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Peer relationships are an important developmental context for children and adolescents. A large body of research in developmental, child clinical, and educational psychology has focused on the role of peer relationships in the development of youth. A large part of this research traditionally has focused on problematic peer relationships, peer rejection, and exclusion. This research has yielded much knowledge of the predictors, correlates, and consequences of low social status in the peer group. More recently, researchers have become increasingly interested in high status in the group, specifically popularity, which is not the same as peer acceptance. Reasons for the focus on popularity are that popular youths are often influential in the peer group, and role models for prosocial skills and behaviors, but also for aggression and health risk behaviors. Not all popular adolescents are uniformly prosocial. Sometimes aggression, bullying, or manipulative behaviors are also associated with popularity, for boys as well as girls. This indicates that popularity is not a homogeneous construct. This contribution explains the heterogeneity of popularity, and the predictors, correlates and consequences of popularity among youths, with a specific focus on health, adjustment, and health risk behaviors.

Peers gain heightened significance during adolescence. Youth organize themselves into peer networks that reflect clusters of social relationships, and these social networks play a prominent role in youth's risk behaviors, internalizing symptoms, and adaptive behaviors. Remarkably, youth are often quite similar to their friends, which can be because of selection and influence processes. Whereas selection refers to the process where adolescents cluster with peers based on pre-existing similarities in behaviors, attitudes, or values, influence occurs when adolescents adjust their behaviors, attitudes, or values to those of their peers. Similarity-based selection may occur through preferential attraction, default selection, and repulsion, whereas influence toward similarity may occur through mutual encouragement, imitation, peer pressure, and conformity. Most evidence has been found for selection based on preferential attraction, and influence based on imitation and norms of popular peers. Individual, dyadic, and contextual factors contributing to variations between adolescents in openness to peer influence are discussed, as well as directions for further research.

Item does not contain fulltext Peer relationships are an important developmental context for children and adolescents. A large body of research in developmental, child clinical, and educational psychology has focused on the role of peer relationships in the development of youth. A large part of this research traditionally has focused on problematic peer relationships, peer rejection, and exclusion. This research has yielded much knowledge of the predictors, correlates, and consequences of low social status in the peer group. More recently, researchers have become increasingly interested in high status in the group, specifically popularity, which is not the same as peer acceptance. Reasons for the focus on popularity are that popular youths are often influential in the peer group, and role models for prosocial skills and behaviors, but also for aggression and health risk behaviors. Not all popular adolescents are uniformly prosocial. Sometimes aggression, bullying, or manipulative behaviors are also associated with popularity, for boys as well as girls. This indicates that popularity is not a homogeneous construct. This contribution explains the heterogeneity of popularity, and the predictors, correlates and consequences of popularity among youths, with a specific focus on health, adjustment, and health risk behaviors.