Popularity Increases Aggression in Kids, Study Finds

"Popular kids — except those at the absolute top of the social ladder — are most likely to act aggressively toward other kids, a new study finds.

It isn't aggression that makes kids more popular. But becoming more popular makes kids more aggressive, said study author Bob Faris, a sociologist at the University of California, Davis — suggesting that those kids see tormenting others as a way to gain and cement status.

Faris and his co-author, Diane Felmlee, reviewed a study that followed eighth-, ninth- and 10th-graders in North Carolina over a year.

"For the most part, we find that status increases aggression," Faris told LiveScience.

"For some people, that will be a surprise. For other people who have grown up quoting 'Mean Girls,' it might be an 'Oh, duh' kind of revelation," he added, referring to the 2004 comedy about a clique of vicious but popular high school girls.

After controlling for variables known to influence aggression — including dating activity, sports participation, grade-point average, socioeconomic status and physical development — the researchers found that students who were more central in their social networks were also more aggressive. Network centrality is a bit more complex than popularity: It means that a kid has not only a lot of friends, but a lot of friends who are also socially prominent. These school-age movers and shakers have a lot of social power among their peers, Faris said.

The gradual increase of aggression with popularity continues until you reach the top 2 percent of popular students, Faris said. At that point, aggression suddenly drops off. The top 2 percent are even less aggressive than the kids at the very bottom of the heap, Faris said.

"We can't preclude the possibility that kids at the very top are just somehow really different, that they're incredibly nice and everybody loves them," Faris said. But other evidence suggests that these extremely popular kids are just secure enough in their positions that they don't need to be aggressive anymore, he said. Another, soon-to-be published study by Faris found that the more kids care about popularity, the more aggressive they are, suggesting it's a tendency toward social-climbing that triggers bullying behavior."

http://www.livescience.com/culture/popularity-increases-aggression-110208.html