Middle school and high school tend to be Darwinian in terms of the social hierarchy — it's a pecking order, and if you happen to be at the bottom, your adolescent years will most likely be marked by pain and suffering. Unless….you see yourself as well-liked and accepted. A new study has found that even the kids who aren't popular but who see themselves as popular "are just as socially successful over time as the kids who actually are part of the in-crowd." The study also discovered a "popularity gap."

From the Newsweek article:

One of McElhaney's most interesting findings is that self-perceived and peer-perceived popularity don't line up too well; most of the well-liked kids do not perceive themselves as well liked and visa versa. The correlation between self-perceived and peer-ranked popularity was .25, meaning about a quarter of the kids who were popular according to their classmates also thought they were popular. For the other three quarters, there was a disconnect between how the teen saw themselves and what their peers thought.

Why such a perception gap? For one thing, humans are notoriously bad at gauging what others think of us, whether it's a musical performance or on a first date. We're usually way off base thinking we did far worse or far better than others think we did. Although this particular study did not get at what exactly makes a teen feel well liked, McElhaney ventures a guess: kids who felt well liked but weren't considered more universally popular, may have carved out a small niche for themselves where they have a small number of very positive social relationships that bolster their self esteem. Or, they may be off the radar at their high school, but highly involved in an outside activity, like a church group or competitive sports team, so they're relying on their experiences outside of middle school to figure out their social standing.

Evidently, popularity is in the eye of the beholder.

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