Brief Report
Affective associations with negativity: Why popular peers attract youths’ visual attention

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2017.05.010Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Visual attention for popular peers after priming was measured using eye tracking.

  • Visual preference is weaker after the positive than after a negative or no prime.

  • Visual preference for a popular peer is thus attenuated by the positive prime.

  • The results suggest that popular peers’ negative behavior may be most salient.

  • Valence of the context may play a role in peer influence by popular adolescents.

Abstract

Visual attention to high-status peers is well documented, but whether this attentional bias is due to high-status individuals’ leadership and prosocial characteristics or due to their more agonistic behaviors has yet to be examined. To identify the affective associations that may underlie visual attention for high-status versus low-status peers, 122 early adolescents (67 girls; Mage = 11.0 years, SD = 0.7) completed a primed attention paradigm. Visual attention was measured using eye tracking as participants looked simultaneously at photographs of two classmates: one nominated by peers as popular and one nominated by peers as unpopular. Prior to each trial, the early adolescents were presented with a positive prime, the word “nice”; a negative prime, the word “stupid”; or no prime. Primary analyses focused on first-gaze preference and total gaze time The results showed a stronger first gaze preference for popular peers than for unpopular peers in the no-prime and negative prime trials than in the positive prime trials. The visual preference for a popular peer, thus, was attenuated by the positive prime. These findings are consistent with the notion that youths may visually attend to high-status peers due to their association with more negative characteristics and the threat they may pose to youths’ own social standing and ability to gain interpersonal resources.

Introduction

Studies with monkeys (Deaner et al., 2005, McNelis and Boatright-Horowitz, 1998), preschoolers (LaFreniere and Charlesworth, 1983, Vaughn and Waters, 1981), early adolescents (Lansu, Cillessen, & Karremans, 2014), and adults (Foulsham et al., 2010, Maner et al., 2008) have shown that high status attracts attention (Koski, Xie, & Olson, 2015). Within adolescent populations specifically, being the recipient of peers’ visual attention has been linked to “popularity,” that is, being perceived as dominant, “cool,” and influential (Cillessen and Mayeux, 2004, Lease et al., 2002), a commonly studied indicator of high social status. Popular adolescents draw attention over unpopular adolescents both in first gaze preference and in total gaze time (Lansu et al., 2014).

The principal explanation as to why status attracts attention is that socially dominant group members control physical and social resources, making it functional to pay attention to them (de Waal, 1982, Dunbar, 1988, Hawley, 1999). As postulated by resource control theory (Hawley, 1999, Hawley, 2003), social dominance and control over resources is most effectively gained through a combination of prosocial and agonistic behaviors (see also Pellegrini, 2008, Pellegrini and Bartini, 2001). Resource control theory has labeled individuals who combine the use of prosocial and coercive strategies as “bistrategics.” These bistrategics have been shown to be superior in terms of social power (i.e., access to resources and popularity; Hawley, 2003), and adolescents who exert influence through skillfully using prosocial and coercive behaviors to their advantage have been shown to be high in popularity among peers (Olthof et al., 2011, Sandstrom and Cillessen, 2006). It is unclear, however, whether it is these adolescents’ prosocial behavior or their more agonistic behavior that underlies the greater attention these adolescents receive from peers.

The aim of the current study, therefore, was to get more insight into whether the attention-attracting power of popular early adolescents is mainly driven by their positive and prosocial characteristics or by their negative and antisocial characteristics. To accomplish this goal, we used eye tracking to assess visual attention in conjunction with a priming paradigm. Previous research has shown that priming facilitates the processing of stimuli conceptually congruent with the prime, ostensibly due to the activation of conceptual networks and enhanced accessibility of conceptually related constructs. Priming effects have been demonstrated using the affective priming task (Bargh et al., 1992, Hermans et al., 1994), the Stroop task, and the dot probe paradigm (Everaert, Spruyt, & De Houwer, 2013). Priming also facilitates visual attention for prime-congruent stimuli. Odekar, Hallowell, Kruse, Moates, and Lee (2009) showed that priming a word leads to greater visual attention for semantically related pictures, and Faber and Jonas (2013) found that priming threat-related words leads to greater visual attention for threat-related pictures when an unsafe context is activated. Given that visual attention to a target is facilitated by previous exposure to a conceptually related prime, the first question of the current study was whether visual attention for popular peers is more strongly facilitated after being primed with a positive construct or with a negative construct. A facilitative effect of a negative prime on attention to popular peers would indicate that it is the association between popularity and antisocial traits that draws adolescents’ attention to popular peers. The facilitative effect of a positive prime would indicate that it is popular peers’ prosocial traits that garner adolescents’ attention.

