What are their attributes? According to research, the popular child has a strong personality while being friendly toward classmates. They're usually good students who exhibit exemplary social skills, plus they're able to control their emotions in social settings. However, popular children are not necessarily the most likable kids.
More accurately, they're the ones who are good athletes, school leaders, cooperative, studious, not shy or unassertive. Researchers describe many unpopular kids in terms of being physically unattractive, seldom displaying positive social interactions and often exhibiting inappropriate behavior.
When kids in late elementary school responded to two questions, "Who is the most popular child in the class? From this result it's easy to assume, just because a child is popular doesn't mean he or she is the one most liked or admired by peers. It is interesting that children identified by teachers in kindergarten as popular were still identified as popular six years later.
It is also noted that among siblings, teachers reported strong similarities with regards to popularity, social behavior, school adjustments and positive behavior with peers on the playground. They make you feel included. They make you feel valued. We just look up to them. Mitch Prinstein: So, when it comes to likeability, one of the biggest factors is someone that acts in prosocial ways. So another way of saying that is not acting aggressively. Aggressive behavior makes you disliked very quickly.
Research shows that in a matter of three hours of meeting brand new people, you tend to be as liked by those strangers as you are by people that have known you for a long time. Mitch Prinstein: Well, they generally tend to be things that show that you are connected to others.
I mean, there are a number of factors that people have looked at—physical attractiveness and intelligence and problem-solving skills—all kinds of factors that play a role. But really, the reason why those factors play a role is because they often change the way that we interact with others or the ways that others interact with us.
Psychologists call this a transactional model, and that basically means is that the way that people treat us elicits and brings out different behaviors from us towards them and vice versa. There was a really interesting study that looked at the initial interactions with people when they were just meeting each other in a big crowd and then followed up later to see who became close friends with whom. And then they said what happened in those first five minutes of meeting each other that might have predicted who became really close friends so much later.
And asking questions was a big part of it—people looking for that common ground. They were interested in asking someone else about their own interests, not merely to keep the focus off of them, but to find a point of shared values and interests and experiences—and then to really focus the conversation on what they shared.
And that immediately created a feeling of affiliation or connection. We want to feel connected. The use of humor is really interesting because it kind of shows that you understand enough about what the other person is thinking. I am repeating it back in my own way to show you that our minds are working in sync. And those kinds of subtle ways of reflective listening or using humor or otherwise makes people feel included.
We are genetically built to want to be included. Are you nodding and smiling and kind of making eye contact in a way that shows connection? And we kind of just dismiss stuff about social relationships and popularity as being like a teenage preoccupation. What they may not realize, however, is that even if they aren't trying to, they are influencing their kid's popularity. And it's not a meaningless adolescent phase. Our popularity and the way we perceive it is critical to our personal and professional development , according to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Dr.
Mitch Prinstein. Prinstein is a clinical child psychologist and one of the foremost researchers into the psychology of popularity. We spoke with Prinstein earlier this year, read his book " Popular ," and took his Coursera class adapted from the one he teaches at UNC. First off, Prinstein distinguishes between two types of popularity: social reputation status and social preference likability.
The former is more noticeable who's "cool" and who isn't , but the latter who can develop meaningful relationships is significantly more valuable as a child matures into an adult. Studies have found that mothers who remember their childhoods marked by happiness tend to have popular children, those who remember their childhoods marked by hostility tend to have unpopular children, and those who remember their childhoods marked by loneliness or anxiety tend to be of average popularity or higher.
The reason is that the first and last groups both care about their children's social interactions and intervene when necessary, while those who grew up with hostility don't value their children's relationships as much. I vividly remember getting ready to enter kindergarten and worrying out loud to my mom about not having any friends. Her reply was so simple, but so profound.
She said, "All you have to do is walk up to someone and say 'Hi! My name is Lyndsi. What's your name? Do you want to be friends? And it worked! While that may seem like an unimportant, trivial conversation, she provided me with an invaluable script; a couple easy sentences that would pave the way for me to forge friendships.
We need to teach our children to be the one to make the first move. Shut it down We are all guilty of gossip. We have all felt the quicksand-like effects of engaging in those conversations where we pick people apart without their knowing. It seems to be inevitable, especially amongst the tweens and teens in high school hallways. It even creeps in to our elementary school settings.
Is your child prepared to handle those situations or will they simply go along with it because that is the easiest, most comfortable thing to do? It's simple to instruct our kids to say, "I am not going to gossip about so-and-so. Teenagers want more than anything to be accepted, so it's just not practical to assume your child will make such a bold statement, and risk the resentment or, worse, risk becoming the topic of the next gossip session Instead, encourage your child to simply shut the conversation down by pointing out one positive about the person being talked about, and immediately changing the subject.
It is a powerful practice they will surely benefit from having down the road. Look for someone who needs you This year, encourage your child to find the people who tend to get "lost" in the crowd.
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