Popularity and Conformity Predicting Romantic

DRAFT 2/25/08 . 1 Popularity and Conformity Predicting Romantic Relationship Quality, Academic Achievement, and Problem Behavior from Ages 13 to 20 Joseph P. Allen Amanda Hare Erin Miga I. SLIDE#: Title Page A. I’ll be giving the next talk, titled Popularity and Conformity Predicting Romantic Relationship Quality, Academic Achievement, and Problem Behavior from Ages 13 to 20, put together with my co- authors Amanda Hare and Erin Miga, and with the long list of collaborators you can see on the slide. B. We want to follow up, and actually amplify some of the points implicit in Mitch’s approach. 1. SLIDE#: And while we are and remain adolescence researchers at heart, today we’re going to take a slightly different tack. Today we want to argue that if we really want to complete our understanding of adolescence, we need to look at adulthood as well. a. For adolescence is not an endpoint but a way station. Yet, too often we all (and we include ourselves in this) treat successes along the way as though they are equivalent to successful long-term outcomes. 2. What do we mean by this? a. __ Well, we study phenomena like popularity, or alcohol use, or problem behaviors as though if they are good or bad in adolescence than they are good or bad for long-term development, but that’s not necessarily the case. b. In the end, our problem when we only study development within adolescence is a lot like relying upon opinion polls early in a presidential race to predict actual election results. They may tell us something, but they don’t always mean what we think. c. __ Said in a different way, the ingredients that make up a successful adolescence, especially socially, aren’t always the same ingredients that make up a successful adulthood. d. This is what we call the “high school reunion effect” If you’ve been to a high school reunion, you know it’s often striking that at least some of the kids who were most popular, athletic, successful etc. in high school, haven’t fared all that well since, whereas others have blossomed. That’s part of what we’re hoping to get at today. C. SLIDE# : So our goal today was to start asking the question: 1. How do Predictors of adaptation at the END of adolescence differ from predictors of adaptation DURING adolescence? a. __ We’ll consider predictors such as popularity with peers, ability to stand up to peer pressure, and capacity negotiating autonomy and connection issues with a best friend. DRAFT 2/25/08 . 2

b. __ And we’ll consider outcomes ranging from delinquent behavior and alcohol use to academic achievement and long-term success with peers and romantic partners. II. Methods A. SLIDE#Sample : We’ll be examining these questions in a community sample of 184 adolescents, drawn from the public school system of Charlottesville, Virginia, who were interviewed along with their parents and best friends, B. but who we’ve also observed in interactions with both parents and best friends, and ultimately with their romantic partners. 1. The sample was evenly divided between males and females, 2. Adolescents were initially assessed at age 13, and we’ll be reporting results of annual re-assessments up through age 20. 3. The sample was a normal community sample, and was representative of the population of the surrounding community in both socioeconomic and racial/ethnic terms. 4. We’ve managed to maintain extremely low attrition over time (we’ve only had 1 participant dropout and say don’t contact us further, and at any given data point we typically have better than 90% participation. Nonetheless, we’ll be using Full Information Maximum Likelihood techniques to handle any missing data that we do have today, and find they yield results almost identical to simple regression results (and we typically present those just for simplicity). III. Popularity A. So our goal was to re-examine a few of the qualities we study in adolescents to see just what they might tell us about LONG_TERM outcomes for teens (i.e. by the end of adolescence). B. For example, let’s start with popularity. 1. SLIDE#: We assessed popularity using a sociometric procedure as outlined. It’s a measure that displays remarkable stability over time, and in fact we use the average score over the first 3 years of the study as our measure here. 2. SLIDE#: Now, as Mitch and others have made clear, there are two different animals running around in adolescence under the name of popularity a. __ there’s social status…i.e., who other kids say are the high status kids in a school, and b. __ there’s what we called a preference based or likeability measure of popularity… DRAFT 2/25/08 . 3

who kids actually like to be around. 3. __ We’re going to focus on the second of these animals…which is who is liked enough that other teens actually want to spend time with them. 4. We’ll call this popularity/likeability, or even just ‘popularity’ for short, but we want to be clear about what we mean. C. SLIDE#: And we’ve previously shown that cross-sectionally, this measure of popularity, like its childhood counterpart, is in fact associated with all things good, at least cross sectionally a. From quality of close friendships to family relationships to ego development to attachment security, popular teens at age 13 look like they are doing better than their less popular peers. i. __ But as I said, this is cross-sectionally, the real question is what happens down the road? DRAFT 2/25/08 . 4

