Childhood peer relationships: social acceptance, friendships, and peer networks

Journal of School Psychology 41 (2003) 235 – 284

Childhood peer relationships: social acceptance, friendships, and peer networks Mary E. Gifford-Smith a, Celia A. Brownell b,* b

a Duke University, Durham, NC, USA University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

Received 28 October 2002; accepted 28 October 2002

Abstract This review addresses several areas of contemporary research in children’s peer relationships during the elementary and middle school years, with primary foci on children’s peer acceptance, the ability to make and maintain friendships, and their participation in larger peer networks. Particular attention is given to research examining the major developments and individual differences in each of these components of children’s peer relations, how these different aspects of peer functioning relate to one another, and how they contribute to development more generally, including school adjustment and achievement. Finally, it is argued that children’s psychosocial development may be best informed by an integration of these somewhat independent research traditions. D 2003 Society for the Study of School Psychology. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Friendship; Social acceptance; Peer networks

Introduction The world of children and their peers has captivated developmental psychologists for more than three decades (Hartup, 1970), and its study over this period has yielded a number of interesting and important insights. We now know that peer relations change in systematic ways as children age, and they serve different purposes in children’s lives at different ages. What happens in children’s peer groups and friendship relations affects development and functioning in probably every other aspect of children’s lives, including the family, the school, and the community. And the goings-on in these settings in turn * Corresponding author. Psychology Department, University of Pittsburgh, 3409 Sennott Square, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA. Tel.: +1-412-624-4510; fax: +1-412-624-4428. E-mail address: [email protected] (C.A. Brownell). 0022-4405/03/$ - see front matter D 2003 Society for the Study of School Psychology. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/S0022-4405(03)00048-7

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affect children’s functioning in their peer groups. Thus, children’s relationships with their peers and friends are associated with multiple aspects of development and adjustment, including their achievement in school. In this review, we will discuss several primary areas of contemporary research in children’s peer relationships during the school years, with emphasis on elementary school and middle childhood. Our goal is not to provide a comprehensive review, but rather to be representative. We will chart the major developments and individual differences in each of several components of children’s peer relations, how these different aspects of peer functioning relate to one another, and how they contribute to development more generally, including school adjustment and achievement. We will draw primarily from work in developmental psychology since that is where our own expertise lies. A number of important changes occur in children’s peer-relevant social worlds during the primary school years. These shifts produce both new demands and new opportunities for social and emotional growth. By middle childhood, more than 30% of children’s social interactions involve peers. Peer groups enlarge and are less closely supervised by adults, including parents, than was true at prior ages. Peer groups themselves become defined relative to one another, in the familiar phenomenon of ‘‘cliques,’’ which emerge in late childhood and pre-adolescence. Middle childhood peer groups exist in a wide assortment of settings outside the home and classroom, whereas peer contacts during the preschool years were typically in home, child-care, or arranged play settings (Rubin, Bukowski, & Parker, 1998). Contexts for peer interaction also increasingly include remote electronic contact by computer (e-mail, ‘‘instant messaging,’’ and on-line ‘‘chatting’’), an area that, to our knowledge, has not yet received focused research attention despite the growing number of anecdotal reports from parents of the many hours their children spend in such activities. What children do with their peers also shifts over childhood, from spending most of their time in active or pretend play in the early years, to engaging in organized activities such as sports or games, ‘‘just hanging out,’’ and talking and gossiping in middle childhood and pre-adolescence (Zarbatany, Hartmann, & Rankin, 1990). Thus, it is during middle childhood that children can truly be said to participate in a separate social world of their peers. Although this world is by no means independent from the family, the school, and other social institutions, there are unique features of peer relationships that set the world of peers apart from children’s other socialization experiences. Investigators of children’s peer relationships have conceptualized and studied them in a number of different ways that are only partially overlapping. One pervasive distinction in the research literature is between group-based peer interactions and relationships, and dyadic peer interactions and relationships. At the level of the group, children’s peer relationships can be characterized in terms of likeability or social acceptance by other group members (e.g., popularity or rejection), in terms of visibility or salience in the group, how connected they are to the other children in the group (e.g., network centrality), their dominance in the group hierarchy (Hawley, 2002), their ‘‘reputation’’ or how they are perceived by their peers (e.g., Hymel, Bowker, & Woody, 1993; Waas & Honer, 1990), or in terms of the larger social networks in which they move and with which they identify (Cairns, Xie, & Leung, 1998; Farmer & Rodkin, 1996; Gest, Graham-Bermann, & Hartup, 2001). At the dyadic level, researchers have predominantly studied children’s friendships (Bukowski, Newcomb, & Hartup, 1996; Hartup W.W., 1996). More recently, they have

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begun to study other dyadic relationships as well, such as bully –victim relationships (Hodges & Card, in press), and mutual antipathies or enemies (Abecassis, Hartup, Haselager, Scholte, & van Lieshout, in press; Hartup & Abecassis, in press). In the current review, we focus primarily on children’s acceptance by their peer groups, the nature and quality of their friendships, and their participation in larger peer networks. Although children’s day-to-day peer relationships cut across all of these arenas, research has tended to concentrate on them independently rather than integratively, as does our review. Research on children’s peer relationships is conducted almost exclusively in schools, and children’s experiences with peers in school have been linked to other aspects of their developing social competence as well as to academic success. Hence, we focus here on school-based peer relations and their associations with social and academic functioning. Finally, we close by discussing the few empirical efforts to consider children’s peer experiences more broadly, and how the nature and quality of peer experiences are both similar and different across these three domains.

Individual differences in children’s social competence: sociometric status and social behavior Peer acceptance is distinct from other aspects of peer functioning, most notably friendship and social network participation. At the most general level, peer acceptance, or sociometric status, refers to the degree to which children are liked or disliked by the children in their peer group. Because sociometric status research has grown out of the tradition of developmental psychology, it has emphasized individual differences in social experiences. Thus, sociometric classifications (described below) have been used as a tool to index or describe an individual child’s place within the larger peer group rather than to describe the interpersonal processes or structural characteristics of the peer group itself (Cairns et al., 1998). Modern sociometric research has its roots in the work of Jacob Moreno who suggested that peer experience could be best understood as the product of three distinct interpersonal forces: attraction, repulsion, and indifference (Moreno, 1934). Reflecting these dimensions, current sociometric methods solicit information from children regarding their positive and negative feelings about their peers to derive the now well known sociometric ‘‘categories’’: popular children, who are well liked by many peers and seldom disliked; rejected children, who are frequently disliked and not well-liked; controversial children who are both liked and disliked, and neglected children who receive very few liked or disliked nominations. Of primary interest have been questions addressing why certain children become popular or well-liked, while others are rejected or neglected by their peers and how a child’s social status can be understood within the broader context of individual development. More specifically, research on sociometric status has been shaped by four primary aims: (1) Identifying characteristics of the individual child that contribute to the formation and maintenance of social status (e.g., behavior and social cognitions); (2) Identifying features of or processes within the larger peer group that relate to social status acquisition and maintenance (e.g., reputational bias and group norms);

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(3) Identifying early experiences that influence children’s social status within the peer group (e.g., parenting strategies and attachment); (4) Exploring the link between peer status and other developmental outcomes (e.g., school success/failure and delinquency). Historically, the lion’s share of empirical and conceptual work has focused on the first of these areas-identifying the correlates of sociometric status. Early work focused on fairly straightforward, global comparisons across status groups with respect to a variety of behavioral and social cognitive variables (see Coie, Dodge, & Kupersmidt, 1990; Newcomb, Bukowski, & Pattee, 1993 for detailed reviews). More recently, the growing recognition that status categories are not necessarily homogeneous entities has led to studies exploring subtypes of children within a particular category (e.g., aggressiverejected versus nonaggressive-rejected children) (Bierman, Smoot, & Aumiller, 1993; Harrist, Zaia, Bates, Dodge, & Pettit, 1997). At the same time, researchers have considered the behavioral correlates of status on a more molecular level, identifying different forms and functions of a variety of social behaviors related to status (e.g., proactive and reactive aggression) (Coie, Dodge, Terry, & Wright, 1991; Crick, 1996). Concurrent with these trends, researchers interested in the developmental significance of sociometric status began exploring links between earlier experiences (e.g., parenting styles and the experience of abuse) and social status (see Ladd, 1999 for review), while others began to delineate the relations between sociometric status and developmental outcomes (e.g., delinquency and school failure) (see Ollendick, Weist, Borden, & Greene, 1992; Parker & Asher, 1987). By the mid-1990s, these investigations became still more complex, involving larger longitudinal data sets, with the goal of building and testing conceptual models to predict the development of a variety of externalizing and internalizing outcomes (Dodge et al., in press; Ladd, Kochenderfer, & Coleman, 1997; MillerJohnson et al., 2002). In these studies, sociometric status or peer acceptance is one variable among many thought to influence social development, and the primary objective is understanding the complex interplay among these variables. Perhaps not surprisingly, as the questions and methods for studying sociometric status have become more complex and time-consuming, the volume and centrality of work concerning status has decreased (J. Coie, personal communication, September 2002). Nevertheless, sociometric status continues to be an important area of attention for researchers attempting to understand the development of children’s social and emotional competence. As a review of the major conceptual and empirical work in each of the research areas outlined above is beyond the scope of this paper, the remainder of this section will be devoted to those questions and issues that are currently most salient: (1) methodological issues concerning the measurement of sociometric status; (2) recent findings concerning the correlates of social status, focusing particularly on heterogeneity within status categories; and (3) group processes related to status formation and maintenance. Discussion of links between social status and other developmental outcomes (e.g., school drop-out and delinquency) will be limited to those outcomes most directly related to school performance. Readers interested in associations between family experiences and peer status and/or between peer status and antisocial behavioral outcomes more generally are directed to recent reviews by Ladd (1999) and Rubin et al. (1998).

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Methodological issues in studying sociometric status The veritable explosion of interest in sociometric status over the last several decades has been driven, in part, by the development of efficient and reliable methods of measuring children’s status. Most researchers choose one of two widely recognized methods-peer nominations or peer ratings. As these methods are described in detail elsewhere (Coie & Dodge, 1983; Coie, Dodge, & Coppotelli, 1982; Newcomb & Bukowski, 1983), they will be reviewed only briefly here. However, understanding how these constructs are operationalized is important not only for evaluating the sociometric status literature, but also for exploring how status, social network, and friendship research are interrelated, an issue that will be taken up later in this paper. Peer nominations The most commonly cited procedure for measuring sociometric status via peer nominations was developed by Coie et al. (1982). Based on the recognition that peer acceptance and peer rejection were not opposite ends of the same continuum, Coie and colleagues argued for assessing these dimensions of social experience separately. To accomplish this, children are typically asked to nominate, from a roster of their peers, those children whom they ‘‘most like’’ or ‘‘like most to play with’’ and those children whom they ‘‘most dislike’’ or ‘‘least like to play with.’’ Peer acceptance is defined, at the most basic level, as the number of most liked nominations received, while peer rejection is viewed as the number of least liked nominations. Children’s raw scores for peer acceptance and peer rejection are typically standardized either at the classroom or grade level (sometimes within gender, sometimes not) and are then combined to derive scores for social preference and social impact. Preference refers to the standardized difference between the number of most liked and least liked nominations, while impact is conceptualized as the standardized sum of most liked and least liked scores. Preference and impact are then combined to derive five mutually exclusive sociometric categories: popular, rejected, neglected, controversial, and average (for details, see Coie & Dodge, 1983, 1988). Newcomb and Bukowski (1983) advocate a variation of this method in which binomial probabilities, rather than standard scores, are used to classify children into sociometric categories. Here, classification into groups (i.e., popular, rejected, etc.) is based on the extent to which a child’s liked and disliked scores exceed chance levels. Because Newcomb and Bukowski utilize a more conservative cut-off score, smaller, more homogeneous, and more extreme groups are identified using their procedure. Both procedures have advantages and limitations. For example, more extreme groups have greater behavioral discriminability but are less stable and may overlook children that, while not severely troubled, are nevertheless ‘‘at risk’’ for negative outcomes (Terry & Coie, 1991). Regardless of the particular method used, the conceptualization of acceptance and rejection as separate dimensions of social experience allows researchers to distinguish children whose low peer acceptance is due to outright rejection from those with mixed reputations (e.g., controversial) and those who have low visibility within the peer group (e.g., neglected children). As these different groups of children have been found to have different behavioral and cognitive profiles as well as different developmental trajectories (Newcomb et al., 1993), these distinctions have proved critical.

