Today Daniel is in his thirties, and he’s turned out exactly as you might have expected—caring, energetic, modest, and likable. In the past decade or so, Daniel has founded and sold several multimillion-dollar businesses. If you have ever used Google Docs, Daniel is one of the people you can thank, as his was one of the companies that helped create the live-collaboration capability of the application. After years working on strategic initiatives at Google, he’s now a sought-after investor and board contributor to many of the most successful CEOs and entrepreneurs around the globe. He’s also a frequent keynote speaker at business schools and an advisor to entrepreneurs throughout the country, and he counts former US presidents, members of Congress, prime ministers, and CEOs of some of the most well-known global brands like Google and Apple as his close personal friends.
Daniel believes that popularity is very much a part of the adult playground, affecting the innovation and productivity of corporations all over the world. He perceives something very adolescent in the workplace that reminds him of my class almost every day, he tells me. It’s a dynamic that plays out in every meeting and influences how every decision is made.
“Here’s what happens,” Daniel explains. “After a meeting, everyone gets together in twos and threes around the watercooler, and then you hear what people really thought. And it’s all the stuff that didn’t get talked about at the meeting at all. I’m always amazed at the big difference, and I wonder, why the delta?”
Daniel’s theory is that efficient decision-making in business has become hampered by popularity, or rather the fear of losing it. “People don’t want to lose status or have people dislike them,” he says. “There’s a lot of norming in a company, people going with the herd, following others. People are afraid to say what they think. I find it really interesting how much we overestimate how secure those around us are, and how much this still plays out for people in their thirties, forties, and fifties. They still need that validation from their peers. They really want people to like them, and when they think others don’t, it stings them for days, or months.”
Daniel also believes that popularity has a lot to do with our happiness. “We did a study at Google,” he recalled. The results boiled down to two findings. More than raises, or promotions, or perks, there were two things that predicted who was happy and who was not. One had to do with the frequency of constructive feedback employees got from their managers. But the second was simply how much people felt they had someone—anyone—who liked them. “It’s the small things, the human things, that make organizations flourish and make people happy,” Daniel says.
“It’s funny,” he explains. “We teach writing and arithmetic. We expect folks to do very well in science and reading from a very early age. But the ability to establish great relationships with others seems to be every bit as important to success if not more, yet it’s not taught in a formal way. We usually learn about relationships by trial and error—how to get along with peers and how to be popular. For those who can do it, great. But for others, it is a lifetime of struggling, never understanding why their peers have issues with them.”
Popularity is a part of life that we experience every day, in every type of social situation. And the way that we experience popularity in one context tends to be related to the way we connect to others in all parts of our lives.
But there’s a catch: most people don’t realize that there are two different types of popularity—one that helps us, and one that can potentially harm us, leaving us stranded in adolescence. And ever since high school, we have never come to terms with which kind we want.
CHAPTER 2
Boorish Bully or Likable Leader
There’s More Than One Type of Popularity
It was the early 1840s, and the doctors of General Hospital in Vienna were worried. For reasons no one could understand, hundreds of women who delivered babies at the hospital were developing an extremely high fever and dying. The fever occurred most often among new mothers on an obstetrics unit staffed by physicians. Those who gave birth on a second unit, run by midwives, had much better rates of survival.
The doctors carefully analyzed both units, taking note of the differences in doctors’ and midwives’ delivery practices, the units’ atmospheres, and even the women’s physical positions during labor. They systematically tested one hypothesis after another to account for the deaths, but they could not identify a determinate factor. Mothers on the doctors’ unit continued to develop what was referred to as a “puerperal fever” and die. Soon pregnant women in Vienna pleaded to be admitted to the midwives’ unit. Some even chose to give birth on the city streets. Remarkably, even those who delivered outside the hospital were more likely to survive than those under medical care.
Then a young physician named Ignaz Semmelweis began working at General Hospital. Semmelweis was a trainee from a wealthy family, and his colleagues quickly selected him as chief resident. Over time he earned respect from his associates and supervisors for his medical knowledge, his upper-class background, and his medical proficiency. His reputation spread throughout the entire city, and people wanted to meet him just to hear his opinions.
Semmelweis soon developed a theory to explain the mysterious deaths. He observed that the doctors who worked on the obstetrics unit also performed autopsies. Many of these were conducted on individuals who had died of puerperal fever, after which the attending physicians would proceed immediately to the obstetrics unit. Semmelweis hypothesized that puerperal fever in the new mothers was caused by “cadaver particles” that somehow spread the disease from the dead bodies.
He suggested that his colleagues routinely wash their hands with an antiseptic solution following each autopsy to reduce contagion to women on the obstetrics unit. He also urged doctors to disinfect all medical instruments that had been used in autopsies. In essence, Semmelweis developed a theory of infection by germs that guides medical practice to this day.
