Why you never really get over your high school years: 'These are memories that come back all the time' — Photo: Emmanuel Lafont/BBC
Popularity, one of the main obsessions of adolescence, seems to remain engraved in our consciousness for decades after we leave school.
Before I became friends with Georgia*, I was afraid of her.
One episode stayed in my memory. We were 14 years old, and my best friend at the time was having a party, the kind that takes place in a rented church hall and all the students in the grade attend. But there was a group of people that my friend had forgotten to invite.
Georgia and her group came towards us across the courtyard, while the people around them turned to look. She was a frightening combination of fake tan, bleached hair extensions, and fluorescent sportswear. What could someone like her want with people like us?
"We're invited to your party, right?", Georgia demanded of my friend. “Yes, of course,” my friend managed to reply, stuttering. Satisfied, Georgia turned and marched away.
Another girl nearby muttered, "You don't have to invite them if you don't want to." But we all knew that yes, she needed it.
You probably also have similar memories of high school and the cruel side of school political disputes. Maybe you have memories of a Georgia in your life, a popular girl who could instill fear with a simple look. Maybe you were a Georgia yourself.
Either way, you probably have vivid memories from that time. After talking to hundreds of people about their high school experiences, Mitch Prinstein, a psychology professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, discovered that their memories of the people who once dominated the school hallways (the popular girls, the party princes, the star athletes) were extraordinarily strong.
Even decades after leaving school, most people can effortlessly remember the name of the most popular student in their year. Even more easily than the names of teachers and other classmates, Prinstein wrote in his 2017 book Popular: The Power of Likeability in a Status-Obsessed World.
And it's not just the memories that remain. We can imagine that the high school hierarchy becomes irrelevant after we walk through the school gates for the last time. But, it seems, it may continue to exert a strange and persistent hold on us.
Research shows that how popular and liked we were as a teenager can influence our lives for years to come, affecting everything from the way we interpret our social interactions to the quality of our romantic relationships, our satisfaction with life and even our health.
Rethinking popularity
It was American psychologist John Coie who changed the way researchers thought about popularity.
His studies, now considered fundamental, carried out in the early 1980s, began with two simple questions asked to school-age children about their peers:
Who do you like most? Who do you like least?
Reading children's handwriting responses on hundreds of pieces of paper, Coie identified new insights into human social behavior.
A possible assumption is that some children would, in general, be more liked by their peers, while others would be more rejected.
But Coie and the other researchers also noticed something different. Some children were both liked and rejected by different students; while others were neither liked nor rejected.
In other words, some were mentioned many times by colleagues, being highly visible, almost like small celebrities. And others barely appeared in the answers.
Coie then used the children's responses to propose, for the first time, five social categories.
"Accepted" and "rejected" for those who were widely liked or rejected, respectively.
"Controversial" for those that received a large number of both "likes" and "dislikes".
"Neglected" for those that were barely mentioned in either way.
And "average" for children who didn't stand out too much in any direction.
Many studies have confirmed the usefulness of these labels. In general, they show that about 40% of children are "average" and 60% fit into one of the other four categories.
The most liked children tend to be seen by their peers as kind, encouraging and supportive, while the "neglected" children tend to be quiet and withdrawn.
"Rejected" children tend to be aggressive and bully others, or are unassertive, socially anxious and victims of bullying.
The "controversial", the rarest group, divides opinions, generally being seen as the class clowns or the rebels.
In the early years of school, children's values are often aligned with those of the adults who supervise them. In high school, this changes — Photo: Emmanuel Lafont/BBC
Surprisingly, Coie found that the labels assigned to children remained largely the same even when they were introduced to new peer groups. And although the initial research was done with elementary school children, many studies have replicated the results with teenagers. One of them found that around half of children maintain, five years later, in secondary school, the same label they had in primary school.
"I had a really bad time in elementary school, and I always remember my mom saying, 'It'll be better when you go to high school,'" says Connie*, another friend I talked to about the school experience. "But I think that when you're bullied, or if there's something that makes you look visibly different… It's like you become an easy target."
After being bullied in her first few months of high school, for reasons that included not being white in a predominantly white institution, Connie changed schools. At the new school, however, he soon found a similar pattern.
The 'Regina George effect'
Although the labels remain the same, the social dynamics change drastically between elementary school and high school. In elementary school, "popular" children are simply the ones that others like most, and often the ones who behave well and excel in school, because at this stage, children's values are typically aligned with those of the adults who supervise them.
In high school, this changes.
Adults and everything they represent become deeply undesirable. A conscientious and extremely dedicated student may end up relegated to the status of "nerd", while a more rebellious and divisive student may, unexpectedly, have a social rise.
Chatting on the phone with my high school terror, who is now my close friend, Georgia, I ask if she considered herself popular in high school. She says she didn't think of herself that way.
"'Popular' gives the impression that people like you, and I don't think they necessarily like us," she responds. "Maybe it was more of a thing about being… kind of infamous, you know? Loud and wanting to get attention."
As a teenager, Georgia embodied the "controversial" archetype. She had aggressive behavior and was disruptive in class. For all those who adored her, there were probably many who disliked her. I tell her that people, including me, were quite afraid of her at one point. But she is wrong to think that this disqualifies her from the "popular" label.
