But will there be a rose ceremony? “Mean Girls” goes reality TV.
By: Lara on June 24, 2008
Under: aggression, peer status
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I like reality TV as much as the next person. But I can’t decide if I love this or hate this: It’s a “reality with morality” show (their words, not mine) called Queen Bees. The premise is that “mean girls”—young women in their late teens who have been nominated by friends or family—vie for the title of “most reformed mean girl” in a presumably life-changing eight-episode experience. The girls are coached by a psychologist; the contestant who shows the most improvement wins $25,000.
The reality-TV-lover in me can’t wait to set the DVR. The aggression researcher in me is less enthusiastic. Are we really to believe that these young women, who have been using mean behaviors effectively for years (everything from self-centeredness to downright nastiness, according to the press release), will suddenly see the damage they’re doing and vow to redeem themselves? Will any change we see be real change, or clever positioning for the cash? Are the producers truly shining a light on meanness in the hopes that viewers will reconsider their bad behaviors, or are they celebrating it by featuring attractive, socially prominent women who may have gotten that way to begin with by being, well, mean?
Can true change even happen for these girls, or are their behaviors too deeply ingrained? Many of the behaviors we think of as “mean girl” behavior peak in adolescence, middle school in particular. Such behaviors don’t disappear, of course, and occur regularly even among adult women, as most people can tell you. But for most young women, there is a decrease in these behaviors across adolescence and into adulthood. (The film “Mean Girls” – which I really liked, by the way – depicts high school aggression among girls who don’t show the typical trajectory. Well, that or they were “Really Mean Girls” in middle school.) Given their levels of meanness and how long they’ve gotten away with it, I wonder how effective a short-term intervention would be, even one led by a famous TV psychologist. These girls have been getting their way for a long time.
Still, I’ll probably tune in, just to see.
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Does your status need a boost? Beat someone up on YouTube.
By: Lara on April 10, 2008
Under: aggression, peer status
Comments: 5
When colleagues and I study aggression among girls, it’s often of the social/relational kind—gossip, exclusion, the cold shoulder—not because relational aggression is solely the domain of girls, but because rates of more physical kinds of aggression among girls are comparatively very low. (There is plenty of research on physical aggression and violence among girls; some of it is presented in this excellent book edited by Martha Putallaz and Karen Bierman). But researchers (among others) are documenting increasing rates of physical violence perpetrated by girls, and girls, while not exactly closing in on boys’ levels of aggression, are definitely narrowing the gap.
So when I hear a story like this, which was reported on CBS and has been heating up the blogosphere over the past couple of days (like this post on Jezebel), I’m not particularly surprised by the girls’ actions. Girls whaling on each other just isn’t as rare as it used to be. But this case is unusual in its violence, and it’s extremely creepy in that the girls reportedly lured their victim to the scene of the beating with the express purpose of videotaping it and posting it on YouTube.
The thing that struck me as most interesting about this story was who the perpetrators were—cheerleaders, presumably popular girls. Plenty of recent research on adolescent popularity has shown that the most popular students can also be the most aggressive. Beyond that, Toon Cillessen and I will publish a study later this year showing that the combination of being popular and knowing that you’re popular predicts the very highest levels of physical and relational aggression in a given high school grade. It may be that being popular and knowing it (or caring enough about popularity to rate yourself really highly on it) means that you’re also extremely protective of your status—protective enough to hurt other kids who challenge or threaten that status. That’s pure conjecture; we really don’t know why kids who are popular and know it can be so mean. It could be simpler than status maintenance. Maybe popular kids who know their power just feel entitled to kicking people around a little when they feel like it. Maybe they know they won’t really get into trouble for it. Maybe they figure other kids will like them even more when they act like jerks.
But popular kids’ aggression doesn’t usually go as far as it did in this story—in fact, one common assumption about popular-aggressive kids is that they use aggression in savvy, hard-to-detect ways that allow them to manipulate or threaten without being discovered (and punished). The girls in this incident clearly wanted to be discovered: They wanted to create a YouTube sensation! I’m fascinated by this. Do some popular teens feel that they have to show such extreme expressions of physical dominance in order to gain or maintain their status (and if so, why?)? Or is it even bigger than that—Are kids using social media like Facebook and YouTube as vehicles for gaining respect or power, by promoting their mean behaviors on a worldwide scale? I’ll admit it, this scares me a little. The potential for one-upsmanship seems enormous.
