Speaker
Description
The classroom is a key social environment for social learning with peer interactions shaping social status, defined as popularity (social influence) and likability (peer acceptance). Adolescents often pursue popularity through aggression and bullying, while likability is achieved via prosocial behaviors. Some use both strategies, known as bistrategic control, though research on this topic remains inconclusive. This study, based on a sample of 6379 early adolescents nested in 328 classrooms from 119 Slovenian schools, used a multilevel person-centered approach to explore profiles of popularity, likability, bullying, and prosocial behavior, examining differences in bystander behaviors, social goals, and status insecurity. Additionally, classroom popularity norms were considered to examine how individual student-level profiles and classroom-level factors interact. Five profiles emerged on an individual level: popular bullies (5.3%), unpopular bullies (9.7%), bistrategic controllers (5.6%), prosocials (9.2%), and uninvolved (70.1%). Popular bullies reported the highest bullying reinforcement, while both bully profiles and bistrategic controllers had strong popularity goals. Prosocials exhibited the highest defending behaviors, likability goals, and social status insecurity, while bistrategic controllers showed the least social insecurity. Multilevel analysis revealed two classroom profiles: those with higher and lower prosocial popularity norms. Classrooms with higher prosocial popularity norms had fewer uninvolved students, more prosocials, and slightly more bistrategic controllers and popular bullies. This study highlights the complex interplay between individual behaviors and classroom-level social norms in shaping student interactions.
Keywords
social status, bullying, prosocial behavior, classroom popularity norms, latent profile analysis
| Please also indicate what kind of contribution it is: | Scientific |
|---|---|
| Please indicate what type of scientific contribution it is | Quantitative method study |
