The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth: Popularity, Quirk Theory, and Why Outsiders Thrive After High School

by Alexandra Robbins

  Throughout my years of lecturing at schools, my biggest surprise was a parent who, even after listening to a talk about how children’s health and happiness should be prioritized over prestige and accolades, asked me how to force her children to follow their mom’s dreams. At a high school outside of Seattle, she asked me, “What if my only dream for my kids is that they go to either Stanford or Yale?” Later, as the principal drove me back to my hotel, I told her about the encounter. The principal knew the woman. Her oldest daughter, she told me, was at Yale. Her younger daughter still attended the high school. “There’s a middle daughter, too,” she told me. The mother hadn’t mentioned her. “Where is she?” I asked. The principal named a small college. At that moment, my heart broke not only for the daughter who already was forced to become her mother’s alarmingly narrow ideal, but also for the middle daughter who knew that in her mother’s mind she had already failed.

  “All parents want their kids to be popular,” psychologist Lawrence Bauman has claimed. “Popular kids seem to be a vindication of all the early years of support that parents have given and the effort they have made in raising their kids.”3 In this respect, there may be scant difference between parents who push their kids to get into a prestigious college and parents desperate for their kids to be cool. Both sets of parents, intentionally or not, restrict their children by jamming them into a specific mold. Both sets might seek some sort of brag-worthy validation of their “successful” parenting. Both sets might make their children feel as if they aren’t good enough—or worse, that they are deficient or failures—the way they are. Certainly some parents push for popularity because they want to spare their children the pain of friendlessness. But what’s tragic about students in Eli’s situation is that rather than assure children that there’s no such thing as normal, some parents are telling them that they aren’t—and then making them feel like they should want to be. Too many parents fail to understand that there is a difference between fitting in and being liked, that there is a difference between being “normal” and being happy. High school is temporary. Family is not.

  “Normal” is a loaded, slippery word that signifies different standards for different groups. Eli, for his part, told me he didn’t “distinguish between normality and conformity.” An important observation of normality comes from psychologist David Anderegg: “When you try to identify people who are psychologically normal, the one reliable thing that seems to distinguish them, above all else, is that they define themselves as normal. They squeeze out any and all weirdness, because they don’t want it. To these aggressive mental centrists, nerds and geeks are not normal.”

  Parents who rely on their children’s peers to dictate normality are venturing into particularly perilous territory, even apart from the idea that defining normality by teenage trends produces standards that are arbitrary and ultimately meaningless. When parents equate normality with popularity, they encourage behavior that is of much more concern than unpopularity.

  Students reported that their parents’ preoccupation with their social status can go beyond the bounds of trying to disguise or smother their quirks. A New Jersey junior didn’t drink alcohol frequently, but happened to tell her mother that most students at her school did. Seemingly disappointed, her mom fretted, “Oh . . . well if everyone’s drinking, does that mean you aren’t cool?” In condoning alcohol use, parents may be hoping to be “the cool parent” among their children’s friends, expecting to boost their children’s popularity. Yet studies show that students perceive parents who have negative attitudes about alcohol and drugs to be more caring.

  Parents’ attitudes toward drinking can be more dangerous than they realize, whether they throw parties with alcohol for teenagers, or allow them to drink alcohol in their homes while they look the other way. “The permissiveness of parents who want their kids to be popular can lead to tragic consequences,” according to Joseph Califano Jr., former U.S. Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare. The permissive parent debate runs hot and fierce. Some parents insist that because teenagers are going to drink anyway, they might as well drink at home. “High school kids drink. . . . It’s going to happen,” the Cato Institute’s Radley Balko wrote in the Washington Post. “Surely there are more pressing concerns for the Washington area criminal justice system to address than parents who throw supervised parties for high school kids. These parents . . . know that underage drinking goes on and take steps to prevent that reality from becoming harmful. We ought to be encouraging that kind of thing, not arresting people for it.”

  Actually underage drinking is harmful to begin with. Health risks aside, numerous studies show that children whose parents allow them to drink at home are at a higher risk for developing alcohol problems. By contrast, teenagers who don’t drink at home are less likely to drink anywhere. Balko’s view is shockingly common. In a long-term study, Connecticut high school students told researchers that their parents were much more tolerant of substance abuse than they were of rudeness, academic failure, and stealing. It is unclear, however, whether Balko bothered to research his op-ed before pontificating in a major newspaper, given his erroneous claim that kids are going to drink anyway and his suggestion that if they drink at home, they won’t drink elsewhere. In fact, teenagers whose parents provide alcohol for parties are three times more likely to binge drink. Penn State’s Prevention Research and Methodology Center found that “the greater number of drinks that a parent had set as a limit for the teens, the more often they drank and got drunk in college.” Conversely students whose parents strongly disapprove of underage drinking are less likely to drink heavily in college. Experts say college drinking can cause far worse problems than alcoholism. One wonders what, for Balko, could possibly be a “more pressing concern” than the health and safety of children?

