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

by Alexandra Robbins

  “You’re one of the only teachers in this school who legitimately cares about kids,” said a sophomore.

  The class nodded. A junior said, “It’s a teacher’s job to try to help kids any way they can. You’re the only teacher I have who does that. How come other teachers aren’t getting in trouble? Why are you getting in trouble for making class interesting?”

  “Yeah, what do they have against you?” another student asked.

  Regan didn’t know.

  ELI, VIRGINIA | THE NERD

  The Academic Bowl coach began to ask a question: “Indo—”

  BUZZ. “Jakarta,” Eli said.

  “Right!”

  “I didn’t even know what he said!” a teammate complained.

  The coach continued. “The Parisian mus—”

  BUZZ. “The Louvre,” Eli said.

  “How could you get that?!” another teammate whined. “He only said two words!”

  Eli grinned. Sometimes it was fun to be a nerd.

  After school the next day, Eli approached his locker to retrieve his books. Three students Eli identified as “ghetto people,” wearing baggy pants and chains, were standing at a nearby locker, blocking Eli’s way.

  “Excuse me,” Eli said to the student directly in front of his locker. The student did nothing.

  “Excuse me,” Eli repeated.

  “Dude,” said another boy. “Move out of his way.”

  “Oh, sorry,” the first kid said. He stepped forward only slightly, his backpack still obstructing Eli’s access.

  Eli had to stand to the side of his locker, and could open it only partially. As he tried to maneuver his books out of the narrow crack, he heard the third student say to the first, “Why are you standing so close to me?”

  “That kid’s at his locker.”

  The third student lowered his voice. “Who cares? Look at him, he’s a nerd.”

  “I know, but . . .” Eli missed the end of the conversation as the group walked away.

  Eli sighed. Okay, you’re ghetto, I’ll leave you alone; I’m a nerd, leave me alone, he thought. Why can’t we just stay in our own separate spheres?

  At the next Academic Bowl practice, Eli managed to run the entire National Parks category (prompting a teammate to say, “Do you just spend all your time staring at maps or something?”). But he wasn’t as quick as usual, and neither was the rest of the team. When they missed a few easy questions, the coach jumped out of his chair and shouted, “What is wrong with you guys?! You laugh now, but just wait ’til we get our asses kicked by Arrington.” Arrington had won several championships. “They practice five days a week, and after I said some things to their coach after the first round”—which Eli’s team had won—“do you think they’re going to let us get off easy? You guys have got to get faster on the buzzers and stop missing easy questions. I’m not losing to Arrington. They’re from the freakin’ ghetto.”

  As the rest of the students tried to stifle their laughter, Eli listened somberly to his coach’s warning about the upcoming final round.

  The following night, Eli’s mother asked him, “Why don’t you get some friends together and go see a movie or something this weekend?” At his look, she added, “I just thought you’d want to get out and do something on the weekend.”

  “Okay, I’ll think about it.”

  “Well, you say that all the time. I talked to Dad and he also says you never go out on the weekends.”

  “Okay, just please leave me alone then.”

  That night, he emailed a friend, “I’m both excited and nervous for college, but does that necessarily mean big changes? There is just so much I want to do—skydive, travel the world, run a marathon—but is [this] the beginning of these dreams or just the beginning of a lifelong realization that maybe everything isn’t as I expect it to be? Will moving to the other side of the country really open me up to people? What will I do if I don’t make friends? The more I think about it, the more doubt, uncertainty, and more than anything else, loneliness, plagues me. As depressing as that sounds, I’m still gonna go into all this with an optimistic outlook. There is still a teeny-tiny part of my soul holding on and thinking the best is yet to come. But right now, with a zero social life, depressing family situation, mounds of schoolwork, and questioning who I am, I’m just doing all that I can to keep pushing on.”

  ______

  WHY STUDENTS EXCLUDE

  Experts attribute exclusion to a fundamental concept. As Duke University psychology professor John Coie has said, “The dynamics of group life require that someone be rejected.” You can’t have positive space without negative space to define its outlines. You can’t crown a winner without others to defeat. This idea isn’t new. Emile Durkheim, a prominent sociologist at the turn of the twentieth century, theorized that society needs “deviants” in order to define the boundaries of normality. Social psychologists tell us that deviant group members are those who stray from prevailing group norms. A group might assume that alienating these nonconformists will lead to a more cohesive group, a more consistent group image, and group decision-making that’s tidy and conflict-free.

  The deviants, however, are powerful. The role of the deviant can be such a catalyst that it can cause a group to reverse its in-group bias. In 1988, researchers discovered an anomaly they dubbed the “black sheep effect.” First, they found that students evaluated likeable fellow group members more positively than likeable outsiders, as expected. But then they unearthed something strange. Those same students evaluated unlikeable outsiders more positively than similar, unlikeable insiders.

