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For the 2006 indie album, see Popularity (album).

Introduction

From the 1917 silent film Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, this image shows one girl behaving with overt aggression towards another girl.

The term Popularity is borrowed from the Latin term popularis, which originally meant "common" or "being well-liked". The current definition of the word popular, the "fact or condition of being well liked by the people", was first seen in 1601.

While popularity is a trait often ascribed to an individual, it is an inherently social phenomenon and thus can only be understood in the context of groups of people. Popularity is a collective perception, and individuals report the consensus of a group’s feelings towards an individual when rating popularity.

Two Types Of Popularity

Everyone can point to the popular person in the room, but they don't necessarily like that person the most. If asked to choose someone to hang out with, they would likely point to someone else. This is evidence that there are two main forms of personal popularity that social psychology recognizes, sociometric popularity and percieved popularity.

Sociometric Popularity

Sociometric popularity is more or less the result of an individual's likability. If a person is generally well-liked and known for positive traits then they are sociometrically popular. People who are sociometrically popular often are known for their interpersonal abilities, their empathy for others, and their willingness to cooperate non-aggressively. This is a more private judgement, characterized by likeability, that will not generally be shared in a group setting. Oftentimes, it is impossible to know who individuals find popular on this scale unless confidentiality is ensured.

Perceived Popularity

Perceived popularity is a characteristic used to describe individuals who are well known for being popular. This form of popularity does not have a positive correlation with perceived kindness and pro-social traits like sociometric popularity. This form of popularity, especially amongst adolescents has been widely explored by the popular media. Notable works dealing with perceived popularity include Mean Girls, Odd Girl Out, and Ferris Bueller's Day Off . Individuals who have percieved popularity are often highly socially visible and frequently emulated but rarely liked. Since perceived popularity is a measure of visible reputation and emulation, this form of popularity is most openly discussed, agreed upon within a group, and what most people refer to when they call someone popular.

Causes

One of the most widely agreed upon theories about what leads to an increased level of popularity for an individual is the perceived value that individual brings to the group. This seems to be true for members of all groups but is especially demonstrable in groups that exist for a specific purpose. For example, sports teams exist with the goal of being successful in competitions against other sports teams. Study groups exist so that the members of the group can mutually benefit from one another's academic knowledge. In these situations, leaders often emerge because other members of the group perceive them as adding a lot of value to the group as a whole. On a sports team, this means that the best players are usually elected captain and in study groups people might be more inclined to like an individual who has a lot of knowledge to share.

It has been argued that this may be a result of our evolutionary tendencies to favor individuals who are most likely to aid in our own survival. This theory is impossible to test however.

It is also of note that the value that an individual brings to a group is not what is of consequence in determining his or her popularity; the only thing that is important is his or her value as perceived by the other members of the group. While perceived value added and actual value added to the group may often overlap, this is not a requisite and it has been shown that there are instances in which an individual's actual value add to a group is relatively low but their perceived as highly valuable nevertheless.

Attractiveness

Attractiveness has been shown to have very profound effects on popularity. People who are attractive are more likely to be thought of as possessing positive traits. People who are attractive are expected to perform better on tasks and are more likely to be trusted. Additionally, they are judged to posses many other positive traits such as mental health, intelligence, social awareness, and dominance.

Additionally, people who are of above average attractiveness are assumed to also be of above average value to the group. Research shows that attractive people are often perceived to have many positive traits based on nothing other than their looks and regardless of how accurate these perceptions are. This phenomenon is known as the Halo effect This means that, in addition to being more more well-liked, attractive people are more likely to be seen as bringing actual value to the group, even when they may be of little or no value at all. In essence, attractive people are given the benefit of the doubt while ordinary looking individuals must prove that they are bringing value to the group. It has been shown empirically that being considered physically attractive does, on average, increase one's sociometric and perceived popularity. Some possible explanations for this include increased social visibility and an increased level of tolerance for agressive, social interactions that may increase perceived popularity.

Agression

The degree to which an individual is perceived as popular is often highly correlated with the level of agression with which that individual interacts with his or her peers. There are two main categories of aggression, relational and overt, that both have varying consequences for popularity depending on several factors such as the gender and attractiveness of the agressor.

Relational Agression

Relational aggression is nonviolent agression that is emotionally damaging to another individual. Examples of relationally agressive activities include ignoring or excluding an individual from a group, delivering personal insults to another person, and the spreading of rumors. Relational aggression is more frequently used by females than males.