His suggestions worked. The mortality rate among the mothers on the physicians’ unit fell to around 1 percent, the same rate as the midwives’. Dr. Semmelweis was hailed as a hero, but despite all his fame and status, medical historians report that people did not especially like him. Howard Markel, a distinguished professor and director of the Center for the History of Medicine at the University of Michigan, reports that Semmelweis frequently “hurled outrageously rude insults to some of the hospital’s most powerful doctors who deigned to question his ideas.” He “publicly berated people who disagreed with him,” according to another account, and loudly branded those who challenged his ideas “murderers.”
His supporters pleaded with him over many years to publish his findings, so others could review and promote his practices. Yet he refused, stating that his discoveries were “self-evident,” and that there was no need to defend them to those who were “ignorant.” When he did eventually agree to publication, after a decade of resistance, the piece was filled with hostile rants that personally attacked his critics, their intelligence, and their character. He stated that his peers did “not even understand the limited truth,” dismissing them as “wretched observers” of medical conditions, and judged that Germans’ disagreement with his principles rendered “the obstetrical training in Berlin worthless.”
Dr. Semmelweis had high status and influence. He was well respected, revered, and powerful. He was popular. But he was also a bully, and thus loathed by many of his peers.
—
One hundred fifty years later, three girls walked into the library of a small suburban high school in southern Connecticut. All had blond hair and all were dressed impeccably, if not a little provocatively for fifteen-year-olds on a school day—tiny T-shirts, short skirts, and matching sneakers with bulky pink socks. Their arrival was noticed by just about everyone.
The tallest girl, Alexandra, entered the library first, while her two friends followed dutifully a few paces behind. Alexandra moved with the confidenc
e of a star, without a trace of adolescent awkwardness. The aisle between the study carrels was her runway, and she walked it erect with long strides and a gaze fixed toward nothing specific ahead. When one of her friends asked her a question, she responded without turning to face her. Occasionally she offered a passing glance or wave to a classmate, who stared up at her with wonder.
Alexandra had come to the library to participate in a research study on popularity conducted by my lab. My assistants stood in the doorway of a private room, waiting for a dozen or so participants, a few of whom were already working diligently at a large conference table. Before my assistants could ask for her name, she entered the room and announced, “I’m Alexandra Cort.” The other students looked up immediately.
Alexandra’s friends, meanwhile, seated themselves on chairs outside the private room, staring aimlessly at the stacks around them. When my assistants informed them that they were free to leave, one replied, “No, we’ll stay here. We’re here with Alexandra Cort.”
“Yeah,” the other boasted. “We’re her best friends.”
“She will be here all period,” an assistant pointed out. “Don’t you want to get some lunch?”
“No, we want to wait for her. We’ll skip lunch.”
“Actually,” the assistant explained, “it’s important for our study that the participants are not distracted. Would you mind waiting for your friend in the cafeteria?”
Rolling their eyes, the girls slid their chairs some twenty feet away from the room, sat down again, and began to whisper to each other.
Our data eventually revealed that Alexandra was the most popular girl in the tenth grade. In fact, she was the first person selected by almost every single participant when we asked them to name the most popular kids in their school.
But she also was one of the most despised. About 65 percent of her classmates—by far more than anyone else in her grade—picked Alexandra as the student who was most likely to gossip about others, use her friendships as a way of being mean, give others the “silent treatment,” and say hurtful things behind others’ backs. About half of her classmates identified her as one of the students they liked least.
Even her friends obediently waiting for her to complete her participation in our study were overheard whispering about her. “Alex is so conceited,” one remarked. “I know,” replied the other. “Like, I don’t even want to go with her to the mall this weekend.”
Anyone who is popular is bound to be disliked.
—Yogi Berra
How can someone be popular when they are not even liked? The very idea seems like a contradiction.
Yet when we think about “popularity,” we tend to immediately think of people who have an outsized reputation—people like Ignaz Semmelweis and Alexandra Cort. Anyone who has been to high school remembers exactly who the popular types were: the cheerleaders, the athletes, the wealthy kids, or those whose parents held high-profile positions in the community. Even as we disliked them, we grudgingly emulated them. In my high school, no one would be caught dead without an Ocean Pacific T-shirt and everyone talked about the latest Duran Duran video, because those were exactly the things the popular students told us were cool. But in most cases, these kids weren’t even our friends.
If we consider someone we don’t like as being popular, then what does “popularity” really mean?