Although the literature shows that popular peers tend to show both positive and negative social behaviors, we expect that attention for popular peers is stronger when a negative construct is activated than when a positive construct is activated. Previous research has shown that negative cues interfere to a greater degree than positive cues with the effective evaluation of stimuli (McNally et al., 1992, Mogg et al., 1993), suggesting that cognitive resources are disproportionally allocated to negative information. This includes biases in the deployment of visual attention, particularly when the negative stimuli are threat related, for example, angry faces (Hansen and Hansen, 1988, Yiend, 2010, Öhman et al., 2001). Popular adolescents can be a source of threat to many adolescents because popularity is often obtained and maintained through the use of manipulative and coercive behavior such as bullying (de Bruyn et al., 2010, Witvliet et al., 2010) and proactive aggression (Prinstein and Cillessen, 2003, Stoltz et al., 2016) that causes their peers considerable social and emotional distress. Furthermore, although on an explicit level youths may report highly popular peers to be positively evaluated, on an implicit level evaluations have been shown to be more negative (Lansu, Cillessen, & Karremans, 2012). Thus, it is more likely that popular adolescents’ negative traits, rather than their prosocial ones, capture peers’ attention. Accordingly, we hypothesized that a perceptual bias to the popular peer would be greater following a negative prime than following a positive one.

The second question addressed in the current study was whether the visual attention patterns for popularity induced by each of the two primes resemble or differ from the “natural” visual attention pattern measured after “no priming.” Similar preferential attention to popular peers in the no-prime and positive prime trials would indicate that popular peers are automatically associated with more positive traits. This pattern of findings might be anticipated because adolescents more frequently engage in prosocial behavior and positive social interactions than in aggressive behavior (Pepler, Craig, & Roberts, 1998). As a consequence, popular adolescents’ positive behavior may be most accessible and, thus, compatible with the conceptual networks activated by positive primes.

However, it was also possible that we would find the visual attention for popular peers in the no-priming trials to be similar to that in the negative prime trials. This would suggest that the negative traits of popular peers are automatically more accessible when confronted with these peers. Although the aggressive behavior of popular adolescents is generally less frequent than their prosocial behavior, their aggressive acts may be more impactful because “bad” seems to be stronger than “good” in many areas regarding information processing (Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Finkenauer, & Vohs, 2001). This proposition is further supported by research showing that negatively valenced stimuli elicit more brain activity than positively valenced stimuli (Smith, Cacioppo, Larsen, & Chartrand, 2003), and it is in line with the previously mentioned findings that threat-related stimuli are more quickly detected than rewarding stimuli (Hansen and Hansen, 1988, Öhman et al., 2001). Thus, the presence of popular peers may activate negative, rather than positive, conceptual networks similar to those that are accessible after the presentation of a negative prime.

To gain more insight into what extent prosocial and aggressive behaviors are associated with high popularity in the current sample, descriptive analyses were performed. If adolescents indeed see their popular peers as aggressive, this would support our expectation that exposing adolescents to negative social primes might activate this association and subsequently guide attention toward popular peers. If adolescents indeed see their popular peers as prosocial, this would support our expectation that exposing adolescents to positive social primes might activate this association and subsequently guide attention toward popular peers.

It is important to understand when attention for high-status popular peers is more or less pronounced. If attention for popularity is, for example, stronger when negativity is activated, this could mean that adolescents are particularly apt to turn to popular peers in negative or threatening situations. Popular adolescents often engage in aggressive behaviors (Prinstein and Cillessen, 2003, Rose et al., 2004) and risky behaviors such as alcohol consumption and early sexual activity (Mayeux et al., 2008, Prinstein et al., 2011) that place themselves and others at risk for emotional and physical harm. Moreover, popular adolescents set the norms for what behaviors are deemed acceptable within their peer group, leading to increased engagement in those behaviors by other group members (Cohen and Prinstein, 2006, Rancourt and Prinstein, 2010). Thus, identifying when attention for popular peers and subsequently possible peer influence take place may help to prevent peer contagion of undesirable behaviors.

Section snippets

Method

The current study extends the analysis of data presented in Lansu et al. (2014)—in which attention to popular and unpopular peers was examined solely in the no-prime condition—by comparing attention in the positive and negative prime conditions.1 In Phase 1 of the current study, sociometric data (i.e.,

First gaze preference

A repeated-measures ANCOVA on first gaze was conducted with prime as a two-level factor (positive prime or negative prime) and participants’ own popularity as a covariate. The first gaze preference for one peer over the other differed as a function of the prime presented before displaying the peer pictures, F(1, 107) = 6.32, p = .013, ηp2 = .06. When the negative prime had preceded the trial, first gaze preference for the popular peer over the unpopular peer was more pronounced (55.5% of the trials

Discussion

The first question of the current study was whether biased visual attention toward popular peers is stronger after a negative prime than after a positive prime. As hypothesized, first gaze visual preference for the popular peer over the unpopular peer was stronger after activating a negative construct than after activating a positive construct. This finding is consistent with the notion that it is popular adolescents’ negative behaviors that drive the greater attention they receive from their

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to the school administrators, teachers, parents, and students who made this research possible. This research did not receive any specific grants from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

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