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Peer ratings Another widely used method for assessing peer status is children’s ratings of their peers. In this procedure, children are asked to rate each of their peers on a single scale of likeability, anchored on one end by a score reflecting acceptance (‘‘like very much’’) and on the other end by a score reflecting rejection (‘‘dislike very much’’). The mean rating received across respondents is taken to reflect an individual child’s level of social acceptance within the group. Because it relies on a unidimensional system for measuring peer acceptance, the rating scale approach is not typically used to derive the sociometric categories described above. For this reason, and also because administration puts greater demands on the respondent, the use of rating scales has become less common (Maassen, van der Linden, Goossens, & Bokhorst, 2000). However, proponents of this system argue that because ratings systems allow children to evaluate every member of their peer group as well as to provide information on the degree of liking or disliking they feel, ratings provide a more detailed and potentially more valid measure of peer group acceptance than nominations (Maassen et al., 2000). Additionally, several researchers have developed techniques for deriving extreme groups from rating scale responses (Asher & Dodge, 1986; Maassen, Akkermans, & van der Linden, 1996; Maassen et al., 2000). This suggests that the rating method offers a viable alternative to the nomination procedure, particularly in settings where children know each other well (e.g., small to moderately sized classrooms, schools characterized by stable populations) or where negative nominations are not permitted. In sum, while methods based on ratings and nominations differ in important respects, the findings they produce are reasonably comparable, depending on how the data are analyzed. While the nomination method appears to be the procedure of choice, especially in recent years, the ratings method supplements our understanding of social status in important ways. Additionally, the ratings method, as will be discussed later, overlaps less with methods for assessing friendship and social networks, allowing a more rigorous examination of relations among these distinct constructs. Correlates of sociometric status Sociometric status, ostensibly a reflection of the peer group’s perception of the individual child, has been most commonly treated by developmental psychologists as an attribute or characteristic of the child. It is not surprising, then, that the search for determinants of children’s sociometric status has also concentrated on characteristics of individual children. In a now substantial empirical literature, sociometric status has been shown to relate to individual physical characteristics such as attractiveness and athleticism (Li, 1985); to individual behavioral styles such as propensity to be aggressive versus prosocial in peer encounters (Coie et al., 1990); to individual social skills including communicative behavior (Burleson et al., 1986) and group entry skills (Putallaz & Gottman, 1981); to individual social-cognitive skills such as social problem solving and evaluating others’ intent (Dodge & Feldman, 1990); and to individual differences in emotion regulation (Fabes & Eisenberg, 1992). As this research has been reviewed extensively elsewhere (Coie et al., 1990; Newcomb et al., 1993), the ensuing discussion

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will focus on more recent trends within this literature, particularly the growing recognition of within- rather than between-group differences in the correlates of social status. Over the past decade, the emphasis of status research has evolved from studies exploring differences in the behavioral or social profiles of children of varying status groups (e.g., how rejected children differ from their non-rejected peers) to more fine-tuned analyses of heterogeneity within the traditionally recognized sociometric categories (e.g., subtypes of rejected children). Similarly, rather than simply identifying global categories of behavior linked to social status (e.g., aggression and withdrawal), researchers have moved toward more molecular assessments, examining the forms, functions, and meanings of social behavior within the interactional context. In fact, this more molecular examination of social behavior, particularly aggression, has supplanted, to some extent, the research on sociometric status as the primary focus of researchers interested in individual differences in children’s peer relations and their relations to developmental outcomes. The remainder of this section will provide a very brief review of the behavioral and social cognitive correlates of each sociometric category (for more detailed review, see Newcomb et al., 1993), which will be followed by a more detailed analysis of work examining behavioral heterogeneity within each group (e.g., subtypes of rejection). Rejection Rejected children appear to be at greater risk for negative developmental outcomes than children from other status groups (Ollendick et al., 1992; Parker & Asher, 1987) and, as a consequence, they have received the bulk of the conceptual and empirical attention. Of primary interest has been the relatively robust link between rejected status and aggressive behavior. Children identified as rejected have been shown to engage in higher frequencies of aggression (Dodge, 1983; Newcomb et al., 1993), to engage in more hostile and unprovoked aggression (Coie et al., 1991), to use aggression to solve conflict or obtain desired objects (Coie et al., 1991), and to respond aggressively to ambiguous provocation (Feldman & Dodge, 1987). These links have been noted both in naturally occurring or established peer groups and in newly formed, lab-based playgroups, implicating aggression in both the formation and maintenance of peer rejection. Related to these differences in aggressive behavior, rejected children have been shown to demonstrate social cognitive biases that likely mediate the relationship between rejection and aggression. For example, rejected children are more likely than their nonrejected peers to interpret ambiguous overtures as hostile (Dodge et al., in press; Feldman & Dodge, 1987), to generate and positively evaluate aggressive solutions to social problems (Crick & Ladd, 1990), and to endorse emotionally reactive and sensationseeking goals (Hinshaw & Melnick, 1995). While the evidence linking aggressive behavior and social cognitive biases to peer rejection is both widely replicated and compelling, it does not tell the whole story. First, only about half of all children identified as aggressive are rejected by their peers (Coie et al., 1991). This suggests that differences must exist in how aggression is used by children of different status. The severity of aggression and the reasons for which it is used (e.g., proactive versus reactive aggression) have been shown to distinguish between rejected and non-rejected children (Coie et al., 1991; Price & Dodge, 1989). Second, the fact that the link between aggression and rejection does not hold equally for boys and girls has led to

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advances in our understanding of relational or social aggression, a form of aggression that appears to be more salient in girls groups (Crick, 1996). Finally, the link between aggression and rejection, while present at each age, changes with development (Coie et al., 1990). Not only does the relationship weaken with age, but the norms for both the expression of aggression and its acceptability appear to change with age as well. Proactive and reactive aggression Based on the finding not all aggressive children are rejected, Coie et al. (1991) hypothesized that differences in the frequency of aggression may not be as important as qualitative differences in the nature and function of aggression used by children of different status. To test this hypothesis, they formed lab-based play groups of rejected and non-rejected 7- and 9-year-old boys rated as aggressive by their peers and then examined the frequency and nature of naturally occurring aggressive episodes. Three types of episodes were identified-reactive aggression (aggression in response to provocation), instrumental aggression (aggression to obtain an object or position), and bullying (unprovoked, person-centered aggression). Results suggested that the relevance of these different forms of aggression for rejection varied somewhat with age. Among older children, all three forms of aggression were related to rejection, whereas among younger children only instrumental aggression significantly related to rejection. These findings suggest that bullying and reactive aggression have less negative sequelae for younger children, perhaps because person-oriented aggression is more normative at that age. Another possibility, according to Coie and colleagues, is that bullying is more adaptive at younger ages when techniques for establishing social dominance are relatively unsophisticated. As children develop more subtle means for obtaining dominance, bullying and reactive aggression may be viewed more negatively by peers. These early findings suggest that examining the different forms and functions of aggression may be helpful in understanding the relation between aggression and rejection. However, it should be noted that the high degree of correlation between reactive and proactive aggression (estimates of r=.70 are typical) makes delineating their differential contributions challenging. Gender differences in the link between aggression and rejection One major limitation of the work linking aggression to rejection is that it has been conducted almost exclusively on boys’ groups, and boys of low socioeconomic status in particular, or on groups too small to assess gender differences adequately. In addition, until fairly recently, the singular focus on overt forms of aggression (e.g., physical and verbal) appears to have obscured the link between aggression and rejection among girls, in part because of the relatively low base rates of these behaviors within girls’ groups (Maccoby & Jacklin, 1980). Building on the seminal work of Crick & Grotpeter (1995) and Underwood, Galen, and Paquette (2001), researchers have now begun to investigate relational or social aggression, a non-physical form of aggression characterized by the use of exclusion, negative gossip, and verbal threats. While both boys and girls engage in relational aggression, there is growing evidence to suggest that this form of aggression is more frequent among girls (Crick & Grotpeter, 1995), is perceived by girls to be more hurtful (Galen & Underwood, 1997; Paquette & Underwood, 1999), and is more likely to be associated with peer rejection for girls than for boys (Crick, 1996; Crick & Grotpeter,

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1995). Furthermore, the link between relational aggression and rejection has been demonstrated across developmental periods. These studies suggest that the forms and frequency of aggression differ in girls’ groups relative to boys’ groups and correspondingly, that relations between aggression and social status may differ for boys and girls. Developmental changes in the link between aggression and peer rejection The link between aggression and peer rejection has been found at each major developmental period (preschool, school-age, and adolescence). However, the nature of this relation changes with development. In preschool and the primary grades, aggression occurs more frequently than in older groups and is more closely related to both incidental and chronic rejection (Cillessen, van Ijzendoorn, van Lieshout, & Hartup, 1992; Coie et al., 1990; Vitaro, Tremblay, & Gagnon, 1992). Normative changes in the expression of aggression (e.g., from physical to verbal forms) and in the perceived acceptability of aggression contribute to a weakening of the relationship between aggression and rejection with age (Coie, Terry, Zakriski, & Lochman, 1995; Luther & McMahon, 1996). For example, in a longitudinal examination of rejected children, Sandstrom and Coie (1999) report that aggressive fourth grade boys actually experienced greater increases in social preference over time than their nonaggressive-rejected peers. The authors suggest that these findings may be due, in part, to increasing acceptability or even desirability of aggressive behavior in certain types of situations or within certain populations, for example, among urban adolescents. Importantly, Sandstrom and Coie go on to suggest that developmental changes in the structure of the peer group, including the emergence of cliques, may underlie important age shifts in the link between aggression and rejection. Just as all aggressive children are not rejected by their peers, not all children identified as rejected are aggressive (French, 1998). Considerably less is known about rejected, nonaggressive children, in part because this group appears to be quite heterogeneous. While several studies have suggested that non-aggressive rejected children may be more shy and withdrawn than their aggressive rejected peers (Cillessen et al., 1992; Rubin, LeMare, & Lollis, 1990), these behaviors do not consistently differentiate them from non-rejected children. Another characteristic that may serve to discriminate non-aggressive rejected children is atypical or non-normative behavior (Bierman et al., 1993). In a sample of school-age rejected boys, non-aggressive rejected children were described by their peers as socially awkward and incompetent or prone to strange behaviors. Consistent with these findings, recent work examining sociometric status differences in children’s teasing behavior suggests that rejected children are more likely than their non-rejected peers to be teased for non-normative or unusual behavior (Gifford-Smith, 1998). Finally, there is some suggestion that non-aggressive-rejected children are less at risk for poor social developmental outcomes than their rejected aggressive peers, possibly because rejection in the absence of aggression is a less stable phenomenon, particularly at younger ages (Bierman & Wargo, 1995; Cillessen et al., 1992; Pettit, Clawson, Dodge, & Bates, 1996). If, in fact, rejection in the absence of aggression has to do with relatively subtle norm violations, it would be reasonable to assume that the significance of such deviations for social status would change as a function of developmental and contextual changes in what constitutes normative behavior.

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Related closely to research examining the link between rejection and aggression are studies of the association between rejection and peer victimization. Although a comprehensive review of the literature on peer victimization is well beyond the scope of this paper (see Juvonen & Graham, 2001 for a review), it is worth pointing out that the questions that shape the peer victimization literature are very similar to those that have been asked about sociometric status. For example, most research in this area is aimed at understanding the behavioral and social cognitive correlates of bullies and their victims, at exploring heterogeneity within these categories (e.g., aggressive/provocative victims versus passive victims), and at examining the psychosocial outcomes for those children who bully or are bullied by their peers. More relevant to this discussion is research examining the relation between peer preference and victimization. Given what is known about the relation between aggression and rejection, it is not surprising that the overlap between peer victimization and rejection, while significant and larger than for other sociometric categories, is not perfect (Boulton & Smith, 1994; Perry, Kusel, & Perry, 1988). Across studies, the magnitude of the correlation between these two constructs appears to be around .50 (Schuster, 2001). The question of whether peer rejection contributes to victimization or vice versa remains an issue of debate. Boivin, Hymel, and Hodges (2001) have suggested that peer rejection may put a child ‘‘at risk’’ for victimization by virtue of the fact that the child is perceived as more vulnerable. Whether a low status or rejected child is in fact selected as a victim depends, according to Boivin, on the child’s other behavioral characteristics. For example, rejected children who are passive or withdrawn may inadvertently reinforce their bullies through their submission, thereby further marking themselves as ‘‘easy targets.’’ Relatedly, Schuster (2001) has indicated that while both rejected and victimized children are de-valued by their peers, the social behavior of rejected children seems to predict whether they will become victimized by their peers. For example, in an experimental task that allowed children to behave either competitively or cooperatively (the Prisoner’s Dilemma game), rejected-victimized children were found to demonstrate exceptionally high levels of cooperation, suggesting an almost submissive stance. Rejected nonvictimized children were characterized by almost the opposite profile, engaging in behaviors that were highly competitive. While these behaviors suggest one possible root of their rejected status, Schuster hypothesizes that aggressive, assertive behavior may lead potential bullies to look elsewhere for their targets. Taken together, the studies reviewed in this section suggest that the relations between rejection and aggressive behavior are more complicated than originally assumed, and further, that studying either aggression or rejection as a global category may lead to contradictory or misleading results. The forms, functions, and meanings of aggression change with development and interactional context. Children’s ability to recognize these changes and behave accordingly appears to be more important predictors of both rejection and victimization than general levels of aggressive or antisocial behavior. Popularity While the majority of work on the behavioral correlates of social status has focused on negative behaviors such as aggression, researchers have also attempted to isolate correlates of positive social status. Not surprisingly, prosocial behaviors consistently emerge across

