Social Acceptance among Adolescents: Analytical Essay

Deep down even the most hardened criminal is starving for the same thing that motivates the innocent baby: Love and acceptance. — Lily Fairchilde

Most people share a similar craving for social acceptance. The need to belong is defined as the desire to form and maintain close, lasting relationships with some other individuals (Baumeister & Leary, 1995) .The extent to which their peers accept individuals is considered an important indicator of social and emotional well-being across the lifespan. Social acceptance is pleasant, rewarding, and, in moderate amounts, associated with various indicators of wellbeing (Bushman, 2015). Social acceptance means that other people signal that they wish to include you in their groups and relationships (Leary, 2010).

Over the past 15 years, there has been an interest within the social psychological literature on the other side of social acceptance—namely, social rejection. Social rejection means that others have little desire to include you in their groups and relationships (Leary, 2010). Social rejection also is a complex construct, consisting of behaviors that can range from ignoring another person’s presence to actively expelling him or her from a group or existing relationship. People can experience acceptance and rejection chronically or acutely. People experience social acceptance and rejection in numerous ways. Social rejections prevent the fundamental need for positive and lasting relationships, which strikes at the core of well-being. Thus, the human need for social connection can be both a sweet blessing when others accept a bitter curse and us when others reject us (Bushman, 2015).

Peer relationships play an important role in adolescent social development.

Adolescence is the transitional period from childhood to adulthood and is an important time for social development. It is the time associated with enhanced sensitivity to social evaluation and enhanced desire for social affiliation (Brown, 2004). Social comparison becomes entrenched in daily life (Brown and Lohr, 1987), potentially making adolescents reactive to cues of social acceptance and rejection.

As adolescence progresses, the importance of peer relationships increases dramatically. Teens spend proportionately less time with family and more time with friends, and these peer relationships become more intimate (Larson & Richards, 1991). For example, parent–child conflict increases during early adolescence (Steinberg and Silk, 2002) and social affiliation with peers and romantic interests becomes increasingly important (Furman, 2002; Brown, 2004). Adolescent peer and romantic relationships are often intense, volatile, unstable and involve increasingly complex and salient social hierarchies such as in-groups and crowds (Connolly et al., 2000; Brown, 2004).

As such, being accepted by one’s peer group during early adolescence seems likely to pave the way for successful social functioning throughout the course of adolescence and into adulthood. However, the relatively limited literature examining social acceptance with peers during adolescence indicates that popular status does not uniformly predict positive outcomes for teens, nor does rejection automatically lead to negative outcomes (Prinstein & Aikins, 2004).

How do adolescents respond to social acceptance?

Many adolescents suffer extensively over how well they are liked and accepted by their peers—a fact that is both well known and at times bemoaned by the adults who live and work with them. During adolescence, teens’ perceptions of their own social success may be a crucial predictor of long-term social functioning, such that even teens who are not broadly popular may demonstrate positive adjustment over time if they maintain a positive internal sense of their social acceptance.. Further, there is some indication that self-views become more stable and enduring by adolescence, suggesting that they may take on more importance in how individuals approach their social worlds at this age (Trzesniewski, Donnellan, & Robins, 2003).

Perceptions of belonging have been determined to have important effects on adolescent development, influencing both social and academic outcomes (Baumeister & Leary, 1995; Walton & Cohen, 2007). Some research found that sense of belonging in school was correlated with higher grades at the end of the year, as well as students' expectations for success and value of the work they did in school (Anderman, 2002).

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Positive attributes towards social acceptance

Adolescents show increased recognition skills for faces of peers (Picci and Scherf, 2016) .As early as childhood children may also gain acceptance from others because they possess personal attributes or competences that are valued by peers or society in general (Langlois & Downs, 1979). Social psychologists have published widely on the stereotypic biases associated with physical attractiveness, and speculated on the ways in which appearance elicits preferential treatment from others and shapes the social context in which individuals conduct their interpersonal relations (Langlois et al., 2000; Ramsey & Langlois, 2002).

In other words, links between perceptions of attractiveness and other desirable traits or behavioral characteristics are more than phenomena that shape first impressions or judgments between strangers. It has been suggested that the stereotypes linking attractiveness and personal worth may be internalized and have enduring effects on self-esteem. Positive attributes are more frequently ascribed to attractive children and negative characteristics attributed to children perceived as unattractive (Bordieri, Solodky, & Mikos, 1985; Dion, 1972; Dion & Bersheid, 1974).

Some bodies of evidence from both childhood and adolescence —in areas ranging from attachment expectations, to attributional biases, to rejection sensitivity—suggest that internal assessments of one’s relations with others and expectations about how one will be treated by others are critical in shaping emotional and behavioral outcomes (e.g., Dodge & Price, 1994; Downey & Feldman, 1996; Sroufe, 2005).

Low Social Acceptance

People state emphatically that it is “what’s inside” that counts and encourage their children not to judge others based on appearances .Yet they look up to attractive people to an astonishing degree. They say they value common qualities, such as kindness and understanding, the most important but seem to be exceptionally interested in achieving good looks and popularity (Anthony, Holmes & Wood, 2007).

Low social acceptance has been identified as negative social behavior. A wealth of studies has shown that children and young adolescents’ negative social behavior (i.e., aggressive, disruptive, and shy behavior) is associated with the extent to which their peers (Halcrow, 2007). Some studies of young adolescents also have accept them indicated that individuals who act aggressively and disruptively towards their peers are less likely to be accepted by their peers compared to children who do not display the same behavior.

For example, compared to their accepted counterparts, low accepted adolescents often show poorer social competence and greater antisocial behavior , experience more loneliness and depression ,and exhibit later chronic conduct disorders in adolescence . Low social acceptance is linked consistently to a variety of social and emotional problems during childhood and early. Beginning in early childhood, persons who gain their peers’ acceptance often show signs of positive well-being, whereas persons who do not gain their peers’ acceptance typically exhibit a variety of social and emotional difficulties (Halcrow, 2007). For example, compared to their accepted counterparts, low accepted children and young adolescents often exhibit poorer social competence and greater delinquent behavior (Deckard, 2001).

Conclusion

It is concluded that during the transitional age of development between childhood to adulthood being accepted from the people around your environment is very important during this age. During this age the transition of making strong relationship from parents to peers are more significant to adolescents.Adolescents spend increasingly more time with peers (Larson et al., 2002) and feelings of belonging and acceptance within the peer group are very important for adolescents (Brown et al., 1986). Therefore, it is concluded that for many adolescents, positive peer relations provide opportunities in the development of social functioning, academic achievement, and self-esteem (Malti et al., 2012; Valkenburg et al., 2006; Wentzel, 2005).

On the one hand, children and adolescents who are highly liked among peers have higher levels of empathy and prosocial motivation and display more cooperative, helping and sharing behaviors (Cillessen and Rose, 2005; De Bruyn and Cillessen, 2006; Meuwese et al., 2016). On the other hand, rejected adolescents tend to show more antisocial behavior than adolescents that are accepted among their peers (Wolters et al., 2013), and they display deficits in social cognition (e.g. lower levels of perspective-taking skills) and executive control (e.g. limited impulse control and emotion regulation) (Dodge et al., 2003; Eisenberg et al., 1997; Fink et al., 2014).

Bibliography

1. Baumeister, R.F., & Leary, M.R. (1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation.
2. Psychological Bulletin, 117, 497–529.