  While encouraging substance abuse is extreme, parental pressure to conform to other social standards is no less damaging to an impressionable teenager’s psyche. Too many teens have to deal with parents’ constant criticisms about their weight. Practically everything about Eli—his clothes, his interests, his mannerisms, his hair—was under fire. The mother of Wade, a New Hampshire junior, tried to change his sexual orientation. The only openly gay student at his school, Wade experienced only sporadic harassment from classmates in his conservative community. But when the topic came up at home, his mother immediately signed him up for counseling because, Wade said, “she believed I had been sexually abused to make me the ‘way I am.’ At least at school, there is room for me to breathe.”

  Imagine what it must be like for teenagers like Wade or Eli, who don’t feel they have room to breathe in their own homes. If you are a parent reading this book, you care about your child. If she is quirky, unusual, or nonconformist, ask yourself whether you are doing everything you can to nurture her unusual interests, style, or skills, or whether instead you are directly or subtly pushing her to hide them.

  The same day that Eli told me about the “geeky haircut” conversation, he mentioned that he had set a goal to sell his possessions and take off to travel the world by 2020. Eli’s command of geography was impressive, his hope for adventure wistful, but I could not shake the image of this earnest but jaded boy searching the globe for the unconditionally accepting safe haven he could not find at home. Meanwhile, he couldn’t wait to attend the college he had applied to mostly because it was as far across the country as he could get. I realized then that his mother’s desperate attempts to convince her son to be “normal” resulted in a consequence that, to many parents, would be a far worse fate than having an idiosyncratic child at home: She drove her child away.

  Late Winter to Early Spring

  Being Excluded Doesn’t Mean That Anything’s Wrong with You

  Chapter 8

  A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO GROUP PSYCHOLOGY

  WHITNEY, NEW YORK | THE POPULAR BITCH

  In February, Whitney walked into her new economics class, saw a sea of black, and did a double take. Since eighth grade, s
he had taken honors and college-level classes with the same students. But Riverland offered only one level of economics. Whitney scanned the room. All of the students were punk, emo, or losers. She checked the room number to make sure she was in the right class, then sat next to punk girls who looked at her strangely. Whitney was wearing her cheerleading warmups and a large bow in her hair because it was a game day.

  “Whitney,” said a skanky punk, “you need to leave right now.” Populars categorized the punks as “okay punks” or “skanky punks,” a division based entirely on money. The skanky punks were poor.

  Startled, Whitney asked why.

  “Because you’re too smart to be in this class and you’ll make us all look stupid.” The other students cracked up.

  Whitney laughed nervously. When Chelsea walked in, Whitney dashed across the room to sit next to her, finding a small sense of security in the vicinity of another popular. “Ugh,” Chelsea whispered to Whitney, “here we go again.”

  After a brief introduction to the class, the teacher said, “Raise your hand if you have a car.” Almost everyone raised a hand.

  “Who pays for your own car?” Whitney and Chelsea put their hands down. Their classmates’ hands were still raised.

  “Okay,” the teacher continued, “whose parents pay for their car?” Only Whitney and Chelsea raised their hands.

  “Whose parents pay for gas?” Chelsea’s hand lowered.

  Whitney was the only student with a hand in the air. Her classmates stared at her and muttered, “Oh my God.” Blushing, Whitney quickly lowered her hand.

  “Wow,” one boy shouted, “I wish I was her.” The students laughed.

  Later that day, in advertising (another class without preps), the students discussed which magazines to use for a project. When Whitney said she wanted to use American Cheerleader, the other girls in the class gave her dirty looks.

  Whitney tried to focus on happier things. She had been selected as first chair flutist in the all-county band, for example. Whitney liked the flute, which she had played for nearly a decade, partly because she believed she could express herself more truthfully through music than she could at school. The preps had discouraged her from playing because rehearsals often conflicted with social plans, but Whitney was committed. She attended every rehearsal for the following month’s concert, even skipping a cheerleading competition for one of the band practices. She also had been accepted to her first-choice college. But her social issues overshadowed these triumphs.

  ______

  WHY GROUPS DON’T GET ALONG

  Throughout the year, Eli wondered repeatedly, “Why can’t we all get along?” He couldn’t figure out why, by senior year, cliques couldn’t just set aside their quibbles and coexist peacefully. One answer to Eli’s question lies in the psychology of group identity.

  In the early 1970s, social psychologist Henri Tajfel showed an audience of fourteen- and fifteen-year-old boys slides of abstract paintings. Tajfel told the boys that they would be divided into two groups, depending on which paintings they preferred. He lied. In reality, Tajfel and his team randomly assigned the groups. The psychologists then ushered the boys one by one into cubicles, gave them a list of each group’s members identified only by code numbers, and told them to distribute virtual money to everyone. Even though the boys did not know what membership meant, they were so eager to adopt an us-versus-them mentality that they showed favoritism, a hallmark of group identity, toward their own random, meaningless group.

  Researchers have replicated these results, using more minimal fake group assignments. Students showed group favoritism even when they were told that the groups were assigned by the flip of a coin. To rule out the idea that group members played favorites because they believed they had something in common with their groupmates, researchers split people into groups by lottery and told them so. The results didn’t change.