It has been found that relational aggression almost always has a strongly negative relationship with sociometric popularity but can have a positive relationship with perceived popularity depending on the perceived level of attractiveness of the agressor. For an agressor who is perceived as unattractive, relational agression, by both males and females, leads to less perceived popularity. For an attractive agressor however, relational agression has been found to actually have a positive relationship with perceived popularity.

The relationship between attractiveness and agression is further intertwined by the finding that increased levels of physical attractiveness actually further decreased the sociometric popularity of relationally agressive individuals.

In short, the more physically attractive an individual is, the more likely they are to experience decreased levels of sociometric popularity but increased levels of perceived popularity for engaging in relationally agressive activities.

Overt Agression

Overt agression is agression that involves individuals physically interacting with each other in acts such as pushing, hitting, kicking or otherwise causing physical harm or submission in the other person. This includes threats of violense and physical intimidation as well.

It has been shown that overt agression directly leads to perceived popularity when the agressor is attractive. Experiments that are controlled for levels of physical attractiveness show that individuals who are attractive and overtly agressive have a higher degree of perceived popularity than attractive non-overtly agressive individuals. This was found to be true to a small degree for females and a large degree for males.

Interestingly, attractive individuals who are overtly aggressive barely suffer any consequences in terms sociometric popularity. This is a key difference between overt and relational agression because relational aggression has a strongly negative relationship on sociometric popularity, especially for attractive individuals. For unattractive individuals, there is again a strongly negative relationship between overt agression and sociometric popularity. This means that attractive individuals stand to gain a lot of perceived popularity at the cost of very little sociometric popularity by being overtly agressive while unattractive individuals stand to gain very little perceived popularity from acts of overt agression but will be heavily penalized with regards to sociometric popularity.

Differences

Age

Popularity is gauged primarily through social status. Because of the importance of social status, peers play the primary role in social decision making so that individuals can increase the chances that others like them. However, as children, individuals tend to do this through friendship, academics, and interpersonal conduct. By adulthood, work and romantic relationships become much more important. This peer functioning and gaining popularity is a key player in increasing interest in social networks and groups in the workplace. To succeed in such a work environment, adults then place popularity as a higher priority than any other goal, even romance

Gender

These two types of popularity, perceived popularity and sociometric popularity, are more correlated for girls than they are for boys. However, it is said that men can posses these qualities to a larger extent, making them more likely to be a leader, more powerful more and central in a group, but also more likely than women to be socially excluded. Boys tend to become popular based on athletic ability, coolness, toughness, and interpersonal skills; however, the more popular a boy gets, the worse he tends to do on his academic work. On the other hand, this negative view of academics is not seen at all in popular girls, who gain popularity based on family background (primarily socioeconomic status), physical appearance, and social ability. Boys are also known to be more competitive and rule focused, whereas girls have more emotional intimacy. Since boys possess a competitiveness, popularity can be seen as a negative aspect for their development; because aggression is correlated with popularity, many researchers fear the long term effects outside of the immediate social content. Additionally, because perceived popularity is partially characterized by emulation, some worry about the development of antisocial behaviors in peers.

Race

In some instances it has been found that in predominantly white high schools, attractive non-whites students are on average significantly more sociometrically popular than equally attractive white students. One theory that has been put forth to explain this phenomena is a high degree of group cohesiveness among minority students compared with the relative lack of cohesion amongst members of the majority.

