Parent-Child Conversation of More-Liked and Less-Liked Children

Abstract

Four more-liked boys and four less-liked boys (M age = 58.13 months) were videotaped as they interacted separately in semi-structured activities with their own mother and father, the mother and father of a more-liked boy, and the mother and father of a less-liked boy. Parents of less-liked boys had more intensive interactions that were more controlling, directive, and intrusive than parents of more-liked boys. Parents of more-liked boys had extensive interactive patterns that made them better able to extend praise and encouragement to children not their own. Similarly, more-liked children seemed more sensitive than less-liked children to situational factors that occurred during interactions with parents not their own and were therefore better able to adjust their behavior to the expectations of the situation.

The Two Faces of Adolescents' Success With Peers: Adolescent Popularity, Social Adaptation, and Deviant Behavior

“…If popularity is a fundamental marker of adaptive social development in adolescence, it should also be associated with success in a range of other spheres of social development. Attachment theory and research on popularity in childhood suggest that the positive and open stance toward social relationships that is likely to lead to popularity with peers tends not to arise de novo, but rather to derive from and be closely associated with positive interactions within the family (Allen & Land, 1999; Austin & Lindauer, 1990; Henggeler, Edwards, Cohen, & Summerville, 1991; Lieberman, Doyle, & Markiewicz, 1999). Similarly, attachment security and higher levels of ego development embody an ability to consider autonomously the needs of self and others, and to manage complex emotional reactions while strongly valuing relationships.…”