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developmental periods as predictors of popularity. Popular children are described by their peers as cooperative, helpful, considerate, and socially outgoing (Coie et al., 1990). Observational studies reveal that children with high peer acceptance engage in more frequent positive behaviors such as associative play, friendly approaches, social conversation, and acceptance of peer overtures (Coie & Kupersmidt, 1983; Newcomb et al., 1993). Finally, popular children have also been shown to demonstrate a pattern of social information processing that reflects a priority for maintaining harmonious relationships with peers. Specifically, well-accepted children are more accurate in their encoding of social cues (Dodge & Price, 1994), more likely to perceive benign intent in the face of provocation (Nelson & Crick, 1999), to generate and positively evaluate prosocial problemsolving strategies (Chung & Asher, 1996; Erdley & Asher, 1999; Nelson & Crick, 1999) and to endorse relational goals over instrumental ones (Nelson & Crick, 1999). The contention that sociometrically popular children are universally nicer, more cooperative and generally more socially skilled than their less popular peers has rarely been challenged. However, recently, it has been suggested that popular children may constitute a less homogenous group than has been commonly assumed. Several studies have suggested the presence of at least two subtypes of popular children-one characterized by the prosocial attributes described above and one characterized by a mix of prosocial and aggressive or socially dominant traits (Luther & McMahon, 1996; Parkhurst & Hopmeyer, 1998; Rodkin, Farmer, Pearl, & Van Acker, 2000). It should be noted, however, that two out of these three studies relied on peer or teacher perceptions of popularity rather than traditional methods of assessing peer status. There is some evidence to suggest that children’s perceptions of peer acceptance may differ in important ways from popularity as it is commonly defined among status researchers (Parkhurst & Hopmeyer, 1998). For example, children perceived as popular by their peers are not necessarily well-liked, but rather enjoy positions of social power and influence with in the larger group (Parkhurst & Hopmeyer, 1998; Lease, Kennedy, & Axelrod, 2002). On the other hand, other researchers have documented that relations between social status and social dominance increase with age, lending credence to the idea that among older children, peer acceptance may be associated with assertive behavior (Lease et al., 2002). As a result, it remains unclear whether the observed heterogeneity among popular children is truly characteristic of well-liked children or simply a function of different assessment strategies. Regardless, the finding that children perceived as popular by their peers may have both prosocial and antisocial tendencies is an important one and will be taken up in more detail later in this paper. Neglected children Neglected children, by definition, have low social impact or visibility in the classroom. They are neither liked nor disliked by their peers and may, in fact, go unnoticed. It is perhaps not surprising then, that beyond a general lack of sociability, clear and consistent correlates of neglected status have not yet been identified. A common finding across studies is that neglected children are hard to distinguish behaviorally from their popular or average peers. Complicating matters, neglected children appear to be viewed somewhat differently by their peers than by their teachers. Based on peer ratings, neglected children are sometimes characterized as shy or withdrawn (Ollendick et al., 1992), as lacking in

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prosocial behavior (Harrist et al., 1997; Hatzichristou & Hopf, 1996), and as slightly less likeable than their non-neglected peers (Ollendick et al., 1992). Teachers, on the other hand, either fail to detect these differences or view neglected children in a more positive light, especially with respect to school motivation, independent functioning, and appropriate classroom behavior (Wentzel & Asher, 1995). Finally, there is some suggestion that the stability of peer neglect is lower than that for other sociometric categories (Cillessen, Bukowski, & Huselager, 2000; Newcomb et al., 1993) and that the use of limited nominations may artificially inflate the number of children identified as neglected by their peers (Terry, 2000). Due in part to the relative lack of stability in the classification of neglected children and the relatively small differences identified between neglected and average children, some argue that neglect may not be a meaningful sociometric category (Rubin, Hymel, Lemare, & Rowden, 1989). Minimally, it appears that neglected children are not at substantially heightened risk for negative developmental outcomes. Controversial children Unlike neglected children, controversial children are highly visible members of their classroom, receiving numerous nominations as both liked and disliked by their peers. Not surprisingly, their behavioral profiles include features characteristic of both rejected and popular children. Like popular children, controversial children engage in higher rates of positive interaction (Newcomb et al., 1993), are rated as more sociable and are often perceived as leaders, especially with increasing age (Bagwell, Coie, Terry, & Lochman, 2000; Hatzichristou & Hopf, 1996). However, like rejected children, controversial children are also more aggressive (especially boys) and are more likely to be perceived as arrogant or snobbish (especially girls) (Hatzichristou & Hopf, 1996). Interestingly, these negative correlates are derived more frequently from peer than from teacher ratings, suggesting that controversial children may use negative behaviors more judiciously or at least away from the direct supervision of adults. There is also some suggestion that controversial children have more advanced cognitive abilities than their rejected peers (Newcomb et al., 1993) and may be somewhat less at risk for negative developmental outcomes, particularly school drop-out (Ollendick et al., 1992). Interestingly, it has been suggested that with increasing age, controversial children may play an important role in deviant peer influence. That is, as deviant behavior begins to become more normative in early adolescence, controversial children, with their combination of leadership skills, cognitive abilities, and proclivity for aggressive and risky behaviors, may become increasingly attractive and influential in the peer group (Bagwell et al., 2000). Although a fairly consistent behavioral profile of controversial children has begun to emerge across studies, the controversial classification is less stable than all other sociometric categories, except neglect (Cillessen et al., 2000; Newcomb et al., 1993). Additionally, given the small number of students typically identified as controversial, drawing firm conclusions about their shared characteristics, and more especially about their risk status, is difficult. Individual-group similarity Attempts to understand the heterogeneity within sociometric status categories have been enriched by work examining how the degree of similarity between an individual

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child and the larger peer group influences the child’s acceptance within the group. This work represents a shift in emphasis from a focus on the child as the primary contributor to his or her own status to a consideration of how features of the peer group might interact with child characteristics to influence social status. Building on the work of Wright, Giammarino, and Parad (1986), Boivin, Dodge, and Coie (1995) demonstrated that the association between social status and a child’s social behavior such as reactive aggression or solitary play was moderated by the level of these behaviors within the larger group. In groups where such behaviors were normative, they were not associated with peer rejection. However, in groups where solitary play and/or reactive aggression were less common, these behaviors were significantly and negatively related to peer acceptance. Furthermore, positive social behavior, hypothesized to be related to positive status regardless of group norms, turned out to be similarly norm bound. That is, positive peer-related behavior was associated with peer acceptance only in groups where such behavior was relatively common. Additional support for the individual-group similarity hypothesis has been reported by Stormshak et al. (1999). Using hierarchical linear modeling, they examined this hypothesis on 2895 children in 134 first grade classrooms. Results suggested that individual levels of aggressive and withdrawn behavior were not significantly related to peer preference in classrooms where such behaviors were more normative, but did predict lower levels of peer preference in classrooms characterized by low levels of these behaviors. Contrary to the findings of Boivin and colleagues, prosocial behavior was related to higher levels of peer acceptance independent of classroom norms. As the studies reviewed in this section demonstrate, emphasis on sociometric status as an attribute or characteristic of the individual child has led to a proliferation of research examining the behavioral and social cognitive correlates of peer acceptance and rejection. The more recent and more fine-grained assessment of how the forms and functions of social behavior relate to social status has made it possible to identify and examine differences among children within particular status categories (e.g., aggressive rejected versus non-aggressive rejected children). Additionally, increased emphasis on the ‘‘fit’’ between the characteristics of the child and the norms or expectations of the larger group has underscored the importance of identifying how processes at the group level influence peer functioning. Sociometric status and academic functioning A key reason for the growth of research on sociometric status over the past several decades is the well-documented link between low peer status and a range of negative developmental outcomes (e.g., delinquency, school failure, and psychological maladjustment). Although a review of the literature linking peer status to the wide range of developmental outcomes with which it has been associated is beyond the limits of this paper, a few words about the relations between sociometric status and academic achievement are warranted. In general, there is substantial evidence to support the conclusion that children of lower social status, particularly those who are rejected by their peers, are at risk for school difficulties such as failure and drop-out (Hatzichristou & Hopf, 1996; Ollendick et al., 1992). Research examining the subtypes of rejected children suggests that those with

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disruptive or aggressive behavioral styles may be in particular danger of poor outcomes (Wentzel & Asher, 1995). Some researchers suggest that peer rejection may serve as a marker of an underlying deficit (or excess) that compromises academic as well as social competence (Coie & Krehbiel, 1984), while others hold that negative peer experiences themselves may perpetuate or exacerbate academic difficulties by undermining motivation to attend school (Buhs & Ladd, 2001). Another possibility is that peer rejection leads to poor school adjustment by increasing exposure to other marginalized peers who de-value academic success. Finally, Wentzel and Asher (1995) suggest that the characteristics of rejected children that lead to their negative status with peers may have a similar influence on teacher perceptions or feelings and that rejection by teachers may be a key factor in school failure. While all three of these explanations likely have some merit, our understanding of the relationship between peer status and academic achievement would be enhanced by work that incorporates recent trends in the study of status discussed in the previous sections. That is, examining the academic orientations of different subtypes of rejected children, attending to the different components of academic achievement (e.g., attendance, motivation, and performance), and examining the ‘‘goodness of fit’’ between the academic motivation of individual children and the values/norms concerning academics in the larger classroom may be an important step to better articulating the link between social status and academic performance.

Children’s friendships Within the larger realm of children’s peer relationships, friendship and group acceptance constitute two different domains, and they may contribute in distinct ways to children’s socioemotional development (Hartup W.W., 1996). Whereas sociometric status represents an individual child’s acceptance within the larger peer group, friendships are dyadic relations between two children. Friendships are voluntary, intimate, dynamic relationships founded on cooperation and trust, while group acceptance reflects the perspective of the child’s peer group. Children who are unpopular, rejected, or isolated in the larger peer group may still have friends, whereas some highly accepted and widely liked children have few or no reciprocal friendships (Ladd et al., 1997; Parker & Asher, 1993; Vandell & Hembree, 1994). A recent study of second and third graders found that 39% of children rejected by their peer group had at least one mutual friend in that group and 31% of popular children did not (Gest et al., 2001). Moreover, friends can serve to buffer the potential ill-effects of group-level processes such as rejection or victimization (Hodges, Boivin, Vitaro, & Bukowski, 1999). Friendships are a primary feature of both adults’ and children’s lives. As early as age 4, 75% of children in group settings are observed to have frequent, reciprocal, cooperative, positive interactions with selected peers (Howes, 1996). Friendships also appear to be universal, cutting across all cultures. Moreover, in every culture, friendship relations are distinct from other close relationships, for example among kin (Krappman, 1996). Of particular interest to developmental psychologists, friendships are manifested differently at different ages (Berndt & Hoyle, 1985; Gottman, 1983; Hartup W.W., 1996), and individual differences in friendships throughout childhood predict later social competence during

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both childhood and adolescence, and even potentially into adulthood (Bagwell, Newcomb, & Bukowski, 1998). Sullivan (1953) proposed that in late childhood and pre-adolescence, children form chumships with a single, favored peer. In addition to providing companionship, Sullivan argued that close, mutual friendships should: promote the development of interpersonal skills, including sensitivity to others’ thoughts and feelings and concern for another’s wellbeing; provide validation of the child’s developing self-concept and promote self-esteem; and produce feelings of personal well-being and prevent loneliness. Indeed, Sullivan contended that without friendships and the opportunities for collaboration and intimacy they afforded, children would fail to acquire the social skills necessary for later successful relationships with others as adolescents and adults. More recently, Bukowski (2001) has suggested two additional functions of friendship: to stimulate skill-acquisition and learning; and to establish a normative culture that shapes behavior. Finally, friendships can also have a dark side. Although friendships typically feature reciprocity, commitment, shared positive affect, and companionship, they can also sometimes include contentiousness, conflict, coercion, jealousy, and betrayal (Bukowski et al., 1996). Moreover, children may choose friends with antisocial characteristics. Such friends, in turn, can amplify the child’s own antisocial tendencies (Dishion, Andrews, & Crosby, 1995), and/or lead to bully –victim relationships (Boulton & Smith, 1994; Bukowski & Sippola, 2001) or perhaps even to enmity and mutual antipathies (Abecassis et al., in press; Hartup & Abecassis, in press). Thus, friendships serve as key contexts for social, emotional and cognitive development (Newcomb, Bukowski, & Bagwell, 1999). Children’s friendships are distinct from their other relationships, including close relationships with adults. The social mirror provided by friends is different from that provided by supportive adults (Sullivan, 1953) and includes reciprocal validation of one another’s developing self-image (Azmitia, 2002; Franco & Levitt, 1998; Ladd & Kochenderfer, 1996). Friendships also serve as an important source of emotional security outside the family, although they do not substitute for child –parent attachments (Furman & Burhmester, 1985; Hartup W.W., 1996). Friends appear to cushion children in perhaps unique ways from some of the stresses they experience, including those in the family (Criss, Pettit, Bates, Dodge, & Lapp, 2002). These include both normative stresses such as the transition to a new school (Berndt, Hawkins, & Jiao, 1999; Ladd & Kochenderfer, 1996), and non-normative stresses such as divorce (Hetherington, 1999) or becoming the victim of a school bully (Hodges et al., 1999; Pellegrini, Bartini, & Brooks, 1999; Schwartz, Dodge, Pettit, & Bates, 2000). It should not be surprising that children without friends not only report being lonely and feeling depressed, but also exhibit other forms of maladaptive behavior (Parker, Rubin, Price, & de Rosier, 1995). Children’s friendships are also different from other dyadic relationships with peers. In a comprehensive meta-analysis of studies comparing friends and non-friends, Newcomb and Bagwell (1995, 1996) concluded that friends engage in more frequent positive interactions, including talking, cooperation, and positive affect than do peers not identified as friends. These behaviors are presumably a consequence of friends’ greater proximity, mutual interest and concern, and they point to the unique affiliative bond they share. Friends are more similar behaviorally to one another, more egalitarian and less likely to assert dominance over one another, as well as more and loyal to one another. Finally,