D. SLIDE#: Because we’ve also examined what we call the Popularity- Socialization Effect, which suggests that popular teens are likely to be particularly highly attuned to socializing influences in their peer group— 1. __ this in part is why they are popular… 2. __ but that while this attunement will include many positive socializing influences, it will also include pushes toward some types of less adaptive behavior that are rapidly becoming normative in adolescence. E. SLIDE#: So to show you how this works, we start with our first outcome: minor deviant behavior, which includes minor forms of criminal behavior, vandalism, shoplifting and the like. 1. And for descriptive purposes, we’ll present most of our results using a simple median split of the sample into popular and less popular groups of teens …though everything we’ll show is also confirmed by regression and/or growth curve analyses with continuous measures. F. SLIDE#: So, what we see initially is that the two groups—popular and less popular teens--start out roughly equivalent in terms of minor delinquency. 1. SLIDE#: Over the following year, however we see them begin to diverge. 2. SLIDE#: Shown in a different way, popularity is actually predicting relative increases in these forms of minor illegal behavior over time. a. We see this as a socialization effect, in which popular kids are picking up on the fact that it’s somewhat ‘cool’ to engage in these kinds of activities. b. And we won’t go into it here, since these are published data, but we’ve included all sorts of demographic controls and covariates (in particular income and gender), and these don’t change the results. c. We’ve also done analyses that show that the size of this effect is related to how much deviance is present in the specific peer group within which a given teen was popular. a) The more deviant the peer group, the more that popular teens appear to be affected by it. ii. We’ve also shown that for more seriously disturbed behavior, such as hostile aggression, peers also appeared to socialize these behaviors out of a popular teen’s repertoire. a) So, it’s a socialization effect that can be for good or bad. 3. SLIDE#: So our theory and our hope was that we could say these popular teens were being well-socialized, and that while at 14, some of this socialization was less than ideal, as they and their peers matured, things would look better. 4. Our big question then with these data are: What happens next? a. SLIDE#: Well, over the following two years, the groups at first appear to come DRAFT 2/25/08 . 5

together. b. SLIDE#: But then by age 18 they’ve diverged again and our popular teens look even more delinquent than ever. c. Our hope, however, was that as they enter adulthood, these “socialized” teens would start to be socialized by healthier forces… d. SLIDE#: and that’s exactly what appears to happen, so that by age 20, there’s no longer any relation between prior popularity and deviant behavior. 5. SLIDE#: SOCIALIZATION appears to have taken a turn for the better. a. So we find that in terms of delinquency, popularity first looked unproblematic at 13, then was a concern during mid-adolescence, but in the long run, did not appear linked to difficulties. 6. So, that’s the good news…but looking at other outcomes, things don’t always look so good. G. We next took a look at how this pattern played out with alcohol and marijuana use, and here’s where things start to get interesting and more troubling. 1. SLIDE#: In early adolescence, we find the exact same pattern as for delinquent activity. The popular and less popular groups start out equivalent. 2. SLIDE#: Then by age 14, we see the more popular kids clearly drinking more. 3. SLIDE#: SLIDE#: 4. SLIDE#: As adolescence progresses, this pattern continues, and even gets stronger, though by age 17, we see that maybe things are getting a little better. SLIDE#: SLIDE#: Though by age 18, we see things not looking so good for our popular teens H. Now by this point, we’re hitting a ceiling effect, at least with our popular group, so we’ll change our metric a bit and look at not whether alcohol has been tried, but HOW MUCH is being drunk in a week. 1. SLIDE#: So now looking at frequency of alcohol use, we see very similar results up through age 18, though the scale has been changed. 2. SLIDE#: At age 19 the groups look a little closer…. So what happens by age 20? 3. SLIDE# : Unfortunately, by age 20, we see a dramatic uptick in frequency of drinking, and the popular kids remain far beyond their less popular peers (and again, this was from popularity back in early adolescence). 4. SLIDE#: And unfortunately, its not just an issue in the amount that’s being drunk, when we look at problems associated with drinking, using a self-report measure that gets at problems ranging from arrests to DRAFT 2/25/08 . 6

