristics. The primary goal was to examine the association between children's clique membership and self-perceived social satisfaction and emotional adjustment above and beyond children's individual social status (e.g., likability, popularity).
Cliques and Self-Concept
As affiliation-based social clusters, cliques differ from other types of peer groups. For example, cliques are different from adolescents' reputation-based crowds (e.g., brains, nerds, jocks) whose members do not necessarily associate with each other (Brown, 1990) and friendship networks, as determined by self-reported friendships (e.g., Haynie, 2001). In contrast, cliques have been defined as a small group of children who demonstrate frequent social interactions, as determined by peer reports (Cairns, Perrin, & Cairns, 1985; Kindermann, 1993). In the current study, cliques were identified with the Social Cognitive Map (SCM) procedure (Cairns et al., 1985) using a paper-and-pencil format. Specifically, children listed groups of peers whom they observed to "hang around together a lot."
Although children's cliques are not primarily reputation-based groups, behavioral reputations of cliques may naturally emerge based on members' shared attributes. The phenomenon of "birds of a feather flock together" has been widely cited to suggest similarity among group members (Rubin, Lynch, Coplan, Rose-Krasnor. & Booth, 1994). Social cognitive processes also play a role in children's perception of individuals in a group. According to Rogosch and Newcomb (1989, p. 597), "social reputations may regulate the types of social interaction that peers engage in with a perceived child, and reputation may constrain the social experiences available to individual children." In the case of cliques, salient behavioral characteristics of clique members might form the basis of a clique's reputation. For example, cliques are sometimes characterized by certain labels, such as "bullies" or "athletes." In fact, a clique's behavioral characteristics might be so salient, as compared to an individual clique member's characteristics, that it could overshadow the way in which the individual is perceived and treated by peers. Behavioral reputation of cliques in this study is not unlike the definition of social crowds (Brown, 1990) except that members of a clique are observed by peers to interact frequently.
The overall reputation of a clique and the manner in which a child is perceived by others, in turn, might contribute to the child's self-perceived functioning. According to symbolic-interaction theories, social interaction facilitates the formation and development of an individual's self-concept (James, 1890: Mead, 1934). Cooley (1902) argued that individuals' interpretations of the way in which they are perceived by others significantly contribute to their self-image, or the looking-glass self. As a result, a child's internalization of others' perceptions becomes the basis of self-perception. For example, Brown and Lohr (1987) demonstrated that adolescents who belonged to a crowd with a prestigious reputation displayed higher self-esteem and expressed higher interest in and valuing of belonging to a group than those who belonged to less well-regarded groups. Similarly, it is likely that children who belong to a clique with positive social characteristics feel more satisfied and successful than those who belong to a clique with a negative reputation.
Group Homophily and Clique Reputation
Group homophily refers to the phenomenon that individuals within a group tend to be more similar to each other than to non-group members (Kandel, 1978). As a selection effect might suggest, children tend to choose to be friends with those who have similar attributes. Also, at least two studies have demonstrated that specific characteristics of children's peer affiliates at one point in time predict children's own change across time, indicating socialization processes. Specifically, a study by Kindermann (1993) has demonstrated that motivation for school engagement increased across the school year for children who were affiliated with other highly motivated children, whereas the opposite was true for children who were affiliated with less-motivated children at the beginning of the school year. Ryan (2001) has reported a similar finding with seventh-grade students. Clique affiliation was found to account for changes in members' achievement over time, even after controlling for the initial selection.
Numerous studies have demonstrated behavioral similarities between friends and clique members, including similarities in aggression levels (Cairns, Cairns, Neckerman, Gest, & Gariepy, 1988), rates of school dropout and early parenthood among adolescents (Xie, Cairns, & Cairns, 2001), and school grades, externalizing problems, and discipline referrals (Henrich, Kuperminc, Sack, Blatt, & Leadbeater, 2000). Although less studied, similarities in internalizing behaviors between clique members also have been found among high school students (Hogue & Steinberg, 1995). In turn, similar characteristics among clique mates likely facilitate the establishment of clique reputation and differentiation of one clique from another.
Measurement of Behavioral Characteristics of Cliques
Kindermann (1996) has discussed different ways to create an index of a composite psychological profile of peer groups. Those methods include averaging group members' scores on characteristics of interest, summing group members' scores to reflect their cumulative effect, and using the variance of group members' scores when diversity of certain characteristics of group members is of interest. Each method has advantages and disadvantages. For example, averages may be misleading when peer groups consist of children with heterogeneous characteristics. However, Kindermann argued that averages are reasonable estimates of clique properties for homogeneous groups, providing an index to compare cliques with one another. Given research showing that clique members tend to be similar to one another, the strategy of using average scores appears to be appropriate.
In previous studies, group homophily often has been determined based on...
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