This is a surprisingly difficult question to answer. Bill Bukowski, a Canadian psychologist who has studied popularity among youth for decades, traces the etymology of the word “popular” to the Middle French (populier) and Latin (popularis), which originally referred to ideas or politicians that were “of the people.” A “popular movement” was thus one that rose from among the masses, rather than from their leaders. By the sixteenth century, the word “popular” was adopted by the English to refer to prices or resources that were “accessible to commoners,” such as the “popular press.” But in the past four hundred years, the term “popular” began to blend the concept of plurality with the idea of something valued and preferred. By the seventeenth century, “popular” referred to anything widely adopted but also “well regarded.” Today, of course, this usage is reflected in the ubiquitous online lists that have co-opted the phrase “most popular” to rank anything and everything—baby names, vacation destinations, dog breeds, diets, YouTube videos, stocks, ice-cream flavors, and so on. There are even lists for the most popular Nobel Prize Laureates, sexual fetishes, Catholic saints, cat names—it’s endless. I assume that the criteria for what makes sexual fetishes and Catholic saints most “popular” differ considerably. So what does “popularity” really mean?
This contemporary notion of “popularity” as anything or anyone that is favorably viewed by many others is more complex than it appears, because there are different ways that we may feel approvingly toward something. Even in the 1600s, popularity could refer to that which was “well liked,” “admired,” or “desired,” which all express different sentiments. Consequently, there are various kinds of popularity that are now studied in the social sciences.
When we remember what “popular” meant in high school, we are invoking the type of popularity that social scientists believe more accurately reflects status. Status is not a measure of how well liked a person is, but rather of his or her dominance, visibility, power, and influence. Interestingly, status does not become salient to us until we reach adolescence, but it tends to establish itself as a meaningful kind of popularity for the rest of our lives.
A second type of popularity reflects likability. Based on findings from social science, it is this type of popularity that we should genuinely care about. Even very young children understand likability. Research shows that as early as the age of four, children can report exactly who their most popular peers are and can do so reliably. But these popular toddlers are not necessarily powerful, dominant, or highly visible. They are, rather, the kids that everyone likes the most. Likability continues to be relevant to us throughout our lives and has been shown to be the most powerful kind of popularity there is.
—
In 1982, John Coie, a psychologist at Duke University, conducted a now-seminal series of experimental studies that began by giving children a list of all of their classmates’ names and asking them two simple questions:
“Who do you like the most?”
“Who do you like the least?”
Psychologists refer to this procedure as a “sociometric assessment.” For each of these questions, participants can nominate as many people on the list as they wish.
Coie and his then-assistants, Ken Dodge and Heide Coppotelli, asked over five hundred children to answer those two questions. The results were interesting for a number of reasons. First, Coie found that children who were very well liked might also be just as strongly disliked. In fact, likability and dislikability are independent measures of regard. We can be both liked and disliked at the same time. We can also be neither.
Second, the scientists found that children differed greatly in the number of times they were named at all, regardless of which question was being asked. Some children seemed to be especially visible in their classrooms—they were cited often when their peers were asked to name the kids they liked or disliked. Other children were just the opposite: it was as if their classmates barely knew they were there.
This study was not the first time researchers had asked children these questions. But Coie and his team were the first to use the answers to create five categories, or “sociometric groups,” that are the foundation for how we now think about the different faces of popularity. Their results have been replicated in hundreds of research studies among children and adults all over the world.
Coie’s groupings can be pictured in a two-by-two matrix. “Likability” is plotted on the vertical axis, while “dislikability” is plotted horizontally. The more times a child is picked as “liked the most,” the higher his or her nam
e would appear. The more times a child is nominated as “most disliked,” the farther to the right his or her name would go.
Figure 1. Sociometric Groups
Coie and his colleagues found that some children received an unusually high or low number of nominations, and this qualified them for one of four sociometric groups in the corners of the matrix. Children in the top left quadrant were highly liked and rarely disliked. Coie described this group as “Popular,” but they also can be designated as “Accepted,” because the type of popularity they enjoy is based purely on who is most likable. The opposite quadrant, at the bottom right, included those who were “Rejected”—liked by few and disliked by many. Children who rarely were nominated as liked or disliked, the invisible children, gathered in the lower left box and were referred to as “Neglected.” By contrast, the group in the upper right box—those who were widely liked and disliked in roughly equal measure—were among the most visible members of the group, and make up the “Controversials,” the peers we either love or hate. Controversials are relatively rare and make up the smallest of the sociometric groups. Taken together, Accepteds, Rejecteds, Neglecteds, and Controversials total about 60 percent of all youth. The remainder of his subjects were classified by Coie as “Averages”—the largest single group. Note that although they do not get an extreme number of nominations as liked most or liked least, most Averages tend to veer toward one of the other categories.
These labels may feel reductive, I know. Especially in today’s society, when we try so hard to adapt any environment to meet individuals’ needs, describing anyone as “Rejected” or “Neglected” can seem harsh. Such characterizations assume that these sociometric groupings reflect an attribute of each child and not merely a mismatch between the person and her particular peer group. Might a Neglected child be better liked if he was placed among different peers? Might someone who is Rejected become popular if given a fresh start?
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