Popularity and Rejection in Children's Peer Groups: A South African Perspective

Abstract

The aim of this study was to describe the classroom and playground behaviour of children who had been nominated either as popular or as rejected by their peers. The subjects were black South African children aged between 8 years and 12 years and 3 months, living in a semi‐urban area in one of the former “homelands”. The children's peer status was assessed using the sociometric method developed by Newcomb and Bukowski (1983). Out of six‐hundred and thirty‐one children thus assessed, 29 were nominated as popular and 29 as rejected. Observations were carried out for 30 minutes in the classroom during a formal lesson and for 30 minutes in the playground during recess. Results show that the rejected and the popular children did not differ in their initiations of contact with other children, but popular children were the recipients of more initiations of contact/approaches from others than the rejected. Social rejection by peers was related to aggression and disruptiveness, while popularity was associated with pro‐social behaviour. Not only were popular children the instigators of most positive behaviours, they were also the recipients of such behaviours from others, while the rejected children initiated more negative interactions but were also the objects of more aversive interactions. Popular children spent more of their time in interactive activities, while the rejected children were observed more frequently and for longer periods in parallel and solitary activities.

On the whole, the results of the present study confirmed observations described by previous research in this field carried out in different cultural settings.

Key words:

• South African children
• peer group
• sociometric status
• classroom and playground behaviour