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although friends engage in conflict at rates similar to those of nonfriends, they are distinguished from nonfriends in their conflict resolution efforts. That is, research regularly shows that friends resolve their conflicts quickly and amicably, and remain engaged with each other following conflicts, unlike nonfriends whose conflicts may be unresolved or who sever the interaction following conflict (Hartup & Laursen, 1999; Hartup W.W., 1996). Because friendships are founded on emotional commitments, children have a lot at stake in their friendships, and failing to resolve conflict puts the friendship at risk. Thus, children are particularly motivated to reduce conflict with their friends in order to maintain the relationship (Hartup W.W., 1996; Whitesell & Harter, 1996). In sum, friendships are unique relationships, distinct from other child – child relationships, from peer group processes, and from parent –child relationships. They appear to offer their own resources or provisions and to serve different functions than do children’s other relationships. The extant empirical literature on children’s friendships does not begin to compare in size and breadth to that on sociometric status and group acceptance, but it is nevertheless too extensive to permit detailed review here. Instead the current review will highlight the key research traditions and identify continuing issues. The focus includes: (1) conceptual and methodological issues in defining friendship and identifying children’s friends, as well as in assessing the quality of friendship relations; (2) developmental changes in children’s friendships; (3) individual differences with respect to number of friends, characteristics of friends, and quality of friendships, and their correlates; (4) associations between children’s friendships and cognitive and school performance. Defining and measuring friendships in childhood Historically, friendship has received less attention than topics like popularity or rejection, or even peer-directed behavior by the individual child such as aggression versus prosocial behavior (Hartup, 1970, 1983; Hartup W.W., 1996). However, along with the declining prominence of research on sociometric status and group acceptance has come a corresponding increase in the study of children’s dyadic relationships, and friendship in particular (Bukowski, 2001). The historically greater emphasis on group-level processes and individual behavior than on friendships may be because friendship has proven to be more difficult to operationalize than either sociometric status or peer-directed social behavior. Sociometric methods, as reviewed above, are relatively easy to implement and are a good fit for classroom-level data that yield indices of children’s likeability and acceptance by the peer group. Likewise, observations of individual children’s peer-directed behavior such as aggression and prosocial behavior, whether they are obtained in naturalistic settings or using laboratory manipulations, yield relatively straightforward interpretations at the level of the individual child. Measurement issues for assessing children’s friendships, however, are longstanding and remain difficult to solve. Because friendships exist between children, and are neither group nor individual constructs, it is particularly challenging to operationalize them. Thus, unique assessment techniques have been developed to identify and study children’s dyadic relationships with one another. Perhaps the most challenging issue is establishing the

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defining features of children’s friendships (Bukowski & Hoza 1989; Furman, 1996). This is particularly difficult because the nature of friendship changes with development, even while fundamentals such as companionship, reciprocity, and shared positive affect remain constant (Berndt, 1989; Gottman, 1983; Hartup W.W., 1996). Identifying children’s friends The most frequent means currently used for identifying children’s friends are sociometric methods. Typically, children who both nominate each other as a ‘‘best’’ friend or as one of two or three best friends are considered mutual friends. However, some authors contend that the measurement issues associated with sociometric methods (discussed above) may also compromise efforts to define and understand children’s friendships (Newcomb et al., 1993; Parker & Asher, 1993). Such issues include how the assessments are worded (friend/best friend, like/dislike, play with/work with, etc.); whether children nominate or rate their peers as friends; whether children can identify or nominate as many liked peers as they wish or are limited to naming only 2 or 3; and whether friendships are limited to reciprocal nominations or not. The question of whether or not to require that friendship nominations be reciprocated provides a good example of the complexity involved, since it is rooted in both conceptual and methodological issues. The use of unilateral or unreciprocated nominations is complicated by the fact that children will sometimes name peers they would like to be friends with in addition to naming actual friends. These nominations are usually of the popular children in the class and they are often not reciprocated. However, ‘‘unreciprocated friendships’’ may be considered true friendships by the children who identified them. Moreover, if children are limited in the number of nominations they are allowed, or if the participating children (those for whom consent was obtained) constitute 75% or less of the classroom, reciprocated friendships may be under-identified, that is, friendships identified as unreciprocated by the researcher may, in fact, be reciprocated by one of the nonparticipating children. Some research has suggested that interactions between unilateral or unreciprocated friends are different from those of nonfriends, even though they do not appear to be equivalent to reciprocated friendships (Furman, 1996). For example, conflict tactics are more similar to those of nonfriends, whereas conflict outcomes are more similar to those of mutual friends (Hartup, Laursen, Stewart, & Eastenson, 1988). Moreover, even reciprocal friends agree only modestly in their perceptions of the characteristics and quality of their friendship (Parker & Asher, 1993), suggesting that in some sense each child has a separate friendship that is perceived as distinct from the other’s friendship. Other methods are sometimes used both to identify who children’s friends are and to ascertain the characteristics of those relationships (Bukowski et al., 1996; Newcomb & Bagwell, 1995). These include behavioral observations that concentrate on the frequency, stability, and affective quality of children’s interactions with each other (e.g., Berndt, Perry, & Miller, 1988; Gottman, 1983; Hartup et al., 1988). Children’s talk, proximity, mutual reinforcement, self-disclosure, control and dominance, shared affect, cooperation, aggression, conflict and conflict resolution, and other indices of their relationship are tallied or rated from naturally occurring interactions. Children’s interactions can then be compared to determine which features distinguish friends from nonfriends. Teachers or parents are also sometimes asked to identify children’s friends. Finally, children them-

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selves are often asked to identify their friends using questionnaires or interviews, as well as to report on the characteristics and quality of their friendships. Clearly, varying measurement decisions across studies make it difficult to compare findings. More important, depending on how the decisions are made, investigators may conceivably misidentify, or over- or under-estimate children’s friends. One important weakness in all of these approaches is that they dichotomize friendship (friends/ nonfriends), whereas friendships may actually vary along a continuum from occasional or casual friend to good friend to best friend (Hartup W.W., 1996). Another particular drawback in using reciprocal nominations is that researchers often use the same method to index the child’s social acceptance (popularity/rejection) by the peer group, thereby confounding friendship and group processes. This limitation is especially problematic when investigators wish to compare friendship and peer group acceptance (Gest et al., 2001; Parker & Asher, 1993). One final, prominent shortcoming of the reciprocal nomination method is that it can tell us nothing about the nature and quality of children’s friendships. Measuring friendship quality In addition to the concerns about how best to identify who children’s friends are, issues arise regarding how best to characterize the nature and quality of children’s friendships. Children or adult informants are typically asked to rate how frequently particular kinds of interactions occur with a given friend (e.g., conflict, prosocial behavior, and selfdisclosure), or how true particular descriptions of a given friendship are (e.g., make each other feel important, care about each other’s feelings, get over arguments quickly, can count on each other, help each other out, tell each other problems) (Parker & Asher, 1993). Because there is no widely accepted theory that generates the empirical study of children’s friendships, investigators have typically constructed friendship measures by creating items or features based on their own past empirical work or on their judgments about the most consistent and important findings in past work by others. Ladd and Kochenderfer (1996) suggest that it might be useful to distinguish between friendship processes and friendship provisions in generating measures of friendship quality. Processes refer to observable features of interactions that may influence the quality of the relationship. These might include self-disclosure, gossip, affection, prosocial behavior, conflict, and conflict resolution. Provisions, on the other hand, refer to the benefits that friendships provide to children, including security, trust, intimacy, validation, companionship, support, and so on. In principle, differences in friendship provisions should be predictable from differences in friendship processes. Although such a distinction may serve heuristic purposes, it does not solve the fundamental tension that underlies these various methodological issues. This is the tension between objective, observable features of friendships versus subjective, unobservable, but equally important characteristics such as perceived similarity, closeness, trust, or supportiveness. Some investigators argue that despite the obvious biases in children’s selfreports, children’s own perceptions of their friendships may be the best measure (Furman, 1996). This is because children’s views of the nature and meaning of the affective bond they share with others provide perspectives that no one else shares. Moreover, children’s perceptions of their friendships shape their own behavior as well as their interpretations of

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their friends’ behavior. Because friendship is a relationship between two children and exists at the level of the dyad, what children bring to the relationship and what they take away from it are best known by the children themselves. This dilemma is particularly thorny because there is increasing evidence that one’s perceptions of the social world depend on characteristics of the individual. For example, rejected, aggressive children perceive their standing in the peer group as more positive than it actually is (Hymel et al., 1993; Patterson, Kupersmidt, & Griesler, 1990). Thus, even though children can provide the ‘‘insider’s’’ view of their friendships via self-report, it may be a unique, incomplete, even inaccurate picture of friendship. On the other hand, observers’ and other adults’ perspectives on children’s friendships come with their own biases and limitations. We find ourselves in the uncomfortable position, then, of having no ‘‘gold standard’’ for measurement in this important domain of social development. Nevertheless, some methodologies may be better suited to obtaining some kinds of information about friendships than others. Newcomb and Bagwell (1996), for example, found in their meta-analysis that observational strategies were predominantly used to study features of positive engagement such as cooperativeness, shared affect, and talking, whereas informant reports were more often used to assess relationship properties such as similarity, equality, mutual closeness, and liking. Moreover, differences between children’s relationships with friends and nonfriends with respect to features of intimacy such as mutual closeness, liking, and loyalty were significantly more evident using child reports than using observations or knowledgeable adults’ reports (Newcomb & Bagwell, 1996). It is worth recognizing that all relationships possess both objective and subjective qualities, and that a focus on both is necessary to achieve a complete understanding. Development of friendships A number of models of friendship development were proposed early in the study of friendship (Selman, 1980; Sullivan, 1953; Youniss, 1980); however, there has been little theoretical work in recent years. Early theorists all identified similar changes in the nature of friendships between early, middle, and late childhood. Their differences exist primarily in terms of the underlying causal mechanisms emphasized, including cognitive-developmental changes, social-cognitive changes such as perspective-taking, or more purely social changes such as increases in reciprocity. Most empirical work on age-related changes in children’s friendships has been atheoretical however, so these models have rarely been tested (Furman, 1996). Nevertheless, empirical research on children’s friendship perceptions, expectations, and behavior as a function of age has generally confirmed the hypothesized age-related patterns (Berndt & Perry, 1986; Bigelow, 1977; Buhrmester & Furman, 1987; Furman & Bierman, 1984; Gottman, 1983). Children begin to distinguish between friends and nonfriends early in childhood (Newcomb & Bagwell, 1995), although friendships in later childhood have been found to differ from both preschool and adolescent friendships behaviorally and conceptually. Descriptively, preschool children’s friendships emerge and are most evident in sustained bouts of positive, highly charged, coordinated play, especially fantasy play in dyads or very small groups. By middle childhood, friendships are based on shared norms and personal qualities as a function of growing interpersonal awareness and are evident in

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animated conversation, games, and contests. In adolescence, friendships depend on and are evident in intimate, dyadic exchanges that feature openness, honesty, and affection (Parker & Gottman, 1989). The functions of friendship also differ with development, from serving as a means for achieving mutual enjoyment and entertainment through coordinated play and shared positive affect in the early years of life, to achieving group identity and acceptance in middle childhood, to achieving individual identity and self-understanding in adolescence. The corresponding interactive processes change with age as well, from play negotiation, emotion regulation, and conflict management in the early years, to social comparison and shared negative gossip in middle-childhood, to self-disclosure, positive gossip, and shared intimacy in adolescence (Parker & Gottman, 1989). Making and keeping friends requires an assortment of socioemotional and socialcognitive skills, including perspective-taking ability, affect recognition, communicative skills, self-regulation, understanding of intentions, desires, and beliefs in others, social information processing skills and social problem solving strategies, among others. These competencies develop over childhood, and friendship characteristics and expectations change in concert (Rubin et al., 1998). For example, children’s friendships become more stable and more often reciprocated over development (Epstein, 1986). Children also participate in a variety of developmental ‘‘niches’’ that change with age, accompanied by different demands, roles, and standards for behavior. These are accompanied by a realignment of children’s friendship preferences and of the needs and concerns that friendships can address (Parker & Gottman, 1989). Starting school is an example of one such age-related niche. The transitions into and out of these niches thus correspond to the primary transitions in the nature of children’s friendships. Most of the recent work on children’s friendships, however, has concentrated on individual differences rather than developmental change, particularly in childhood and adolescence. However, it can be argued that a developmental perspective on individual differences is critical. For example, relations between friendship quality and children’s individual characteristics may vary with age, as might the associations between friendship quality and developmental outcomes in other domains. Similarly, friends’ effectiveness as supports, scaffolds or challenges to one another is likely to differ by age.

Individual differences: having friends, choosing friends, and friendship quality Children differ from one another in whether they have friends and how many they have, as well as who their friends are and the quality of their friendship relations (Hartup W.W., 1996). The characteristics of children’s friends affect both the interactions between the children and the nature and quality of their relationship. Whether a child befriends prosocial or antisocial peers, for example, can influence the norms, attitudes, and behavior each of them adopts, as well as their reputation and standing in the larger peer group. Similarly, because friendships can vary in their companionship and support or in the conflict and distress they provide, the quality of children’s friendships can make a difference in children’s feelings of self-worth and well-being, as well as their attitudes toward other children and toward school. Thus, individual differences in friendship appear

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to carry far-reaching implications for development and functioning across multiple arenas in the child’s social world. Having friends or not Insofar as friendships are thought to contribute to the development of social competence, having friends or not may prove to be a critical determinant of children’s social adaptation and adjustment. The empirical literature is consistent with this perspective. A growing number of studies reveals that children with mutual friends are generally better adjusted and more socially competent than are children without friends. They are more sociable and prosocial, have higher self-esteem, and are less likely to be lonely (Newcomb & Bagwell, 1995). They manage difficult transitions more smoothly, and their self-esteem increases following such transitions if they have mutual friends (Berndt et al., 1999; Ladd, 1990). For children who find themselves victimized by some of their peers, having friends can reduce the incidence of victimization and friends can provide support and advice about how to manage the problem (Hodges et al., 1999; Hodges, Malone, & Perry, 1997). In one particularly well-controlled recent study, children with a greater number of mutual friends were found to be more prosocial and good-humored, and less likely to tease others or boss them around, even after taking into account their group acceptance and peer network centrality (Gest et al., 2001). It should be noted, however, that the univariate view that characterizes most of the work on children’s friendships may over-estimate the importance of friendships in children’s development (Hartup & Abecassis, in press). First, the role of friendship in children’s social development is likely to depend on the nature and quality of the child’s other close relationships, the number and kinds of stresses the child confronts, and the child’s own temperament and interaction skills. For example, having friends is more important for children whose family relationships are less satisfying, supportive, and positive than it is for children in higher-functioning families, and families contribute more heavily to children’s adjustment when they do not have close friends (Gauze, Bukowski, Aquan Assee, & Sippola, 1996). Second, friendships may be more important at some points in development than at others (Hartup & Stevens, 1997; Parker & Gottman, 1989). Third, having friends may be less important than other aspects of the child’s social behavior in contributing to the development of social competence. In particular, children’s aggression or their likeability and acceptance in their peer group are sometimes better predictors of social competence than how many friends they have (Gest et al., 2001). Finally, the association between friendships and other aspects of social competence may be driven by features of the child’s social competence rather than vice versa (Hartup W.W., 1996). That is, children who possess the social, communicative and self-regulatory skills to establish and maintain mutual friendships are also likely to be more sociable and cooperative, better at managing conflict and disagreement, have higher self-esteem, and endorse the peer group’s norms. Friendship choice Children tend to choose as friends those peers who are similar to them, and there is some suggestion that friends increase in their similarity over time (Newcomb et al., 1999).