  How can the black sheep effect so clearly flip the concept of in-group bias? Group members, consciously or not, may want to manipulate group dynamics in the group’s collective best interest. According to one theory, a deviant member is more of a threat to the group than a deviant outsider because he goes against group norms, which are in place to distinguish that group from other groups. If a group member rebels against group norms, then he challenges the group’s belief that it is better than other groups. A deviant outsider, however, not only poses no threat to the group, but also validates group norms because the group adheres to them and the outsider does not. The preps nearly drove Whitney out of their group for wearing her own distinctive hippie-chic style. Yet when a non-prep wore a similar fashion later in the year, the preps complimented her.

  So who are these deviants? They may be people with unusual interests and opinions, like Eli or Blue, students who do not fear being alone, like Danielle, or guys who are unafraid to express their emotions, like Noah. Some groups choose to exclude a classmate for no significant reason at all. I heard from dozens of students whose cliques or “best friends” turned on them for no apparent cause. There may be a psychological explanation for this sudden 180: Attacking a third party makes people believe they have something in common. Australian psychologist Laurence Owens observed, “Bitching, gossiping, or storytelling serves to bind the friendship together and create intimacy for those who are in as against those who are out.” This method of exclusion is particularly common in schools. As a drama kid in Georgia put it, “Gossip is like word vomit here.”

  The good news is that if people are left out because a group needs a scapegoat, they are not doomed to a life of social rejection; they should, according to Coie, “experience some relief when they join new groups in which they are not cast in this same deviant role.” As with the black sheep, these scapegoats illustrate another case in which a student might be excluded not because his or her behavior is offensive per se, but because of its potential effect on the group as a whole. Is that, then, what exclusion is all about—not necessarily cruelty for the sake of cruelty, but a valid way for kids to coordinate and organize their social environment? That’s what Stacey Horn, a University of Illinois psychology professor, wanted to know. Horn conducted a series of studies about exclusion to investigate how adolescents view group status and social identity issues.

  In one study, Horn s
urveyed freshmen and juniors at a large Midwestern high school where the low-status groups included Goths, druggies, and dirties (a label, used there, for smart kids who wore grunge and sometimes participated in delinquent behavior). Horn presented the students with hypothetical scenarios about Goths, druggies, and dirties excluded from various activities because of their label. In one scenario, preppies didn’t want a classmate on the student council specifically because he was a dirtie. Horn asked if it was all right or not all right for the preppies to want to exclude the dirtie from the student council. Students in both grades said the exclusion was acceptable.

  Horn’s work led her to conclude that students regard exclusion and teasing as “a legitimate way of regulating behavior that they viewed as deviant or weird.” Teenagers try to enforce the categorizations they use to make sense of the world around them. If kids see themselves as the Normal Police, then exclusion is one of their most powerful weapons.

  During the second stage of Horn’s study, she provided a new detail about the low-status student to make the situation less ambiguous; for example, the dirtie was involved with high school activities. This descriptive variable led students to say they believed the exclusion was more wrong than before they knew anything about the boy besides his label. Ninth graders were more likely than eleventh graders to use stereotypes, rather than moral reasoning, to justify the exclusion. But a number of students still thought that it was fair to exclude someone just because of his label. Horn concluded that stereotyped group labels “function as social categories by which adolescents can judge their peers without having actual information about them.” Thus many students are excluded only because classmates don’t get to know them. It’s easier on the brain to lump outsiders into a general category.

  In a follow-up experiment, Horn wanted to see how far teenagers would go to rely on stereotypes over morality when making judgments about someone. She and her colleagues asked high school freshmen to judge whether it was all right to punish a particular group of students for wrongdoing even when there was no evidence that they were to blame. The result? A significant number of the freshmen said that it was okay to punish the group—if the group’s stereotypes fit the crime. They agreed that it was more acceptable to penalize football players for damaging property at a school dance than to punish them for hacking into the school computer system, even if there was no proof they committed either transgression. In scenarios consistent with group stereotypes, the freshmen were more likely to judge based on those stereotypes than on issues of fairness or rights.

  Does it matter if a dirtie isn’t on the student council? Or if a Goth doesn’t make the cheerleading squad? Some kids, and even adults, may view this type of exclusion as relatively harmless because it seems reflective of a school’s natural order. At many schools, like Whitney’s, class officers are usually preps.

  But what if the peer group categories were more incendiary? What if a student was excluded from the student council not because she was a dirtie but because she was a girl? What if students were punished, without evidence, for destroying school property because they were black? Horn’s mentor, University of Maryland professor Melanie Killen, interviewed diverse nine-, twelve-, and fifteen-year-olds about hypothetical situations in which a child was excluded from friendship, school, or a music club based on gender or race. Almost all of the students said that excluding a child from school because of race or gender was wrong. Their opinions changed, however, when it came to friendship and club membership. In those cases, the students said, exclusion was more acceptable because they should be able to choose their own friends. They rationalized that the club would function better if the club members were more alike.

  Similarly Killen told first, fourth, and seventh graders that they hypothetically had to choose either a black or white student for a basketball team or a math club. The seventh graders were more likely than the younger students to use stereotypes when making their decision, choosing the black student for the basketball team and the white student for the math club. The seventh graders also tended to justify their choice by explaining that their selection would make the group work better.

