Informal Status Among Adolescents: A Literature Review

The paper provides an overview of the literature related to peer status and popularity. First, it reviews the theoretical and measurement issues related to the concept of popularity, then a review of the empirical findings with regards to the most important behavioral and personality correlates of status and popularity are presented. The correlates currently inspected are the following: athleticism, aggression, prosocial and risk behavior, academic engagement and performance, leadersip abilities, and other personality traits (e.g. the Big Five). While most of the literature comes from developmental psychology and the quantitative field, the author intends to balance, as much as possible, the sociological, psychological and evolutionary perspectives, as well as the quantitative and qualitative literature. The paper also briefly discusses the effect of peer norms and ethnic and gender differences.