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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Dev. Psychol.
Sec. Social and Emotional Development
Volume 2 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fdpys.2024.1433449
This article is part of the Research Topic The Importance of Peers: Making the Most of Peer Relationships in Childhood and Adolescence View all 6 articles

Running Head: Peer Status Motives, Relational Aggression, Prosociality Goals for, Insecurity in, and Self-Perceptions of Peer Status: Short Term Longitudinal Associations with Relational Aggression and Prosocial Behaviors in Emerging Adults

Provisionally accepted
Danielle Findley-Van Nostrand Danielle Findley-Van Nostrand 1*Benjamin Campbell Benjamin Campbell 2
  • 1 Roanoke College, Salem, United States
  • 2 Roanoke College, Salem, VA, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Research on relational aggression in adolescents suggests it is in part driven by the desire to attain and maintain enhanced status among peers, and recent work also suggests certain forms of prosocial behaviors are similarly status-motivated. However, these associations are not well understood in young adults. In this short-term longitudinal study across eight months (N = 215), we examined whether relational aggression and two forms of prosocial behaviors (altruistic and public) are related to social goals for popularity and preference, social status insecurity, and selfperceptions of status (in terms of dominance and prestige) concurrently and over time in emerging adults (age 18-25). Social goals for popularity predicted increases in relational aggression and public prosociality and were negatively related to and predicted decreases in altruistic prosociality. Preference goals were concurrently negatively related to relational aggression and to public prosociality and were positively related to and predicted increases in altruistic prosociality over time. Social status insecurity moderated links between selfperceptions of status and aggressive/prosocial behaviors, which were largely non-significant without considering status insecurity. Finally, tests of indirect effects suggest that aggression and prosociality mediate associations between popularity goals and self-perceptions of dominance. Findings suggest that strategic use of aggression and prosociality may not be developmentally limited to adolescence.

    Keywords: Relational aggression, Prosocial behaviors, Social goals, popularity, emerging adulthood

    Received: 15 May 2024; Accepted: 18 Nov 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Findley-Van Nostrand and Campbell. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Danielle Findley-Van Nostrand, Roanoke College, Salem, United States

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