[MUSIC] Hi, welcome back. We've been talking so far about different kinds of popularity, specifically likeability and also status or social reputation. We've also been talking about some of the factors that make people popular, either among youth or among adults. Now, what we're going to do is we're going to switch gears and talk a little bit about how popularity changes our mood, our feelings, and our behaviors. Specifically, what we'll talking about are a few different types of outcomes. So, first, we're going to talk about what's referred to as externalizing symptoms. These are things like aggression, deviancy, ADHD, conduct disorder, and even things like school truancy. We're going to then move on to talk about internalizing symptoms, things like depression, anxiety, loneliness, self-esteem. From there we're going to move on to talk about health risk behaviors, things like substance use and risky sexual behavior. And then last we're going to spend some time talking about adult outcomes, including the ways that popularity in childhood affects our relationship satisfaction, our employment status, and even our physical health in adulthood. So we're going to get started by talking first about the ways that we've gone about understanding the effects of popularity on these outcomes. First, I want to tell you a little bit about some different methods that people have used to try and study this question, and then we're going to talk a little bit about different theories that we've tested to try and understand those effects. So it was actually aback in the 1960s when psychology was still being influenced by Freud and the thoughts that moms were responsible for all of our development, but there was a series of research studies that demonstrated that maybe peer relations were way more important than we even realized. What ended up happening was that a few researches were trying to understand why some people were most likely to experience psychopathology, this meant that either they were getting outpatient treatment, or more commonly, inpatient treatment for severe difficulties. They were also looking at some of the reasons why some folks in the military were honorably discharged compared to those that were dishonorably discharged. And there was a lot of research being done to answer those questions back in the 60s. So what they did was, they were trying to understand all the possible predictors for those outcomes, and they were able to look at lots of things. Especially when they were looking at folks from the same community. They could go back and look at those kids school records and even their criminal records from back when they were adolescents, so they looked at arrest reports, they looked at IQ, they looked at grades, they looked at teacher evaluations, they looked at parent-child relationship quality. And it turned out that while many of those did predict to which kids grew up to have psychopathology, or dishonorable discharges, there was one factor that seemed to play a role, even above and beyond all those other factors. And that was specifically how popular these kids were back when they were in elementary school and middle school. So specifically, I'm talking about the kind of popularity that has to do with likeability. So remember this is popular, rejected, neglected, controversial, and average the kids that we are calling to have high social preference. They are more liked than they are disliked. There's something about being really well liked that seems to be protective for us as we grow up. And there's something about being disliked that predicted these outcomes even decades later. So we call that a follow-back study. This is where we can look at an outcome that we're interested in in adulthood. And then go back and look for school records or other kinds of available records to understand what factors might predict that outcome. Follow-back studies are really helpful because you can make sure that everyone in your sample has the outcome you're interested in as adults, and then you look back at their childhood records. But the problem is, of course, that those childhood records may or may not have all the information that you want, and often, it wasn't collected in a systematic fashion. Also, what's hard is it's impossible to really determine whether those things you're looking back on might have been related to the things that really predicted the outcome of psychopathology or dishonorable discharge. In other words, we call those third variables. Variables that might have affected both kids likeability, and also those kids outcomes when they grow up to be adults. So we can't control for that. For all we know, in follow-back studies there may be some folks that had difficulties with aggression or psychopathology when they were kids, that happened to lead them to get rejected. And then when they grew up, they continue to show manifestations of that psychopathology. So a contrast to using a followed back design, is what we call a follow forward design. And that's where we're able to look at large, large samples of kids when they're children, and we collect lots of information in a systematic and standardized way, and we can control for all those third variables. So for instance, we can look at whether a kid's had psychopathology or other difficulties when they were young. But also measure their likeability or their popularity at that young age. And then see whether that predicts changes in who develops more psychopathology or experiences later outcomes even after controlling for those third variables. Of course, the problem with join follow forward studies is that they take a lot of time. You have to cut all the data at time one. Wait for the kids to grow up and then see what they turn out to be like in terms of their outcomes. So, this is a lot harder to do but it does give us really valuable information. And some, there have been many, many more follow forward studies that have been done since the 60s and that's what I'm really going to focus on in the clips that you're going to see in this unit. So as I alluded to, not only are these studies really focused on whether we're looking back at old data, or if we're doing a follow forward design. They're also designed to help us understand two possible models for how popularity might predict outcomes. One of those has been referred to in the literature as an incidental model. So like I mentioned before, it might be that there are some kids who have an underlying disorder, or they have some sort of symptoms. For instance, maybe ADHD or oppositional defiance disorder. In other words, being argumentative and not cooperative with adults. That might be something that we see change over time. As they grow up, that kind of argumentative style becomes cognitive disorder. And then becomes more severe, illegal behavior in juvenile delinquency. And as they grow up, it might lead to serious criminal behavior. Now along the way, it just so happens that kids who behave that way might also be rejected. But as you'll see in this figure, there's no line connecting peer status or popularity to that negative outcome. So that's just a byproduct, or a side effect of having this underlying disorder over the course of development. So the incidental model would suggest that popularity does not really predict any changes in kids functioning. Let's contrast that a little bit with what we call a causal model. Now in the literature, we call this a causal model, but to be clear it doesn't really allow us to make a causal inference. So in other words, the only way that we can say that something caused something else, is if we randomly assigned some kids to be popular, some kids to be not popular, and then solve whether those kids and the two randomly assigned groups ended up having different lives as they grew up. Obviously, that would be a horrible study to do, and it would be remarkably unethical. So what we do instead is we look at a correlational model that implies causality. And what I mean by that, is we do expect that an underlying disorder, like aggressive behavior, as we've talked about in severe form, might relate to low popularity. But what we find is that even after controlling for that prior social behavior, for instance aggression. Popularity or peer status has a direct impact on some sort of negative outcome. So it's playing a role above and beyond the effect of aggressive behavior. And that's what's referred to as a causal model. So what we're going to be talking about next are going to be a number of studies that have predominantly used a follow forward design, specifically trying to look at a causal model to see does popularity seem to predict outcomes when we use that design and when we control for other known predictors of those outcomes, and that's what's coming up next.