  The need to belong is one of the most powerful human motivations. We are naturally drawn toward forming and sustaining groups. There are evolutionary reasons for this drive; groups offer survival and reproductive advantages. Group membership improves odds of finding a mate, hunting successfully, and defending against predators. Groups can more easily compete for and store food and other resources than can lone individuals. Children have a better chance of survival when they are part of a group that cares about their welfare, feeding them, protecting them, and babysitting them.

  Groups can also be beneficial from a cognitive standpoint. Tajfel’s social identity theory said that people are quick to form and affiliate with groups because groups help us to define our social identities. We see ourselves as members of social categories that enable us to visualize our supposed place in a social structure. Groups satisfy our brain’s natural inclination to make sense of the hordes of people we encounter and observe. This quality is so inherent that children intuitively understand the need to form groups without adults having to teach them.

  When children first begin to sort out their social world, their groupings are broad and oversimplified. Toddlers as young as one year old might, for example, call all children babies—even if they’re twelve. By first grade, children typically have split into distinct social circles, but are probably still blissfully unaware of perceived popularity. At about the age of seven, children have developed the cognitive ability to apply several categories to someone (tall, friendly, good at sports). As children age, they get better at analyzing which categories are relevant to various contexts. For example, they learn that when needing someone tall to reach a cookie jar, it would be a mistake to ask people only from their own gender, race, or grade because the tallest person may be in a different group. By fourth grade, students recognize status differences and can pinpoint each other’s social positions.

  Henri Tajfel didn’t actually set out to prove that teenagers would identify with groups formed randomly. His purpose was different: He wanted to understand what caused people to play favorites with their own group (psychologists call this “in-group bias”). To accomplish this goal, Tajfel decided to begin with experimental groups that were so insignificant that their members couldn’t possibly feel the need to show favoritism. He was surprised when his first random group and every subsequent group played favorites. Tajfel’s unanticipated finding is generally hailed across fields as a seminal discovery.

  More recent research has argued that people’s trust in their groups doesn’t necessarily mean they dislike outsiders, only that they may discriminate against them. Students may become cafeteria fringe merely because they don’t happen to fit neatly into groups that have already formed. People assign more favorable characteristics to their own group and assume that their groupmates’ beliefs are more similar to theirs than are outsiders’ beliefs. They usually process information about outsiders in simplistic ways, then bond over their generalized stereotypes of non-group members.

  Not all groups experience in-group bias the same way. High-status groups (populars, for instance) display more group favoritism, evaluate their group more positively, and critique other groups more negatively than do low-status groups. Members of low-status groups, meanwhile, might attempt to feel better about their identity by copying high-status groups (such as wannabes who dress like populars); using the social creativity strategy, meaning they find different factors on which to base their comparisons (“They will work for me someday”); or comparing themselves to other low-status groups, much like Eli’s list of nerd subspecies.

  Group favoritism seems intuitive, but how does it lead to clique warfare? In 1954, social psychologist Muzafer Sherif invited twenty-two eleven-year-old boys to a three-week summer camp in Robbers Cave State Park, Oklahoma. The boys were well-adjusted, middle class, Protestant Oklahoma City residents with similar IQs and no history of social or academic problems. Sherif randomly divided the boys into two groups and positioned them at opposite ends of a 200-acre campground outfitted with hidden tape recorders. Sherif’s team of observers served as camp staff. Sherif hi
mself, disguised as the camp janitor, watched how events played out.

  For the first several days of camp, the two groups were unaware of each other. The boys instinctively formed group identities, naming their groups the Eagles and the Rattlers. Toward the end of the first week, the camp staff told each group that there was another set of boys on the campgrounds. When the Eagles heard the faraway sounds of the Rattler boys at play, one of the Eagles, knowing nothing about the Rattlers, called them “nigger campers.” Each group requested to compete against the other.

  During the second week, Sherif set up a tournament of competitions—baseball, touch football, tug-of-war, tent-pitching—in which only the winning group received rewards. Tensions between the groups skyrocketed. They sang derisive songs and continued the name-calling. The Eagles set fire to the Rattlers camp flag. Camp staff forcibly broke up fistfights. The Rattlers, decked out commando-style, raided the Eagles’ cabin, ripping through mosquito netting and stealing or vandalizing some of the Eagles’ possessions. Adults had to prevent the Eagles from attacking the Rattlers with rocks.

  Tajfel’s paintings experiment illustrated that random, meaningless groups can adopt an us-versus-them mentality. Sherif’s Robbers Cave experiment demonstrated that those groups can quickly turn hostile, even when they haven’t met face-to-face, and that in a competitive environment the hostility can escalate. Now step up the intensity of both of those scenarios: Nonrandom groups formed exclusively and bonded over time are placed in a setting in which they repeatedly must compete for resources, prestige, adult approval, and limited spots in various desirable organizations. When presented that way, it should come as no surprise that these groups might have difficulty getting along. When presented that way, it sounds a lot like school.