Is She Popular, or Is She Powerful?
Photo by Dominic Sansotta on Unsplash
Greetings Fellow Travelers,
Lately, as a bullying researcher, I have been flooded with questions like these:
Do mean girls grow up to be queen bees?
How can I help my child establish and nurture healthy friendships?
What do I do when my child is bullied at school?
Over the last four years, my research studies and publications have primarily focused on workplace abuse, but what some of you may not know is that I am a former teacher, middle school principal, and current teacher educator. In addition, I am the lucky mom of two boys, the oldest just turning twenty and officially exiting the teen years. I also have the pleasure of coaching adolescents and young adults navigating the sometimes tumultuous waters of their academic and social life.
It is a privilege to hold space for the young heart showing up at your office door, raw and confused, attempting to unravel the tangles monopolizing her mind. I appreciate the intrinsic inquisitiveness of these early stages - the belief that all things are possible and the unfettered indignation at injustices.
So often, as the years stack up into decades, we relinquish the hopes of a new horizon, settling for systems, relationships, and employment that may not nurture our best selves. But not children, adolescents, and young adults - they are dogmatic in their commitment to figuring it all out. Their steadfast curiosity and allegiance to a belief in a better world inspire me.
Per those reasons, over the next several newsletters, I will zoom in on a variety of issues intertwining the social network of school-age students, elementary through college, but for today, I want to offer up one simple but profound question, I first heard from Lisa Damour, that has the potential to revolutionize how your children and/or students conceptualize, value, and develop relationships: Is she popular, or is she powerful?
Is She Popular, Or Is She Powerful?
I have spent countless hours sitting across from students who are feeling heartsick, demoralized, and beaten down by another who has:
Professed a friendship and then spread gossip behind his back.
Failed to save her a seat at the lunch table and looked on unphased as she was relegated to the back of the cafeteria to eat alone.
Turned down an invitation, citing family plans, only to later post pictures of an evening out with friends.
Abandoned a decade-long friendship in a quest to join “the populars.”
Turned roommates against her and implemented the silent treatment in hopes she would move out and on.
Often, woven into these tear-filled narratives, is a proclamation that the offending adversary is “Popular.” And, it is at this moment of declaration, I inquire, “Is she popular, or is she powerful?”
“Popular,” is a sociometric, denoting perceived likeability, suggesting a person is enjoyable to be around. In contrast, “powerful” suggests that others alter their behavior when around the person to reap the benefit of the social status and avoid her wrath.
To figure out where people fall on the popular to powerful continuum, researchers have devised a clever framework for examining group dynamics. They begin by providing participants with a complete list of names of a class, grade, or group, and then invite participants to identify the three people they like the most, the three people they like the least, and the three people they consider to be the most popular.
Surprisingly - and this is important for children, adolescents, and young adults to understand - individuals with the highest likability ratings tend NOT to be identified as popular, despite being described as kind, compassionate, and fun to be around. In contrast, those identified as popular, are often characterized as aggressive and mean.
A recent, two-year study of 568 7th-grade boys and girls broke it down further, citing a new category they label as “bistrategic,” referring to adolescents who enjoy a high degree of popularity while also being described in magnanimous terms. Bistrategic adolescents strike a balance between what the researchers describe as the prosocial-popular adolescent, who is well-liked and well-adjusted, and the aggressive-popular adolescent, who wields power through relational aggression and exhibits characteristics of maladjustment.
The bistrategic adolescent utilizes emotional bullying tactics and occasional rule-breaking to maintain social status and power. However, learns to strategically offer up kindness when it serves to up her likeability and garner followers. The long-term outcomes from these bistrategic individuals appear mixed, the direction of the progression likely dependent on guidance and modeling from family and mentors and the type of environment she ends up securing employment.
It is this bistrategic adolescent, I hypothesize, who has the potential to turn into a workplace bully, successfully rising through the rank of her organization by employing coercive tactics when necessary but offering up a compassionate front in order to maintain likability, especially with those in power. However, with productive and compassionate role models, these same bistrategic adolescents can harness their social-emotional prowess for good, showing up as their authentic and courageous selves, dropping the need to control and manipulate, and instead speaking their conviction and fighting for their cause with dignity and fair play.
In closing, naming matters. What we call people and constructs embolden or weaken the hold they maintain on our lives. So, next time you hear the term “popular” used to describe a person destructively wielding social power, boldly inquire, “Is she popular, or is she powerful?”
Two Read
Two of my favorite reads this week were:
Reading Wars or Reading Reconciliation by Dominic Wyse and Alice Bradbury
25 Picture Prompts for Writing Scary Stories by Natalie Prouix
Book Talk
This past week, I read The Last Mrs. Parrish by Liv Constantine, the pen name for the dynamic duo, thriller, and writing sisters, Lynne Constantine and Valerie Constantine. The book details the relationships of Amber Patterson, the seductress, and the golden couple, Daphne and Jackson Parrish. In this roller coaster ride of a book, everyone is hiding secrets, and nothing is as it seems.
Writing Invitation
Carry your daybook to a local cafe and record in vivid detail the plethora of sounds, conversations, and smells surrounding you. Then, consider how these snippets may find their way into your future stories.
Reach Out With Questions and Ideas
I love hearing from readers, so please reach out to say hello, ask questions, or tell me what you would like for me to write about next ~ dorothysuskind@gmail.com.
Sincerely ~ Dorothy (Who is now reading Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted by Suleika Jaouad)