arguments to driving under the influence related to drinking, we also see a major difference between the two groups at age 20 SLIDE#: a. These formerly popular teens aren’t just being sociable, they’re engaged in problem drinking and having problems as a result. b. Again, this is all from popularity early in adolescence. I. SLIDE#: SUMMARY: POPULARITY predicts: 1. __ Increasing delinquency __ but with a return to group mean levels by age 20… __ as adolescent socialization processes appear to run their course 2. __ But also predicts increasing alcohol…__ and rates stay high and are associated with significant problems by age 20. 3. Now most likely, what’s happening here is the same process as we saw with delinquency, except that whereas by age 20, socialization makes it largely uncool to do things like shoplift or engage in vandalism, with drinking it’s just the opposite. 4. OK, So what about some other outcomes? 5. So now that you have the basic picture of how we do this, let’s turn to look at some other longer-term outcomes. J. SLIDE#: If we turn to look at academic achievement, we get a very different picture. Here 1. Popular kids look better off across the board. K. SLIDE#: If we look at friendship quality (which we assess using best friends’ reports), we see an interesting pattern. SLIDE#: L. In middle school, popular kids start out with a clear advantage M. SLIDE#: which then gets even larger as they enter high school N. SLIDE#: But over the course of high school, the less popular kids catch up. It appears they are able to form friendships…it may just take longer…but these friendships ultimately appear to be of good quality. O. SLIDE#: But then…and here’s the point where we need to look beyond just what happens in adolescence. As they leave the social confines of high school, we see the groups again diverge with less popular kids faring well in terms of finding good close friends when thrown into the larger world of adulthood. 1. We’re currently following these less popular kids to see if indeed they catch up again as they get more experience in the world beyond high school. IV. SLIDE#: Now some outcomes we can’t even really examine in early adolescence, even though they may be quite DRAFT 2/25/08 . 7 important going forward in the lifespan. A. Romantic relationships for example, you can see on the slide we assess these with teens reports about relationships that have lasted at least 3 months. B. SLIDE#: Looking at these, we see that our popular and less popular teens do about equally well in these relationships. C. SLIDE#: There’s one caveat though…if we look at who was actually in a romantic relationship long enough (3 months in this case) and with a partner willing to come in with the teen for a visit (which we’ve found to be at least partly an indicator of how ‘serious’ a relationship is), then the story is different. D. Yes, our unpopular teens do as well once they’re in romantic relationships, but it’s harder for them to get in them. V. SLIDE#: Summary, re: popularity predictions A. So, by age 20, we see that popularity was worrisome with respect to drinking, temporarily worrisome with respect to delinquent activity, linked to better grades and friendship quality, and had no effect on the next big task of social development: forming good romantic relationships. B. So, clearly, popularity tells us a good deal about future outcomes, but the picture is also very mixed. VI. So, let’s try something that’s different than popularity…and in some ways opposed to the notion of getting on well with one’s peers. A. Let’s look at the ability to resist peer pressure, or what we call peer refusal skills. 1. SLIDE#: 2. This measure consists of a series of hypothetical vignettes in which peers tempt adolescent to engage in deviant behavior. 3. Adolescent verbal responses are taped and reliably coded in terms of ability to competently handle the pressure while making it less likely to occur in the future. B. Interestingly, this measure is uncorrelated with popularity, and we’ll get back to the implications of this in a few minutes. C. SLIDE#: When we look at peer refusal skills, we see almost the mirror image of what we saw with popularity…these skills matter at first…they’re linked to significantly less delinquent activity 1. but over time, the difference fades to insignificance. DRAFT 2/25/08 . 8

2. Perhaps by age 20, delinquent behavior is less about peers and more about one’s own goals and norms. D. SLIDE#: When we look at alcohol use in past month, we see almost the mirror image of what we found with popular kids…kids with peer refusal skills Use Less consistently and to a growing degree over time E. SLIDE#: they also have fewer problems… and this is a remarkably strong prediction in our analyses. With a  weight greater than .4, even across 7 years, different assessment methods, and with a number of covariates included. F. So, maybe we’ve got the answer…we just need kids who can stand up to their peers. G. BUT, it’s not so simple. H. SLIDE#: when we look at GPA, we see these kids aren’t doing as well. I. SLIDE#: When we look at their friendship quality…we see no relationship at all to peer refusal skills J. SLIDE#: which is the same thing we see when we look at their romantic relationships, and nor is there any difference in their likelihood of being in a romantic relationship K. So, how to put all this together? VII. (SLIDE#: Well, at first glance, it suggests to us that adolescents face a stark bind: A. __ Conforming to peers increases popularity and risk for alcohol and drug and legal problems, but is linked to better friendships and more romantic relationships. B. __ Skill at refusing peer temptations is associated with fewer problems, but a lower GPA. C. __ Neither behavior explains future romantic relationship qualities (i.e., the precursors of adult marriages) D. This choice says something about role of alcohol in adolescence which we’ll come back to at end. E. For now, just note that it’s a dilemma—connection with peers? Autonomy from peers? Each choice seems fraught with problems. VIII. SLIDE#: But, There does appear to be one route that may at least BEGIN to thread this needle. A. Builds on longstanding work we and others have done that suggests that the pre-eminent social challenge of adolescence is not simply to DRAFT 2/25/08 . 9