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School-age children like and befriend others who are similar to themselves not only with respect to superficial characteristics like age, gender, and physical appearance (Epstein, 1986), but also in terms of more complex psychological characteristics such as humor, politeness, sociability, sensitivity, play style, and play complexity (Gest et al., 2001; Rubin et al., 1998), as well as prosocial behavior, antisocial behavior, shyness, victimization, group acceptance, and depressive symptoms (Haselager, Hartup, van Lieshout, & RiksenWalraven, 1998; Newcomb et al., 1999; Poulin et al., 1997). Recent research suggests, in fact, that this general principle operates consistently across contexts as different as school classrooms and play groups, that it is especially pronounced for aggressive behavior, at least among boys, and even more specifically, it operates for proactive but not reactive aggression (Poulin et al., 1997). How do children decide on which particular similar features to assort themselves? Hartup W.W. (1996) has proposed that the ‘‘reputational salience’’ of a given characteristic is likely to determine its importance in friendship choice. For example, among boys, physical activity is more similar between friends than between nonfriends, whereas for girls personality and social network size are more similar between friends than between nonfriends. Notably, these qualities are also more important for peer group reputation among boys and girls respectively. According to Hartup, the reputational salience hypothesis has never been tested. But it provides a particularly interesting potential link between dyadic and group processes in children’s peer relations. Children’s friendship choices appear to be important to their continuing adjustment. When children choose friends who are well-adjusted and socially competent, endorse conventional social norms, and have few behavior problems, they manage stressful transitions better (Berndt et al., 1999; Hetherington, 1999). Not surprisingly, such friendships are more harmonious, less conflictual, and less exclusive (Dishion et al., 1995; Gropeter & Crick, 1996). Perhaps more important, socially skilled friends encourage adaptive, cooperative, prosocial behavior in one another (Brendgen, Bowen, Rondea, & Vitaro, 1999; Haselager et al., 1998). In contrast to this rosy picture, when children assort with antisocial or socially unskilled friends who endorse non-normative behavior and attitudes, their friendships are more conflictual and less intimate (Gropeter & Crick, 1996), and more coercive (Dishion et al., 1995) but they nevertheless serve to reinforce and exacerbate one another’s antisocial behavior (Dishion, Spracklen, Andrews, & Patterson, 1996; Kupersmidt, DeRosier, & Patterson, 1995). Children who are similar in their aggression and/or withdrawn behavior are more likely to become friends than children who are dissimilar on these dimensions (Kupersmidt et al., 1995), and intra-dyad correlations are greater for antisocial behavior than they are for prosocial behavior or for social isolation (Haselager et al., 1998). This suggests that troubled children may find their friendship choices limited, hence end up in more homogeneous friendships than the typical child. Friendship quality It should be clear from the foregoing that not all friendships are the same. Among children who have friends, which is estimated to be about 85% of children by middle childhood (Hartup & Abecassis, in press), the quality of their friendships varies consid-

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erably both across children and across different friendships of the same child. Generally, friendship quality has been described in terms of particular resources or provisions that the friendship offers and the affective dimensions of the relationship. Friendships have been distinguished in terms of the amount of support, intimacy, and interdependence versus coercion, emotional distance, and disengagement, as well as differences in power, status, exclusivity, conflict, warmth, validation and caring, companionship, commitment, and conflict resolution (Bukowski et al., 1996). Berndt (1996, 2002) has shown that children who rate their friendships positively on one feature tend to rate them highly on other positive features as well. For example, at second, fourth, and sixth grades, the features of intimacy, loyalty, prosocial behavior, conflict, play, and self-esteem-support loaded on one primary factor (Berndt & Perry, 1986). This has led Berndt to argue that the various positive features of friendship quality actually constitute a single dimension from high to low positivity (Berndt, 2002). Likewise, Berndt notes that negative features occur even in good friendships-conflict, rivalry, inequality, and dominance attempts occur in all friendships. These features, too, appear to comprise a single dimension of negative quality from high to low, and this dimension is relatively independent of positive friendship quality (Berndt, 1996, 2002). Whether it is more informative to characterize friendship quality in a more differentiated or more global manner remains an issue in this area of study. An important question is whether the quality of children’s friendships is associated with other aspects of social, emotional, or cognitive development. Insofar as friends serve as socialization agents (Hartup W.W., 1996; Sullivan, 1953), it would be reasonable to expect that high quality friendships would contribute to positive outcomes, whereas troubled friendships might contribute to less optimal outcomes. Indeed, some investigators have hypothesized that high quality friendships should amplify friends’ influence on one another, whether positive or negative (Berndt, 2002). Children who describe their friendships more positively tend also to possess higher self-esteem, report less loneliness, enjoy wider peer acceptance, and exhibit better adjustment to school (Furman, 1996). Children with more friends and more stable friendships are happier at school, their positive attitudes toward school increase over the year, and they have fewer adjustment problems, whereas children with conflictual friendships exhibit decreased liking and reduced engagement in school over a school year, as well as greater loneliness (Ladd, Kochenderfer, & Coleman, 1996). More positive friendships are also related to later positive school attitudes, higher engagement, better achievement, and fewer school-related problems (Berndt et al., 1999). Friendship supportiveness also relates to popularity, sociability, and more positive attitudes about classmates (Berndt et al., 1999; Cauce, 1986; Ladd et al., 1996). Interestingly, several studies have also reported that girls describe their friends more positively than boys do, although boys and girls do not differ in their reports of the negative features, except that girls report lower conflict in their friendships than boys do (Furman, 1996), and boys report less intimacy than girls do (Parker & Asher, 1993). Correlational data, of course, raise the possibility that children who are more socially competent are more likely to perceive, value, or report the positive qualities of their friendships than the negative features. Additionally, Berndt (2002) suggests that the effects of friendship quality may be specific rather than general. That is, friendship effects may be especially pronounced for peer social competence, such as promoting positive social contacts with classmates, but effects may be reduced or non-existent for other aspects of

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competence such as promoting self-esteem. Other investigators (e.g., Aboud & Mendelson, 1996) have proposed that specific features of the friends involved in a friendship may shape specific facets of the relationship. For example, one friend’s empathy may relate to intimacy in the relationship. Different factors may come into play in different friendships—unique dimensions of personality, activities or attitudes, or a specific setting might channel a friendship in a particular direction. One implication is that friendship quality may be more differentiated and complex than our measures currently can capture. Research has generally failed to consider the wide variety of friendship experiences that children have, and the possibility of distinct predictions of these differences in experience to other aspects of development. For example, friendships in school may predict to different outcomes than friendships outside of school; same- versus opposite-sex friendships may predict different outcomes; and number of friendships may predict to different outcomes than quality of friendships (Hartup W.W., 1996). Moreover, friendships tend to be embedded within larger peer networks (Gest et al., 2001; Lansford & Parker, 1999), which means that effects on development attributed to friendship may instead be a function of other experiences in the peer group. More complex research designs are needed to address these kinds of issues. Because children’s peer relationships are multifaceted, and include both group and dyadic processes, as we hope we have made clear, several investigators have recently begun to ascertain the distinct, overlapping, and converging contributions of friendships and other types of peer relationships to children’s social competence and adjustment (Gest et al., 2001; Parker & Asher, 1993; Vandell & Hembree, 1994). These will be discussed more fully below. Finally, we do not yet understand how friends influence one another (Hartup, 1999), but Berndt (1996) suggests three mechanisms of influence between friends that may account for the associations between friendship and adjustment: (1) social conformity, (2) discussion and negotiation, and (3) converging similarity. Research has yet to test these possibilities. Friendships in school Friends influence problem-solving, achievement, and adjustment in school, and schools affect children’s opportunities to cultivate healthy friendships. Pellegrini and Blatchford (2000) argue that characteristics of classrooms themselves may influence both children’s friendship choices, and the very nature of the friendships formed. For example, in traditionally organized classrooms, there are more isolated, friendless children, whereas in less traditional, more open classrooms there are more frequent, more stable, and more reciprocated friendships. Similarly, whether classrooms are competitive and grouped by ability versus cooperative and grouped by interest affects whether friends are chosen on the basis of shared ability versus shared interests. Thus, classroom characteristics appear to affect opportunities for making friends and the contexts in which friendships develop. Children’s cognitive development and intellectual performance are also associated with particular features of their friendships, although the empirical research on this question remains rather limited. When children collaborate with friends (versus nonfriends), they are more efficient and productive problem-solvers across a variety of tasks, including creative and oral tasks as well as more academic tasks such as scientific reasoning problems or writing assignments (Azmitia & Montgomery, 1993; Zajac & Hartup, 1997).

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This may be because friends are more cooperative with one another, they engage in more on-topic conversation with one another, they are less competitive with each other, and their disagreements are resolved quickly and amicably (Newcomb & Bagwell, 1995). Indeed, there is growing evidence that conflicts between friends are not only less intense and more likely to be constructively resolved (e.g., Hartup et al., 1988), but that conflict between friends working on difficult tasks together may promote more effective problem-solving. Azmitia and Montogomery (1993) paired fifth grade friends together to solve a set of deductive reasoning problems. Although friends exhibited proportionally more conflict than did nonfriend pairs during their collaborations, they also more often responded to one another’s suggestions and ideas positively, with more frequent justifications and elaborations. Interestingly, their disagreements proved to be constructive as well, since conflicts appeared to promote more accurate solutions among friends but not among nonfriends. Hartup W. (1996) argues that close relationships with other children may contribute positively to children’s cognitive development because of the emotional qualities of such relationships, in addition to whatever friends might contribute directly to one anothers’ knowledge. Such emotional features might include the uniquely motivating quality of ‘‘friendly competition’’ during collaboration, as well as the greater motivation to persist in the face of difficulty in the context of an emotionally supportive relationship; the mutual commitment and loyalty between friends which motivates children’s concerted attempts to comprehend one another’s ideas and perspectives, which may in turn stretch both the listener’s understanding and the speaker’s communication skills; the safety and security of airing one’s untested ideas in a climate of acceptance, shared positive affect and good humor, and the corresponding lack of defensiveness that may promote thoughtful justifications, revisions, and elaborations of one’s ideas. Hartup also suggests that collaboration between friends may be more productive because of friends’ mutual knowledge of one another’s needs and goals, their expectations of reciprocity and egalitarianism in their exchanges, their mutual trust in one another and their corresponding attributions of sincerity and truthfulness, in addition to their history of effective, productive, satisfying social interactions. These are all interesting speculations that need to be evaluated developmentally as well, since we now know that both the qualities and the functions of children’s friendships change with age. In sum, current investigators recognize that friendships are multifaceted and study them accordingly. That is, the contemporary study of friendship goes beyond simply identifying children with or without friends, or comparing children on the basis of the number of friends they have. It is now recognized that friendships vary along many dimensions, including their quality, that they can be deleterious for the child’s development as well as constructive, involve both positive and supportive interactions as well as conflictual and stressful interactions, and that who a child chooses as friends is as important as whether a child has friends or not (Bukowski et al., 1996). Nevertheless, our knowledge of the variations in friendships types, functions, and qualities remains limited, as does our knowledge of friendship formation and dissolution (Lansford & Parker, 1999) the determinants of friendship stability and continuity over time, and how friendships differ in their form, quality and functions in various social contexts and settings, e.g., in school versus in the child’s neighborhood.

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Social networks Children’s friendships and social status in the peer group are embedded in a larger social network of peer relationships and experiences. One consequence of the emphasis on the individual or dyad as the primary unit of analysis in the study of peer relations has been the relative neglect of group level factors that shape children’s social experience. Proponents of social network analysis have long argued for a more detailed examination of the ecology of children’s groups, of the embeddedness of their social relationships, of the processes that govern how and why children choose to affiliate with particular peers, and how these affiliative and interactional patterns influence the course of development. However, conceptual and empirical work in these areas has only begun to take hold in the last decade or so. As a result, the scope of work in this area is considerably smaller than the sociometric status and friendship literatures. Much of the research on children’s social networks has been influenced by research in sociology. This is evident not only in the emphasis on the group as the construct of interest but also in the more basic premise that individuals cannot be understood outside of the social contexts in which they exist (Cairns et al., 1998). Also important is the view of the peer group as dynamic rather than static entity, an idea that has its roots in the work of Moreno (1934). Thus, while both sociometric status and social network analysis have a common origin in Moreno’s theories, the aspects of his theories considered most critical have been shaped in important ways by the larger academic traditions (psychology and sociology) within which the two research literatures have developed. Kinderman (1993, p. 970) has outlined several key assumptions underlying social network analysis: ‘‘it is assumed that students develop within a peer context that has a certain structure, that this structure is perceived similarly by many students in the classroom, and that this structure has important implications for individual development.’’ Thus, a primary goal of social network analysis is to identify the patterns of children’s affiliation within the peer group. According to Cairns, Leung, Buchanan, and Cairns (1995), this includes both the subsets of individuals within the group (i.e., cliques or clusters), as well as the relations among these groups within the broader network. After a brief description of the methods used to measure social networks, the remainder of this section will be devoted to reviewing the fundamental questions posed by researchers in this area: (1) What are the key features and structural characteristics of children’s social networks (e.g., size, interconnectedness, stability)? (2) What processes are implicated in the formation of social networks (e.g., proximity, familiarity, similarity) and how are these processes influenced by contextual variables (e.g., class size, teacher expectations)? (3) How does participation in social networks influence developmental outcomes (e.g., peer group influences on behavior)? Throughout, particular attention will be given to developmental and gender differences in peer interactions as these are relevant to the questions outlined above.