I may be overthinking this entire thing; it’s possible that these are just some dumb kids who didn’t think their plan through very well. The six girls involved in the incident (and two male accomplices who acted as lookouts during the assault) have been charged with third-degree felonies. Something tells me this story is being told and retold among their high school peers with a level of awe and respect that would make us cringe.
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When popularity is more important than anything else
By: Lara on March 3, 2008
Under: aggression, peer status
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I study peer popularity among children and adolescents. Some of my research has shown that being popular isn’t always associated with good things. Meaning, sometimes popular kids are mean to other kids, and sometimes they do things that their parents would probably rather they not do (drink, have sex). Popular youth are more likely than other kids to do stuff like this. I’m not the only one coming to these conclusions; there are lots of us doing similar work.
Despite findings like this, I have always been quick to end discussions of popularity with a comment like “…but of course not all popular kids are mean. Some popular kids are kind, cooperative, friendly, trustworthy kids.” And I mean it—our data show a lot of variability in aggression, alcohol use, etc., among the “in” crowd. It’s simply unfair not to acknowledge that.
But then I read something like this, and I just want to tear my hair out. Go on, have a look. (Thanks for the link, Sophie.)
Scary, isn’t it? And doesn’t it make you angry?
Stories like this are exactly why I study popularity. Popularity comes with social power—the power to influence others in good ways or bad, the power to make peers happy or make them miserable. There are lots of theories as to why some popular kids act the way the girls in the advice column acted (maybe we’ll tackle those in another post).
But here’s my question: Why is it that other kids are so willing to walk into the trap? Experience being a teenager and experience studying teenagers tells me that if a group of popular kids is mean to other kids, people probably know about it. Is the lure of being part of the “in” crowd so enticing that kids will risk the kind of humiliation that this poor girl experienced?
So while I usually come at this issue from the perspective of the popular kids, this story has me thinking hard about the perspective of their peers. We make a lot of assumptions about the way popular kids are perceived–like, they are sometimes disliked, they are envied, they are seen as competition for romantic partners–but we don’t test these assumptions very often.
If we are to truly understand the dynamics of popularity, we must go beyond studying popular kids themselves. We have to understand how they fit into the larger peer group, how their peers feel about them, and what it is about being popular that is so alluring to some kids that they’re willing to be victimized in order to fit in.
And for what it’s worth, I like Amy’s advice in this column. But I doubt the young girl who wrote her will follow it. If she was willing to submit to hazing in order to hang out with those girls in the first place, something tells me she won’t be willing to make a (possibly very public) issue out of her experience with them. Yet another indicator of just how much power these kids have.
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Now I’m worried about my popular niece
By: Lara on February 17, 2008
Under: peer status
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Remember the popular kids? The ones who looked ten years older than the rest of us, always seemed to have “the right look,” and got away with murder (well, figuratively) at school? Yeah, those kids. Well, as it turns out, we may have reason to worry about those kids, rather than just envying them the fruits of their attractiveness and social power.
In a study to be published in the Journal of Research on Adolescence this month, Marlene Sandstrom (Williams College), Toon Cillessen (Radboud University, the Netherlands), and I measured substance use, sexual behavior, and peer status in over 500 high school sophomores. We then followed up with the same teens two years later, during their senior year.
While teens who scored high on social preference (being nominated as likeable by many grademates) in 10th grade generally scored low on substance use and sexual behavior two years later, teens who were popular in 10th grade were more likely to drink alcohol and engage in sexual intercourse by the end of the 12th grade. (We also investigated the opposite possibility—that substance use and sexual behavior in 10th grade would predict increases in popularity two years later. This did not pan out.)
These findings raise a number of important concerns. Are popular teens more at risk for the physical and mental health problems that can result from substance use and risky sexual behavior? Are the friends or associates of popular youth at particular risk for acquiring these behaviors, because of the social influence power they wield? What about lower-status teens who look up to the popular crowd? At the very least, it raises an interesting question, one that was posed by one of our manuscript’s anonymous reviewers: Should parents wish that their children not be popular?
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