  In situations in which little personal information is available, teens often rely on stereotypes when drawing conclusions about a person. Even if, as they age, adolescents become more aware of discrimination issues, their stereotypic expectations also tend to increase. This confusing combination of changes can make it even more challenging for them to evaluate people—and can cause them to de-prioritize fairness and morality when they decide to exclude. Exclusion is common behavior. But that doesn’t make it unchangeable. And that doesn’t mean that anything is wrong with the cafeteria fringe.

  Spring

  Quirk Theory’s Origins: Why These Issues Are Hardest in School

  Chapter 10

  CHANGING PERCEPTIONS

  DANIELLE, ILLINOIS | THE LONER

  Danielle remained unenthusiastic about her challenge. The girl who had no trouble careening down black diamonds and who had just plunged into below-freezing water with her mother for a charity event, was scared, especially to talk to the students she referred to as “supernerds.” (She later remarked, “People freak me out more than potentially life-threatening activities.”)

  Danielle liked what she called “my little bubble where I don’t have to talk to anyone or feel compelled to do anything that someone else wants me to do.” Her creative writing teacher had described “building a fortress around your heart and shooting down anyone who tries to climb it.” Danielle identified strongly with that metaphor. “I don’t really trust anyone, so the idea of trying to be friends with them is really unappealing,” she explained. “I don’t like feeling responsible for relationships, which is probably why all of mine suck. And I’m kind of worried that no one else will really get me like my friends now do. They all make fun of me for doing things like spontaneously laughing in class because I remembered something funny from earlier, or just being completely random, but they at least accept it and think it’s funny, while other people might think it’s really weird. Also the idea of having to talk is not something I’m happy about.”

  Nevertheless, she had accepted the challenge, which she termed “Operation Outcast,” because, she said, “I’m not happy being so secluded, either. I don’t want to be someone with a million friends, but I don’t want to be so uncomfortable talking to people. I hope to be able to not be so completely socially awkward. It’s embarrassing that I can’t even keep the most basic of conversations going, and that will inevitably hurt me later on. I don’t want to be like people my age, because I like being different, but I should be able to talk to them. Making friends is a skill that I’ll most likely need, and I can’t relate to people older than me forever. (They’re going to die eventually.)”

  Furthermore, National Honor Society elections were coming up, and Danielle hoped to run for Webmaster. Having honed her HTML skills on MySpace since eighth grade, she assumed that she would be good at updating the Web site. In order to run for the position, however, she would have to do some minor campaigning. Which meant she would have to talk to people.

  Danielle wasn’t sure how to chat in class, when teachers’ lectures took up entire periods. She didn’t talk to students between classes because the atmosphere was so chaotic that she feared saying something unimportant would seem pathetic. As she put it, “I hate saying things that are stupid and don’t need to be said, so I usually won’t say anything if I don’t have to.”

  But she tried. Over the next week, Danielle managed to ask a supernerd a question about a homework assignment. In government, she discussed a test with a classmate. In math, she talked to Camille’s preppy friend Trish, who sat in front of her. At a reading committee meeting, she asked another outcast why, after the one meeting Danielle had missed, Blindness had suddenly disappeared from the list.

  In creative writing, she sat next to a student she knew from the school literary magazine, for which she had devoted
time to evaluating student submissions. The guy was both weird and well-liked; he was an excellent writer, painter, and gymnast. They talked about food and pop.

  In late March, Danielle decided to get a job to earn money for college and for the long list of books she wanted to buy. Her first stop was Dairy Queen. As a teenager, Danielle’s mother had worked at McDonald’s for several years, which had helped her to get over her own fear of people. Danielle hoped that a fast-food job would help her too. Plus, she was a big fan of ice cream, and her mother would be tickled if she regularly brought home Cherry Mr. Misty floats.

  A Stone Mill supernerd—the girl who would probably end up being class valedictorian—stood behind the counter. Danielle asked for an application. Normally she would have left immediately, but instead she attempted small talk. “When you work here, do you ever want to eat the food?” she asked.

  The girl smiled. “Yeah, sometimes! Not usually, though.”

  Danielle left, pleased with the nonessential exchange.

  As Danielle grew bolder (on the Danielle scale) with potential friends she hardly knew, her current friends gave her a hard time. On St. Patrick’s Day, Danielle wore a green T-shirt; she loved the out-of-the-ordinary giddiness that holidays inspired. All day, Nikki and Paige rolled their eyes at her, muttering, “I can’t believe you wore green.” Even so, Danielle gave up her free period to go to lunch with the group. At Camille’s house, Nikki said to Camille, “Did Mona tell you about Saturday night!?” They whispered to each other. Danielle could tell that Paige knew what they were discussing.

  On the walk back to school, Danielle stopped to wait for Nikki and Camille. “Go away, Danielle,” Nikki said. “Me and Camille are talking.”