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Methodological issues in the study of social networks One reason for the disproportionate emphasis on sociometric status within peer relations research is that, by contrast, measuring children’s social networks is a complicated task, often involving complex analytical procedures. Additionally, as with the study of children’s friendships, there is no universally accepted method for measuring peer networks (Cairns et al., 1998). The variability across studies in how social networks are operationalized has important implications for how findings are interpreted and integrated, therefore several of the more prevalent methods will be described briefly. Probably the most common method for measuring social networks, the composite social cognitive map (SCM) was developed by Cairns and colleagues (Cairns, Perrin, & Cairns, 1985; Cairns, Cairns, Neckerman, Gest, & Gariepy, 1988). In this technique, students are asked a set of questions about the affiliative patterns in their classroom. Typically, students are asked to identify students who ‘‘hang around together a lot at school.’’ When necessary, follow-up prompts are utilized to ensure that the respondents include themselves (e.g., ‘‘What about you? Do you hang around together a lot with a group?’’), that they provide information on both boys’ and girls’ groups, and that they do not unintentionally leave some students out (‘‘Are there any people who do not have a group?’’). It is important to note that respondents are required to answer these questions without the aid of a roster to ensure that they are only reporting on groups about which they are most knowledgeable. This constraint has limited the use of this methodology to older children, typically third graders and above, who can manage the cognitive demands of the task. Children’s responses are combined to produce a ‘‘social cognitive map’’ of the patterns of affiliation within the classroom based on shared perceptions of these patterns across respondents. For example, children are typically considered to be part of a group if at least 50% of the students in the classroom have identified them as such (see Cairns et al., 1988 for details), although this cut-off varies somewhat across studies. Additionally, two measures of centrality-group centrality and individual centrality—are derived from nomination frequency. Group centrality refers to how central a particular subgroup or clique is within the larger network. It is determined by identifying the two members within the group who received the highest number of nominations and averaging their scores— this average is referred to as the group centrality index. The group with the highest centrality index is considered to be the most central or nuclear group. To determine the relative centrality of other groups within the network, each group centrality index is compared to that of the nuclear group. Cut-off scores determine whether a group is classified as nuclear (equal to or greater than 70% of the index of the most central group), secondary (between 30% and 70%) or peripheral (below 30%). Individual centrality, or an individual’s place within his or her subgroup, is a function of both the individual number of nominations received and the centrality index of the group to which one belongs. That is, an individual’s nomination frequency is compared to his or her group centrality index and cut-off scores similar to those described above are used to classify children as central, secondary, or peripheral within their own group. As a last step in this procedure, students’ individual centrality within the larger network can be determined by considering both their within-group centrality and their group’s

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centrality index. ‘‘Nuclear’’ members are central members of high centrality groups. Children are identified as ‘‘peripheral’’ within the larger network if they are low centrality members of any group regardless of the group’s position, or if they belong to low centrality groups. ‘‘Isolates’’ are not nominated as belonging to any group, while ‘‘secondary’’ members include students not classified in any other category. While these categories appear to reflect a measure of visibility or impact within the peer group, they are sometimes discussed in terms of status. The conceptual and empirical overlap between these categories and the sociometric status categories outlined earlier has been considered and will be discussed later. Other researchers have used self-report data to assess social networks, either through direct assessment (e.g., ‘‘who do you hang out with a lot’’) or through methods involving peer nominations similar to those used to study status and friendship, in which respondents are asked to nominate their three closest friends. Typically, clusters are derived on the basis of reciprocated nominations (Alba, 1972; Hallinan, 1980), although unreciprocated or unidirectional nominations have also been used. Not surprisingly, methods requiring that nominations be reciprocated tend to identify smaller, more tightly interconnected clusters, and may under-identify lower density clusters (Cairns et al., 1998). While the various approaches yield generally comparable results (Cairns et al., 1995), several important differences between these techniques should be noted. First, the SCM method and related procedures are based on students’ perceptions of any and all peer clusters in their classrooms. In contrast, nominations and self-report data elicit information about one’s own peer interactions only. As SCM represents the consensus of numerous members of the peer group, it is less critical to obtain data from every member of the class. Since participation/consent rates often fall into the 70 – 75% range for sociometric assessment, this is an important advantage. Also, some evidence suggests that self-report data may yield networks that are slightly smaller and less inclusive than those derived by the SCM method (Cairns et al., 1995). One potential reason for this is the tendency of respondents to omit from their list classmates who are perceived to be socially undesirable, even if they regularly associate with them (Leung, 1993, reported in Cairns et al., 1995). Thus, SCM and related procedures may offer a more complete and accurate method for identifying social networks. Structural features of children’s social networks Once identified, children’s social networks can be distinguished along several structural dimensions, including their size, interconnectedness, and the stability of peer groups in a given network. Each of these is reviewed in turn, with particular attention given to developmental changes and differences between boys’ and girls’ groups. Size Variations in the size of peer clusters have been reported as a function of development (Cairns et al., 1995; Kindermann, 1998; Shrum & Cheek, 1987), gender (Benenson, Apostoleris, & Parnall, 1998; Salmivalli, Arja, & Lagerspetz, 1997), centrality (Cairns et al., 1995), and context (Hallinan & Smith, 1989). While some variability exists across studies, there is increasing support for the contention that cluster size is related to age in a

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curvilinear manner (Cairns et al., 1998). That is, group size appears to increase somewhat between elementary and middle school, followed by a corresponding decrease over the high school years. Estimates vary by study, but elementary school cliques are typically reported to have between four and five members, while middle school cliques tend to have a mean of five to six members. Importantly, the range in clique size across ages is fairly stable (from dyads to groups of 8 –10 children). Cairns et al. (1998) suggest that these findings are partly confounded by changes in the nature and structure of school settings that occur during this period. That is, rather than reflecting a developmental phenomenon, increases in group sizes between elementary and middle school may reflect greater opportunities for interaction with a wider range of peers. Size of peer clusters is also reported to vary as a function of gender. In general, boys are reported to form larger peer groups than girls, although this difference is modest and not consistently reported. The difference in size of boys’ and girls’ playgroups is often hypothesized to stem from widely recognized gender differences in play styles. Boys are reported to engage in more loosely organized, large group games (e.g., soccer), while girls are more likely to choose smaller, more intimate activities (Hartup, 1983; Thorne, 1986). However, Benenson et al. (1998) have disputed this interpretation, demonstrating that gender differences in group size emerge before children reach the age when these activity differences become common. Several other variables have shown some relation to group size. Groups that are higher in centrality within a given classroom are typically larger than groups of moderate centrality that, in turn, are larger than low centrality groups. Size is related to individual status as well, with higher status individuals belonging to larger peer cliques than their lower status peers, especially among boys (Benenson et al., 1998). Finally, contextual variables such as classroom size and organization can affect group size. According to Hallinan and Smith (1989), larger classrooms and classrooms structured in a traditional manner (versus open classrooms) yield peer cliques of larger sizes. Thus, clique size varies as a function of both contextual and individual variables. Less is known about how cluster size is related to children’s adjustment, if at all. Additionally, while it is reasonable to assume that cluster size may influence processes within the group, such as group cohesion, norms, or leadership, little work exploring such processes has been conducted on children’s groups. Interconnectedness The degree of interconnectedness within a social network refers to the level of cohesion within individual subgroups as well as the amount of overlap among them. While interconnectedness has received somewhat less empirical attention than cluster size, there is some evidence to suggest that interconnectedness, too, is related both to developmental factors and to gender. To date, only one study has examined developmental changes in the organization or degree of connectedness within peer groups. Shrum and Cheek (1987) demonstrated that in addition to becoming smaller with age, peer cliques become more permeable across the middle school years. They identified developmental changes in the distribution of three group-related roles—member, isolate, and liaison. ‘‘Liaisons’’ are network members who have affiliations with more than one clique. Results suggested that the observed reduction

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in group size beginning in late middle school could be attributed to an increase in the number of liaisons, rather than an increase in the number of isolates. Thus, rather than disbanding, peer groups in late middle school and high school become more permeable with age and can be characterized by a greater number of interconnections across groups. The evidence for differences in interconnectedness between boys’ and girls’ groups is more difficult to interpret. Studies of both social networks and interactional styles more generally have suggested that boys are more likely than girls to play in large, less exclusive groups (Eder & Hallinan, 1978). Benenson et al. (1998) examined interconnectedness in boys’ and girls’ groups directly and found that boys’ groups were characterized by a greater number of reciprocated friends than girls’ groups, suggesting that boys’ friends are also more likely to be friends with each other. Benenson reported other organizational differences as well. In particular, boys’ peer groups were characterized by one large central cluster with one or two smaller clusters connected peripherally to the main cluster. Interestingly, social status was significantly related to participation in larger cliques for boys, suggesting that membership in this central clique may have important implications for how boys are perceived by their peers. Girls’ groups were characterized by different affiliative patterns. Specifically, girls tended to form numerous smaller clusters that were not interconnected. Peer status was unrelated to clique size for girls. The picture that emerges, then, is one in which girls form smaller more intimate and probably more exclusive dyads and triads, while boys interact in larger, more loosely connected, more inclusive groups. As is the case with cluster size, more research is needed to understand the implications of clique interconnectedness for group and individual functioning. One interesting avenue for future research will be to examine how groups of varying levels of interconnectedness differ from each other. For example, are highly interconnected groups characterized by less relational aggression? Does peer influence spread more quickly and/or alter behaviors more in groups that are more interconnected? These types of process related questions have yet to be addressed in the developmental literature. Stability A key assumption underlying social network analysis is that the peer group is a dynamic system (Cairns et al., 1998). As a result, a relatively large number of studies have examined changes in group membership over time. Stability estimates vary widely across studies, in part due to differences in methodology, but also as a function of changes in social contexts such as classroom transitions. Studies of the stability of social groups have been conducted across intervals of varying lengths. In a review of studies of short-term stability, Cairns et al. (1995) note that across very short intervals (e.g., 3– 6 weeks), group continuity is quite high, with 66– 100% of groups maintaining a high proportion (at least half) of their original members. For studies at slightly longer intervals, but still less than 1 year, the results are more variable, with stability estimates ranging from 18% to 76% (Cohen, 1977; Hallinan, 1980). As Cairns points out, this variability is due largely to differences in the criteria for defining stability. Hallinan (1980), who reports fairly low stability among middle school groups across 1 year, required that groups maintain a minimum of 3 of their members at each of the 6 data points across the year. Cohen’s less conservative criterion, requiring retention of at least

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50% of the group’s members across two time points, found that 75% of the groups of high school students in his studies were still identifiable a year later. Kinderman (1993) found only moderate stability, with 50% turnover in group membership in elementary school students across an 8-month period. Long-term stability estimates extending over a year or more are considerably lower (less than 10%) probably due in part to the changes in social context that occur during an interval of this length, including grade transitions (Cairns & Cairns, 1994; Nash, 1973). Lending support to this speculation, Cairns and colleagues have shown that in school contexts where an effort is made to keep classroom rosters consistent from year to year, long-term stability estimates are comparable to those reported across intervals within the same school year (Cairns et al., 1985). In sum, while there is sufficient stability in children’s social networks to suggest some regularity in their temporal structure and organization, children clearly experience a good deal of change over time in their peer affiliations. Thus, more work is needed to understand the nature and meaning of these changes. Is a high degree of peer group turnover less adaptive or more? How does stability interact with other group characteristics such as size and interconnectedness? Understanding developing norms for group structure and process may be important for interpreting individual differences in friendship formation and maintenance or in sociometric status, as well as in other psychosocial outcomes. Formation of children’s social networks Considerable theoretical and empirical attention has been devoted to determining the factors or processes that underlie group formation. Peer groups have been shown to form on the basis of a variety of factors including propinquity, familiarity, and similarity. Additional research has been aimed at delineating features of the social environment that might serve to promote or hinder group formation and maintenance, such as class size or teacher behaviors. Although friendships and peer groups may sometimes be formed on similar characteristics, they do not share identical determinants. Thus, what follows concerns those attributes associated with group formation in particular. As discussed later, a continuing issue in the research on children’s peer relations concerns the overlapping and unique features of different dimensions of peer experience. A primary factor underlying peer group formation is propinquity (Cairns et al., 1998). Children are simply more likely to identify children in their immediate social environments as playmates than those to whom they are less frequently exposed (George & Hartmann, 1996). While it is possible that the strong relationship between propinquity and peer affiliation is, in part, an artifact of the methods used to identify peer groups (i.e., children’s choices are typically constrained by researcher-identified criteria such as ‘‘your classroom’’), there is considerable evidence to suggest that propinquity plays an important role in peer group selection even in the absence of this confound. For example, when children are allowed to include children outside of their classrooms in their nominations, classmates are still far more likely to be identified as close friends or members of the target child’s group (George & Hartmann, 1996). Not surprisingly perhaps, the proportion of friends from different classes and age groups increases in later grades as educational settings become less self-contained (Cairns et al., 1998). A related question that has not