Effects

In the Workplace

The importance of popularity at work

More tasks in the workplace are being done in teams, leading to a greater need of people to seek and feel social approval. In academic settings, a high social standing among peers is associated with positive academic outcomes. Popularity also leads to students in academic environments to receive more help, have more positive relationships and stereotypes, and be more approached by peers. While this is the research found in schools, it is likely to be generalized to a workplace. Popular people may not be those who are best liked interpersonally by their peers, but they do receive most of the positive behavior from coworkers when compared to nonpopular workers. This is a result of the differences between sociometric and perceived popularity. When asked who is most popular, employees typically respond based on perceived popularity; however, they really prefer the social interactions with those who are more sociometrically popular. To stay aligned with the group's popularity consensus, those who are gain perceived popularity are treated with the same positive behaviors as those who are more interpersonally, but privately, liked by specific individuals. Well-liked workers are most likely to get salary increases and promotions, while disliked (unpopular) workers are the first to get their salary cut back or laid off during recessions. Additionally, during interactions with others in the work environment, more popular individuals receive more organizational citizenship behavior (helping and courteousness from others) and less counter productive work behavior (rude reactions and withheld information) than those who are considered less popular in the workplace. Coworkers agree with each other on who is and who isn’t popular and, as a group, treat popular coworkers more favorably. While popularity has proven to be a big determiner of getting more positive feedback and interactions from coworkers, such a quality matters less in organizations where workloads and interdependence is high, such as the medical field. In many instances, physical appearance has been used as one indicator of popularity. Attractiveness plays a large role in the workplace and physical appearance influences hiring, whether or not the job might benefit from it. For example, some jobs, such as salesperson, benefit from attractiveness when it comes down to the bottom line, but there have been many studies which have shown that, in general, attractiveness is not at all a valid predictor of on-the-job performance. Many individuals have previously thought this was only a phenomenon in the more individualistic cultures of the Western world, but research has shown that attractiveness also plays a role in hiring in collectivist cultures as well. Because of the prevalence of this problem during the hiring process in all cultures, researchers have recommended training a group to ignore such influencers, just like legislation has worked to control for differences in sex, race, and disabilities.

Benefits of popularity

Popularity is positively linked to job satisfaction, individual job performance, and group performance. The popular worker, besides just feeling more satisfied with his job, feels more secure, believes he has better working conditions, trusts his supervisor, and possesses more positive opportunities of communication with both management and co-workers, causing a greater feeling of responsibility and belongingness at work. Others prefer to work with popular individuals, most notably in manual labor jobs because, although they might not be the most knowledgeable for the job, they are approachable, willing to help, cooperative in group work, and are more likely to treat their coworkers as an equal. If an employee feels good-natured, genial, but not overly independent, more people will say that they most prefer to work with that employee.

Contributing factors to popularity at work

According to the mere-exposure effect, employees in more central positions that must relate to many others throughout the day, such as a manager, are more likely to be considered popular. There are many characteristics that contribute to popularity:

• Expressing and acting in genuine ways-others will turn away if they can detect that someone is being fake to them
• Focusing on positive energy-others will feel too drained to be around someone if their interactions are not started on positive notes or they don't have empathy to share in someone else's positive news
• Treating others with respect-others do not like to be around someone if they aren't treated equally and acknowledged for their hard work
• Create connections-others are more likely to approach individuals they have strong relationships with; these can be built by talking about more personal issues, attending work gatherings, and communicating outside the office walls
• Patience-turning away too quickly ignores that relationships take time to grow, especially in the busy and stressful environments that work often induces
• Incorporating others-others feel a sense of trust and belongingness when they are asked for help on a project

Leadership popularity

Sometimes, employees really like and get along with their managers, but in other circumstances they clash. With a greater focus on groups in the workplace, it is essential that leaders undergo training on how to deal with and mediate groups to avoid such clashing. Sometimes, a leader doesn’t need to be popular to be effective, but there are a few characteristics that can help a leader be more accepted and better liked by his group. Without group or team cohesiveness, there is no correlation between leadership and popularity; however, when a group is cohesive, the higher up someone is in the leadership hierarchy, the more popular they are for two reasons. First, a cohesive group feels more personal responsibility for their work, thus placing more value on better performance. Cohesive members see leaders as taking a bulk of the work and investing a lot of personal time, so when they see a job's value they can ascribe it's success to the leader. This greatest contribution principle is perceived as a great asset to the team, and members view the leader more favorably and he gains popularity. Secondly, cohesive groups have well established group values. Leaders can become more popular in these groups by realizing and acting on dominant group values. Supporting group morals and standards leads to high positive valuation from the group, leading to popularity.

See also

• Respect
• Peer groups
• Social status
• School Bullying
• Self-esteem
• Assertiveness

Further reading

• The Cycle of Popularity: Interpersonal Relations Among Female Adolescents # Donna Eder; Sociology of Education, Vol. 58, No. 3 (Jul., 1985), pp. 154–165; Published by: American Sociological Association.

Category:Social psychology Category:Interpersonal communication Category:Anthropology Category:Social status Category:Sociological terms Category:Experimental psychology Category:Human behavior Category:Biological interactions Category:Society