Given its peculiarities, it is impressive how we so often use high school as a reference for relationships between adults — Photo: Emmanuel Lafont/BBC
"We start paying attention to who's getting the most attention, who might be more dominant or 'cool,'" says Prinstein. "Those who begin to become more physically attractive, or who fit into group norms, [such as] those who dress well or are good at sports."
Adopting "pseudomature" behaviors, actions associated with older teens or adults, is another quick route to status. Teens who drink alcohol, use drugs, and engage in early romantic behaviors are more likely to be considered popular—at least for a while.
Around the age of 15, these behaviors no longer confer status to the same extent.
As adolescents mature, explicit status seeking becomes less socially advantageous, and "likability" begins to regain its role as an important determinant of social standing. But the effects of these early experiences of extreme social stratification can be significant.
"The experiences we have as children—whether we are liked, whether we are popular, or have high status—seem to have a lasting effect on us even 40 years later," says Prinstein.
"Likeability and status have virtually opposite effects. Being liked is good. In general, this leads to all sorts of positive outcomes in health, work, academic life, and psychological health.
"But having high status actually leads to the opposite."
The culture of cliques
Researchers used to think of high school culture as an immature version of adult society.
But in the 1960s, they began to understand that this "group culture" was something much stranger, a parallel world driven by its own eccentric fascinations and sets of codes.
Instead of a simple hierarchy, the high school social scene features a dynamic system of cliques. The main archetypes are repeated in popular culture, from films like American Pie and Breakfast Club to series like Malhação: the popular ones, the misfits, the rejected ones and the nerds.
During the early years of high school, the boundaries between cliques tend to be rigid. "Young people can become extraordinarily tribal, intolerant, and cruel by excluding those who are 'different,'" wrote German-American psychoanalyst Erik Erikson in his 1959 book, Identity and the Life Cycle.
This intolerance, Erikson argued, was perhaps "a necessary defense" against the loss of the identity one had as a child, combined with a bewildering wave of hormonal changes and the overwhelming nature of the future, with all its possibilities and choices.
Teens help each other get through this discomfort by "forming cliques and stereotyping themselves," he suggested. This spontaneous classification makes it easier for teenagers to navigate their social worlds because each person's relative "category" determines how they should be treated.
One thing that is ignored in popular culture, however, is the large proportion of teenagers who do not adhere to any specific subculture. A 1985 study found that about 45% of high school students defined themselves simply as "normal." While the popular young people said that their lives revolved around being well-dressed and going to parties, the "normal" people who defined themselves as such said things like: "I'm just an ordinary teenager."
Being "abnormal" and standing out for the wrong reasons can be socially catastrophic. Connie remembers arriving at her new school at age 13 and finding it impossible to carve out a place in that slippery social structure. She describes her attempts to emphasize different aspects of herself in search of the right clique.
"I remember trying to make friends with the nerdy girls. I remember trying to make friends with the cool girls," she says. "I thought, 'Oh, I'm very studious, I do all my homework.' And then that didn't work, so it was like, 'Oh, I wear makeup, I do my hair,' that kind of thing. I tried to fit in with the music people. I started playing the trumpet."
But it was no use. "I think I knew deep down that it just wasn't working," she says. “There was no place for me to fit in. In the end, I was completely ignored by everyone."
Middle school matures
Towards the end of high school, the rigid social hierarchy begins to relax a little.
In the early 1990s, researcher David Kinney carried out an ethnographic study in which he entered a school to closely observe changes in the boundaries between cliques. He followed former "nerds" who managed to transition into the "normal" group.
The rigidity of cliques early in high school may reflect the limited cognitive abilities of younger teens, he noted.
Although younger teens are increasingly able to reflect on themselves, many cannot differentiate between how often they think about themselves (a lot) and how often others think about them.
For many of the young "nerds" Kinney spoke to, this resulted in debilitating excessive attention to themselves and a certain paralysis in social interactions.
Over time, cognitive development allowed former nerds to feel less fearful and surround themselves with peers who offered them positive feedback.
Feeling "accepted", both in high school and beyond, is one of the strongest indicators of positive outcomes in life — Photo: Emmanuel Lafont/BBC
As teens mature, the barriers that come from wanting to fit in begin to diminish.
Popular young people may even be challenged by alternative and rebellious peers. Kinney's study found that in the school's later years, the "hipsters" were challenged by students with "flamboyant appearance and boisterous behavior" who "competed with them for popularity throughout the school."
Some of these subtle changes must have already been happening when, at age 15, Georgia first asked me to go out with her, but I still remember the confusion and disbelief I felt.
At that time, I was part of a predominantly male group of stoners. Was Georgia trying to play some kind of prank on me? Would I be lured out of my group only to be humiliated in some way?
Almost 20 years later, I ask Georgia why she wanted to be my friend, something I had never asked before. I wonder which of my extraordinary attributes might have caught your attention—my intelligence, my charm?
“I think there was a strangeness that we all shared,” she says hesitantly. "Like, none of us were normal."
School, army and prison
Given all its peculiarities, it's amazing how often we use high school as a reference for our interactions.