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received much empirical attention is how more concrete measures of physical propinquity (e.g., classroom table assignments) might influence peer affiliations. Another dimension that appears to be important in peer group formation is familiarity. As peer groups are reshuffled across grades and other transitions, familiarity is likely to become more important for children’s affiliative choices. For example, Nash (1973) examined changes in peer network composition among boys’ groups across the transition to middle school and found that as former friends were shuffled into different classes or schools, boys who had belonged to different peer groups in fifth grade became members of the same group in sixth grade. Importantly, in several cases, boys chose to affiliate with familiar children who were dissimilar to them in other ways (e.g., academic performance, SES), over unfamiliar children who shared similar attributes. One of the most important forces driving peer group formation appears to be similarity between children. Considerable evidence now exists to suggest that, similar to friendship choice, children form peer groups or cliques based on a variety of shared qualities, including demographic characteristics such as age, gender, race, and socioeconomic status, biophysical characteristics including physical maturation and physical attractiveness, and more behaviorally based characteristics such as aggressive behavior, perceived popularity, and academic achievement. Hallinan (1980) suggests a number of reasons why choosing one’s peer group on the basis of similar characteristics might be an adaptive strategy. In addition to providing a basis for mutual approval, shared characteristics provide a source of validation for children’s developing social identity. Furthermore, at a point in development when one’s interpersonal skills are relatively unsophisticated, grouping on the basis of shared attributes and interests likely reduces peer conflict and other potential threats to the group’s integrity. Consistent with these hypotheses, research indicates that the relevance of physical attributes, shared interests, and behavioral predispositions to peer group formation vary as a function of age, gender, and context. Demographic characteristics offer children a physically salient means for assessing their similarity to other peers and there is now quite robust evidence to suggest that these variables have a strong impact on peer interaction patterns, particularly at young ages. Voluntary segregation on the basis of gender begins in early childhood and reaches its peak in middle childhood (Maccoby, 2000). Social norms banning heterosexual friendships in elementary school, routinely and vociferously enforced through behaviors such as teasing and taunting (Gifford-Smith, 1998; Thorne, 1986), are so strong that pre-existing friendships between boys and girls will even go ‘‘underground’’ to avoid detection. Children also appear to sort themselves into friendship groups on the basis of race, although such voluntary segregation typically begins later than that based on gender (Hallinan & Smith, 1989). Additionally, the tendency of children to segregate socially on the basis of race appears to vary as a function of region, context, and racial make-up of the overall group (Cairns et al., 1998). Given the opportunity, children also tend to sort themselves on the basis of age, preferring same-age playmates to younger or older peers (George & Hartmann, 1996). However, as many of the formal settings in which children interact with each other are structured on the basis of age (e.g., classrooms and extracurricular activities), it is conceivable that age segregation is fueled, to some extent, by propinquity. A number of other physically salient, albeit arguably less visible, attributes have also been shown to influence group formation, including socioeconomic status, degree of

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physical maturation, and physical attractiveness. The evidence on socioeconomic status is perhaps the most equivocal, suggesting that this variable may be more or less salient in certain contexts (e.g., schools characterized by significant disparities in SES) or at different points in development (Cairns & Cairns, 1992; Nash, 1973). In their ethnographic study of middle school peer groups, Adler and Adler (1998) noted that children whose parents could afford the ‘‘expressive equipment’’ of popularity or social status such as name brand clothes and shoes, or expensive vacations, tended to form fairly exclusive peer groups. It seems conceivable that these relatively subtle distinctions would be more salient at older ages as children become more adept at social comparison. Physical maturation does not become a salient criterion for group formation until pre-adolescence, but evidence does suggest that especially among girls, age of menarche and other markers of sexual maturation enter into both friendship and peer group selection. Finally, physical attractiveness appears to be a factor in peer affiliation, at least among girls (Cairns et al., 1998). In addition to demographic characteristics and physical attributes, children appear to form peer groups on the basis of behavioral similarities. Among those most commonly studied are aggressive behavior and academic achievement. Due in part to the strong link between peer rejection and aggression, it has sometimes been assumed that aggressive children play a less central role in the social fabric of their classrooms. Research on social networks suggests this is not the case, however. Aggressive children have friends and oftentimes hold central positions within their peer networks (Xie, Cairns, & Cairns, 1999). Importantly, these networks are typically (although not exclusively) constructed of other aggressive or deviant children or of children who view aggression as acceptable or normative. For example, Salmivalli, Arja, et al. (1997) examined the social networks of children who played different participant roles in bullying episodes (e.g., bully, victim, assistant of bully, reinforcer of bully, defender of victim, and outsider). They found that individual children’s behavior in the context of a bullying episode was highly related to how the members of their social networks behaved in similar situations. More specifically, bullies formed networks with other bullies, but also with children who supported bullying behavior, either by joining in or by encouraging the bully through laughter or inciting comments. While there is evidence to suggest that aggressive children seek out other aggressive children as early as preschool (Farver, 1996), this phenomenon appears to become stronger with age, particularly as norms for aggression change (Sandstrom & Coie, 1999). Similar patterns have been noted for other forms of deviant behavior, particularly delinquency. In fact, one of the strongest predictions of problem behavior in adolescence, including substance use, delinquency, and aggression, is affiliation with deviant peers (Dishion & Skaggs, 2000; Elliott & Menard, 1996; Thornberry & Krohn, 1997). Importantly, peer group affiliation based on aggression is more common among boys than girls (Farmer & Farmer, 1996), probably because overt aggression occurs at greater frequencies among boys. It is conceivable that similar patterns may hold for girls’ groups on the basis of relational aggression, but this has yet to be empirically examined. Evidence also suggests that peer groups form on the basis of more prosocial attributes and this may have positive implications for development. Kinderman and colleagues (Kinderman, 1993, 1996; Sage & Kindermann, 1999), for example, have suggested that children form peer groups on the basis of academic achievement or engagement. That is, children tend to befriend children with levels of school engagement similar to their own.

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Tracking changes in peer group affiliation on the basis of motivation over the course of the year provided strong evidence for this phenomenon. Despite considerable turnover and reorganization in the membership of peer groups, the mean group motivation scores remained stable—children reshuffled themselves into new groups, but the motivational composition remained constant. This work suggests that children’s peer groups form on the basis of a variety of characteristics and predispositions. Which characteristics are most salient likely varies as a function of age and gender. For example, the phenomenon of gender segregation, robust and universal at younger ages begins to break down with the arrival of adolescence (Shrum & Cheek, 1987). While same-sex peer affiliation continues to be the norm throughout high school, the number of mixed-sex peer groups also increases dramatically during this time (Cairns et al., 1998). There is evidence for gender differences as well. In addition to different characteristics being salient for boys and girls (e.g., aggression for boys, physical attractiveness for girls), there is some suggestion that girls tend to consider a wider range of attributes in their peer affiliations than do boys (Neckerman, 1996). It is conceivable that other characteristics such as academic motivation, physical attractiveness, and SES take on added significance as children become more aware of and better able to assess these attributes. Finally, the now considerable evidence that children tend to associate with peers who have interests, characteristics, and predispositions similar to their own has led researchers to speculate about the mechanisms underlying this phenomenon. Farmer and Farmer (1996) identify two main processes thought to contribute to similarity among peer associates. The first, homophily, refers to the tendency of like-minded individuals to be attracted to one another. The second, social synchrony, refers to group level processes that contribute to greater within-group homogeneity over time. Evidence suggests that such forces begin operating quite early in the process of group formation, even during the stages of group entry. For example, Adler and Adler (1998) identified a category of students called ‘‘wannabes’’—students on the outside of a group who adopt the behavior and attitudes of group members as a bid for acceptance. While mechanisms of influence within children’s groups remain little studied, it is generally accepted that children adopt the behavior and attitudes of peers via imitation and reinforcement. For example, Sage and Kindermann (1999) have demonstrated that academically based peer groups, once formed, tend to reinforce relevant academic behaviors such as on-task behavior. Such patterns are thought to underlie increases in academic achievement over time among group members. Similarly, Dishion and colleagues (Dishion et al., 1996) have coined the term ‘‘deviancy training’’ to describe a pattern of interaction between deviant peers in which discussion of rule breaking is contingently reinforced with laughter and approving verbalizations. These patterns of interaction have been linked to increases in substance use (Dishion, Capaldi, Spracklen, & Li, 1995), aggression and violent behavior (Capaldi, Dishion, Stoolmiller, & Yoerger, 2001; Dishion, Eddy, Haas, Li, & Spracklen, 1997), and delinquency (Patterson, Dishion, & Yoerger, 2000) up to 2 years later. Thus, while children may initially be drawn to each other on the basis of their perceived similarities, interactions within the peer group continue to have a strong and lasting effect on individual behavior well beyond the stage of group formation. Finally, there is some suggestion that increases in member similarity can emerge as a result of pressures or influences from outside the group as well (Sage &

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Kindermann, 1999). For example, Hallinan and Smith (1989) report that in classrooms where teachers place high emphasis on good grades and success on standardized tests, peer cliques tend to be more homogenous for reading achievement. The studies reviewed in this section have indicated that multiple factors contribute to peer group formation. The relative contributions of these factors are difficult to disentangle, in part because they operate simultaneously. It is likely that they are more or less salient at different points in development. Propinquity might play a more important role in peer group affiliation at younger ages when classrooms are self-contained and children are more dependent on adults to create opportunities for interaction. Across ages, propinquity and familiarity may be more salient early in the life of a group, for example at the beginning of the school year, until children have had a chance to assess their peers’ interests and attitudes more closely. Related to the question of how these dimensions of propinquity, familiarity, and similarity interact to influence group formation are questions regarding the specific processes implicated in group formation. In a review of research on clique formation in pre-adolescence, Hallinan (1980) identified four potential processes: (1) cliques can develop from and revolve around a close friendship between two children; (2) cliques can form by virtue of the influence of a single individual, who possesses skills, talents or resources valued by the clique; (3) cliques can develop out of some shared formal activity, such as an athletic team; and (4) cliques can emerge when several students share a common interest that brings them together and eventually leads to them being identified as a group (e.g., role-playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons). Longitudinal analyses are needed to establish the validity of these processes and to delineate the conditions under which they operate. Centrality as a measure of peer networks participation In addition to examining the processes of group formation, investigators have also been interested in how children’s positions within the larger peer network are assigned. Research has focused on the behavioral correlates associated with centrality. It should be noted that although such research is concerned with questions similar to those addressed by sociometric status researchers, peer preference and network centrality are distinct concepts, and are associated with somewhat different behavioral profiles. The correlates of centrality differ for boys and girls. For boys, high network centrality is associated with athletic ability (Farmer & Rodkin, 1996), leadership skills (Farmer & Rodkin, 1996; Gest et al., 2001), aggressive and/or defiant behavior (Bagwell et al., 2000), and perceived popularity (Farmer & Farmer, 1996; Farmer & Rodkin, 1996). Academic ability is related to centrality for boys only when accompanied by other valued traits such as athletic prowess (Farmer & Farmer, 1996). Girls identified as highly central to their peer network are also higher on perceived popularity, are good at schoolwork, and have strong leadership skills (Farmer & Farmer, 1996; Gest et al., 2001). While aggressive or deviant behavior does not relate to centrality for girls, highly central girls may be more relationally aggressive than their lower centrality peers. Ethnographic researchers have observed that high status or ‘‘core’’ girls tend to utilize negative gossip, ostracism, teasing, and coalition building to negotiate the social pressures associated with high status (Adler & Adler, 1998).

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Thus, girls with high network centrality may use behaviors associated with relational aggression to preserve their own status or to shore up boundaries around their cliques. Considerably less is known about students of peripheral or isolated status. Peripheral children appear to be more aggressive and disruptive than students from other groups, particularly among girls. But they lack the more prosocial and socially valued traits (e.g., physical attractiveness, athletic ability) that are associated with high centrality (Farmer & Rodkin, 1996). Isolates, not surprisingly, are characterized as shy and withdrawn (Farmer & Rodkin, 1996). In sum, broadening the focus of research on peer relations from emphasizing individual differences or dyadic relationships to include the larger peer network, has provided a more complete picture of the social landscape that children must negotiate. Beginning in early childhood, children sort themselves into groups in a non-random fashion, choosing to affiliate with children that are similar to themselves in important ways. In turn, the processes of joining and maintaining membership in these groups influence the behavior and attitudes of individual members, increasing group cohesiveness and solidifying norms. The structure, size and stability of peer groups, and the processes that govern group formation change with development, lending credence to the view of the peer group as a dynamic, complex entity. While knowledge of individual differences in social behavior and in children’s ability to make or keep friends is critical to understanding development, the social network perspective provides a broader context for interpreting and understanding these key features of peer functioning.

