Psychology Commons^™

Popularity, Social Acceptance, And Aggression In Adolescent Peer Groups: Links With Academic Performance And School Attendance, David Schwartz, Andrea Hopmeyer Gorman, Jonathan Nakamoto, Tara Mckay

Andrea Hopmeyer Gorman

This article reports a short-term longitudinal study focusing on popularity and social acceptance as predictors of academic engagement for a sample of 342 adolescents (approximate average age of 14). These youths were followed for 4 consecutive semesters. Popularity, social acceptance, and aggression were assessed with a peer nomination inventory, and data on academic engagement were obtained from school records. For adolescents who were highly aggressive, increases in popularity were associated with increases in unexplained absences and decreases in grade point average. Conversely, changes in social acceptance were not predictive of changes in grade point average or unexplained absences. These results …