Threatened Egotism or Confirmed Inadequacy? How Children's Perceptions of Social Status Influence Aggressive Behavior Toward Peers

In this study, sociometric interviews were conducted to determine children's actual and perceived social status as well as reputation for aggressive behavior in 4th grade classrooms. From this larger sample, 94 children representing a wide range of both actual and perceived social status scores were identified and recruited to participate in an experimental paradigm designed to measure aggressive behavior in response to positive or negative feedback from a peer. The difference between actual and perceived social preference scores was operationalized as “egotism” (children with negative scores overestimated their status), and the Harter Self–Perception Scale was used to assess self–esteem. Consistent with prior literature, we found a positive association between egotism and generalized aggressive reputation in the classroom. In contrast to previous findings in the adult literature, however, we found that children with an overly pessimistic perception of their status (as apposed to an overly inflated view of self), behaved most aggressively in response to negative feedback from a peer in a controlled laboratory paradigm. Global self–esteem, on the other hand, was positively associated with retaliatory behavior in the negative feedback condition. Potential clinical implications of these results are discussed.