Discussion and integration The burgeoning research in children’s peer relations over the last three decades has significantly enhanced our understanding of the nature and importance of children’s peer experiences. The work reviewed in the foregoing sections suggests that children’s peer acceptance, the ability to make and maintain friendships, and their participation in social networks each contributes to their development and overall well-being. These aspects of peer experience, while not completely independent, appear to tap different underlying interpersonal skills and relate to different psychosocial outcomes. Sociometric status reflects a child’s level of acceptance in the peer group and appears to be related to children’s affective orientation toward peers as well as the ability to recognize and adapt to normative expectations for behavior. Forming and maintaining mutual friendships, on the other hand, taps and fosters skills related to empathy, perspective taking, and intimacy and may be more closely tied to the development of individual social competence as well as to the self-system (Gest et al., 2001). Social network participation and centrality are associated more closely with visibility and social power within the larger peer group and thus may have implications for peer socialization and influence. While sociometric status, friendships, and peer network affiliation represent distinct aspects of peer experience, it is clear that they are also interrelated. The skills and attributes that underlie more general peer acceptance undoubtedly relate to those associated with healthy friendship development. Likewise, peer network participation is predicated to some extent on the ability to form and maintain reciprocated relationships. Finally, the skill with

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which a child negotiates the challenges associated with multiple, embedded relationships in the larger network likely has implications for his or her level of acceptance. That is, if children are able to manage and respond appropriately to the jealousies and rivalries that attend nested relationships (Asher, Parker, & Walker, 1996) without resorting to negative behaviors, it is likely they will be regarded more favorably by their peers. To some extent, the conceptual overlap of these dimensions is both reflected in and exacerbated by measurement issues. The high degree of overlap in methods for assessing these constructs undoubtedly complicates efforts to identify the shared and unique contributions of each dimension of peer experience to children’s well-being. For example, the finding that both peer acceptance and number of friendships are related to loneliness may have less to do with their common underlying correlates, than with the fact that both are typically assessed via best friend nominations and thus share a significant amount of method variance. This argues, to some extent, for the use of more independent measures of the different facets of peer experience. Asher et al. (1996), for example, advocates the use of rating scales to assess peer acceptance while reserving best friend nominations for identifying mutual relationships. Another factor contributing to our limited understanding of how these different dimensions of peer experience are related to each other is the fact that research in each of these areas has developed in relative isolation. It is only relatively recently that researchers have begun examining the empirical relations among these constructs, as we review briefly below. Peer acceptance and friendships In a now-classic study, Parker and Asher (1993) assessed differences in the prevalence and quality of friendships among grade-school children with low, average, and high peer group acceptance. They found that nearly a third of high-accepted children did not have a reciprocal best friend in their classrooms, and that many low-accepted children did have reciprocal best friendships. Moreover, both having a best friend and friendship quality were significantly negatively associated with children’s reports of loneliness, even after controlling for peer group acceptance. Thus, group acceptance and friendship were shown to make distinct contributions to children’s adjustment and well-being. Nevertheless, the friendships of low-accepted children evidenced more problems and were of lower quality than those of average and high-accepted children, pointing to the overlap between group and dyadic processes as well. Expanding on this work, Vandell and Hembree (1994) found that mutual friendships and peer acceptance uniquely and additively predicted social competence, self-esteem, and achievement in elementary school children. Ladd et al. (1997) further differentiated young school children’s peer relationships and found both concordant and distinctive associations. For example, children with more mutual friends were more widely accepted by the peer group (see also George & Hartmann, 1996; Parker & Asher, 1993). When different types of peer relationships (mutual friendships, best friendships, group acceptance, and victimization) were considered in the context of the others, it was possible to determine unique links to affective outcomes like loneliness and social dissatisfaction as well as to academic outcomes such as school-liking or avoidance and academic performance.

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Different relationships were important for different socioemotional outcomes. Peer acceptance, mutual friendships, and victimization all predicted feelings of loneliness, consistent with the findings of past investigators who have studied each predictor separately, but only victimization was a unique predictor. Likewise, victimization was the only unique predictor of school-liking and school-avoidance. Peer acceptance, in contrast, was the only unique predictor (negatively) of increasing social dissatisfaction over the school year. Group acceptance and friendships each predicted unique variance in academic progress over the school year, but mutual friendships were the strongest and most consistent predictors of school performance. Interestingly, scholastic engagement at the beginning of the school year was a better predictor of the number of mutual friendships children formed than vice versa. This suggests that the school environment and children’s attitudes toward it may influence their peer group participation and experiences as much as peer groups influence school adjustment. Since children participate in many social worlds simultaneously and their multiple relationships are inherently interdependent, this is an important avenue for continuing research. Peer acceptance and social networks As considerably less work has been conducted on children’s peer networks, less is known about how visibility or centrality in the larger peer group relates to peer acceptance. There is some suggestion that children’s level of peer acceptance constrains, or is constrained by, their network participation. Children who are well-liked by their peers generally participate in larger, more loosely structured social networks, a finding that seems particularly true for boys (Benenson et al., 1998). The cliques in which rejected children participate, on the other hand are smaller (Ladd, 1983), more dense, and more likely to be comprised of other low status children (Bagwell et al., 2000). Interestingly, while children of lower social status appear to participate in smaller, potentially more deviant cliques, the evidence linking peer acceptance and centrality is less clear. While well-liked children are often central members of their peer groups, this is not always the case (Gest et al., 2001). One possible reason for the relatively small degree of overlap between peer acceptance and centrality is that maintaining a central position within the peer group appears to require skills related to social dominance such as assertiveness and the ability to defend oneself. According to Parkhurst and Hopmeyer (1998), the emergence of cliques in middle childhood requires that children learn to balance the sometimes conflicting goals of being liked and having power. While some well-liked peers appear to manage this without damaging their reputations as ‘‘nice kids’’ others may sacrifice one form of status for the other. Similarly, while there is some evidence suggesting that rejected children are more likely than their non-rejected peers to occupy peripheral positions in the peer group (Bagwell et al., 1998), other studies have failed to find differences in centrality between disliked children and their peers (Gest et al., 2001). One possible explanation is that aggression, while strongly and negatively related to peer acceptance, appears to be positively related to group centrality, at least for boys. Ethnographic research suggests that high centrality boys may use aggression to establish or maintain social dominance, thus enhancing their position in the group. Another possible explanation is that rejected children play more

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central roles in peer groups characterized by antisocial or disruptive behavior (Coie & Dodge, 1988). If these behaviors are particularly salient or visible within the larger peer group, it is conceivable that such boys’ social relationships would be more visible to peers and thus earn them a greater number of ‘‘hangs with’’ nominations. Whether the higher centrality of aggressive children stems from a greater degree of social power or simply from visibility has not yet been fully explored. Social networks and friendship As social networks and friendship are both predicated on peer affiliation it seems reasonable to expect that these constructs would be highly related. In fact, peer networks are often described as nested or embedded friendship relations. Despite the considerable conceptual overlap between these two dimensions, however, there is some suggestion that participation in networks and friendships make different demands on children, and that success in one domain does not necessarily imply success in the other (Gest et al., 2001). For example, Asher et al. (1996) have suggested that to negotiate their larger peer networks successfully, children must not only master the skills necessary to maintain harmonious dyadic relationships, but also learn to cope effectively with the additional challenges inherent in nested relationships. According to Asher and colleagues, these challenges include, but are likely not limited to jealousy, rivalry, envy, and incompatible loyalties such as sharing gossip about one friend to enhance a relationship with another. Additionally, conflicts between two members of a social network may have implications for related members, forcing children to take sides or to reassess their relationships with involved parties. There is some suggestion that these tensions become greater as a child’s status or centrality increases. Ethnographic researchers (Eder, 1985; Adler & Adler, 1998) have observed that as children achieve higher status within the group, particularly girls, they feel pressured to terminate relationships with friends of lower status. Based on these findings, it seems reasonable to suggest that centrality may affect the nature and quality of children’s friendships, but there is little research on such links. Interrelations among sociometric status, friendship, and network affiliation Only recently have researchers examined the relations among all three of these dimensions of peer experience. Gest et al. (2001) assessed the sociometric status, number of mutual friendships, and social network centrality of 205 second and third grade children (ages 7 –8) from twelve different classrooms. Peer nominations for social behavior were also collected. Results support the contention that these constructs represent distinct but overlapping aspects of children’s experience. For example, pairwise correlations were in the moderate range (network centrality and number of friends, r=.49; network centrality and peer acceptance, r=.49; and peer acceptance and number of friends, r=.46). However, as Gest and colleagues point out, success on one dimension did not necessarily predict success on the others. For example, 31% of popular children reported not having a mutual friend as compared to 39% of rejected children. Additionally, evidence suggested that each dimension was characterized by a relatively distinct set of behavioral correlates. Having many mutual friends, high network centrality,

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and high peer acceptance were all significantly related to prosocial characteristics such as leadership, good humor, and ability to regulate emotions. However, consistent with prior research, aggressive behavior was negatively related to peer acceptance and positively related to centrality. Moreover, multiple regression analyses suggested that each of the dimensions accounted for unique variance in these social behaviors. For example, network centrality was uniquely related to both leadership and aggressive behaviors. In fact, the association between network centrality and aggressive behavior became stronger after controlling for the effects of peer status and friendships. Mutual friendships accounted for unique variance in prosocial behaviors such as leadership and sense of humor, and were uniquely and negatively related to antisocial behaviors such as teasing and bossing. Finally, peer rejection was uniquely associated with a wide range of antisocial behaviors including peer-perceived difficulty making friends, peer-perceived social exclusion, aggressive and disruptive behaviors, and emotion dysregulation. Thus, recent evidence suggests that peer acceptance, friendship, and social network affiliation make distinct contributions to children’s social development. However, considering the interrelations among these constructs is also critical. More than increasing the variance we can account for in different developmental outcomes, a broader, multidimensional approach to children’s peer relations may help researchers to identify important remaining questions. One consistent limitation of the peer relations literature discussed here is a failure to consider developmental change more fully. This is true not only for the primary constructs themselves, but also for developments in features of the peer environment. Considering age-related changes in the relative salience of the different dimensions of peer experience outlined here can inform attempts to build a more complete theory of peer functioning. For example, generalizing from the available developmental research, it seems reasonable to expect that friendships represent a relatively constant, universal aspect of the peer environment for children at every age. Friendships may change in form and function, but they emerge early in childhood and appear to have important implications for wellbeing in every period of development. Peer acceptance, on the other hand, may be most critical in the primary grades when classrooms are relatively self-contained and being able to interact effectively with a variety of peers is important. The fact that sociometric status becomes increasingly difficult to measure in middle school provides some support for this speculation. Finally, cliques seem to become increasingly important during middle to late childhood, potentially reaching their peak in middle school. At this point, adult-identified boundaries around peer groups become less salient and less clearly defined. As a result, being well liked by the larger group may be less important to the child than maintaining close supportive friendships and/or establishing one’s position within a tightly knit clique. Socioemotional competence and healthy adjustment may depend on being able to recognize these changes and adjust one’s goals and behavior accordingly. If this is the case, change in status and/or in the number or nature of friendships may be viewed as adaptive rather than maladaptive, signaling growth and a more sophisticated understanding of the provisions of different types of relationships. Change that occurs over shorter intervals of time such as a school year (Ladd et al., 1997) or even the course of a single day is also likely to be a central contributor to children’s social development. Although a number of theorists emphasize the dynamic

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quality of peer relationships, most examine children’s peer interaction as a static entity. Social challenges inherent in the start of a school year are fundamentally different from those faced later in the year. In their study of short-term changes in children’s friendship, Parker and Seal (1966) found sufficient change in friendship patterns over a single summer (in a camp setting) to identify different subtypes of children—some children made numerous friends and kept them, some excelled at making friends but had difficulty maintaining them, and some remained isolated throughout the summer. Importantly, these subtypes were differentially related to peer acceptance. Similarly, changes in one domain of peer experience (e.g., loss of a friend) likely lead to changes in another (e.g., network centrality). Thus, a broader assessment of children’s peer experiences will be necessary to understand both the transitions in their experiences and the effects of such transitions on their adjustment and well-being. Children also move through a variety of social tasks in their peer group within a given day, from finding someone to sit next to at lunch, to working effectively in a teacher defined group of peers, to gaining access to limited resources such as balls or swings on the playground. As a result, children must call on a range of different interpersonal skills to negotiate even small portions of their everyday peer experiences successfully. While some skills, such as prosocial behavior, may be universally advantageous, others may be situation-specific, perhaps even damaging if used at the wrong time—for example, asserting oneself too strongly in the context of a cooperative project. Having an adequately developed arsenal and a sense of what is called for in a given situation may be more critical for healthy peer functioning than any static set of individual social attributes (Crick & Dodge, 1994; Putallaz & Gottman, 1981; Rubin & Rose-Krasnor, 1992). Thus, children’s peer experiences represent a complex ever-changing landscape, one that cannot be adequately captured through a single lens or snapshot. Finally, a major limitation of studying these domains of peer functioning in isolation is the incomplete and fragmented picture of social competence that emerges. Rejected social status means something different for a child with one or two reciprocated, healthy friendships and secondary centrality than it does for a child with no friends who is isolated and has peripheral status. These different dimensions could be used to build profiles of different types of children whose trajectories could then be measured, as has recently been suggested in person-oriented analyses. Adler and Adler (1998) report a finding from their ethnographic study of middle school that lends some support for this suggestion. They observed that cliques were hierarchically organized within the larger network such that high status children occupied central roles in large cliques that dominated the social scene. Although these children enjoyed a considerable degree of influence, often setting trends for fashion and behavior, they spent a large amount of their time protecting their social positions. As a result, their influence was constraining for them, and many of these children, although identified by their peers as popular, were not actually well liked. Secondary members and peripheral members (‘‘wannabes’’) spent much of their time jockeying for position or searching for ways into the popular crowd. Another fairly large group of children existed on the outside of the ‘‘in crowd,’’ forming smaller, more densely related cliques or groups. These children seemed less concerned with gaining status in the larger group and spent more time focused on building stable, harmonious relationships with a smaller number of peers. As a result they were well liked

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by their close peers but largely irrelevant to the larger social scene. Importantly, teachers tended to rate this last group of children as the most psychologically well-adjusted. While these results need to be replicated using more rigorously controlled empirical studies, they do lend credence to the suggestion that research attending to multiple aspects of the peer environment at once can produce detailed profiles of distinct developmental trajectories. Clearly the picture that emerges here is complex. Sociometric status, friendships, and social networks represent only three dimensions along which children’s peer relations can be studied. Several other related aspects of peer experience (e.g., bully– victim relationships, enemies), although outside the scope of this review, provide additional vantage points that must be considered. However, much of what we know today about children’s peer relationships has grown out of work that began in these three areas. We would argue that much of what we stand to learn in the future can be enhanced by efforts to integrate these rich research traditions.

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