handle autonomy issues, but to do so while managing to maintain and deepen relationships…It’s the combination of Autonomy & Relatedness that we’ve consistently found is our best predictor of outcomes DURING adolescence. But what about predictions to the end of adolescence? B. SLIDE#: Here we find, first, that A & R are not associated with higher levels of minor deviant behavior over time. C. SLIDE#: SLIDE#: We also find that A & R do NOT lead to higher levels of alcohol use or problems (these are slight, but clearly non- significant, not even approaching the trend level). D. SLIDE#: We find that A & R are associated with higher grades in school consistently over time. E. SLIDE#: When we look at friendship quality, we don’t see a difference, our one surprising finding here. 1. We think partly that friendships in adolescence depend more on the extent to which two teens AGREE with each other, as they don’t necessarily have to work out a lot of thorny disagreements. F. SLIDE#: With romantic relationships, however, negotiating disagreements is important typically, and when we look at these, we do in fact see that the demonstrated ability to work out disagreements with a close friend in early adolescence predicts later relationship quality in romantic relationships as we approach the end of adolescence. G. SLIDE#: There’s a non-significant difference in the likelihood of being in a romantic relationship, but it’s in favor of the kids who can demonstrate autonomy and relatedness with their friends early in adolescence. IX. SLIDE#: In sum, it looks like there may be a way that teens can have their cake and eat it too! A. __ This is the one trait we examined with no negative predictions… It’s possible to have it all…well, not really to have it all, but to have some things that are at least entirely good. 1. __ Autonomy & Relatedness with one’s best friend in early adolescence (as we observed it) is linked to higher grades in school, and better romantic relationships half a decade later. a. __ It does not have links to drinking or deviant behavior. b. __ The only thing missing was a link to friendship quality over time. 2. To us, the key is that we CAN identify aspects of social development that seem unambiguously positive, but to do so requires focusing not DRAFT 2/25/08 . 10

so much on current success with peers, but rather on an underlying capacity to handle a key task of social development (and of social relationships both during and beyond adolescence). X. SLIDE#: Before we get to our conclusions, I want to remind you of a number of the most salient limitations in these data: A. __ Non-experimental Nature of Data B. __ Examining a limited number of outcomes C. __ NOT following teens all the way into adulthood (…yet!). XI. SLIDE#: Conclusions: A. __ So, in conclusion, we think we put adolescents in a tough bind socially … 1. __ Being likeable with one’s peers as a teenager isn’t always linked to what adults find acceptable, particularly in the area of alcohol use. 2. __ Similarly, what makes adult’s happy—standing up to peer pressure--predicts faring less well w/ peers in some ways, and is associated with lower levels of educational attainment … a. Simple conformity as a teen isn’t the answer either. B. __ This is perhaps most salient with alcohol use 1. It truly appears as a prominent marker along the road to social success for many teens; It’s almost a rite of passage 2. But it’s not a good rite of passage. And it’s not benign. a. It doesn’t just predict social drinking, it predicts problem drinking as well. 3. Other rites of passage, such as minor delinquent behavior, fade w/ time or become normative a. Perhaps that’s because one doesn’t become physically addicted to graffiti or minor acts of vandalism, but one can get addicted to alcohol use. C. __ But we do get a ray of light by focusing not on success or failure as a teen, but on a key developmental task. D. That task is an old friend in our research: the capacity to maintain Autonomy while establishing a Connection with others 1. It’s a Subtle task and difficult to manage…the kids who pull it off at 13 are doing well indeed. 2. But it’s one that has important long-term implications. a. A combination of attentiveness to key relationships and to going one’s own way. 3. The right ‘ball’ to keep our eyes upon. E. SLIDE#: Larger overall point is that We need to look beyond temporary markers of success in adolescence 1. __ Because adolescence is a different environment than adulthood with different (and in some ways, unrealistic) demands relative to adulthood DRAFT 2/25/08 . 11

a. Dressing cool, liking the right music, experimenting with drinking and deviant behavior —all may work in adolescence—but don’t buy all that much in the adult world. i. But they do in an adolescent world that has little that’s REAL to base things upon. b. The bottom line is that We need to distinguish between what matters in adolescence and what prepares one for adulthood…maybe these use to be the same, before adolescence came to extend endlessly, but the aren’t anymore. F. What ‘works’ for teens at 13 isn’t necessarily what works in the long run…an important message for all our research G. __ Which brings us back to The high school reunion effect… 1. __ When we see people at a high school reunion…the kids who were ‘coolest’ haven’t always turned out to have done the best. 2. If we really want to understand adolescence, we have to understand where it leads and how it sets teens up to manage after adolescence has come to an end.