Associations Among Friendship Jealousy,Peer Status,and Relational Aggression in Early Adolescence

Abstract

This study investigated the associations among peer status, friendship jealousy, and relational aggression in early adolescence, with a focus on peer status as a moderator of the association between relational aggression and friendship jealousy. Three hundred eighteen sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-grade students completed a sociometric assessment of relational aggression, popularity, and peer preference, and a self-report friendship jealousy measure. Relational aggression was negatively correlated with peer preference, but positively correlated with popularity for boys and girls. Regression analyses showed that peer status moderated the association between friendship jealousy and relational aggression for girls and boys. At low levels of peer preference, high friendship jealousy was positively associated with relational aggression for girls, but negatively associated with relational aggression for boys. Findings are discussed in light of friendship and social status maintenance processes.

Keywords

relational aggression friendship jealousy peer status adolescence

Research on adolescent peer relations has revealed important links between social behaviors, emotions, and peer interactions. Adolescents desire close friendships, which serve many important functions, including providing emotional support and validation and facilitating social adjustment, interpersonal skills, and well-being (Berndt, 1982; Buhrmester, 1996). Maintaining positive friendship relations, however, can be challenging, as friendships are nested within a broader social network of peers, and tensions often arise from conflicts between the desire for exclusivity within friendships and the need for broader peer interactions during adolescence. Friendship jealousy is defined as a negative emotional, cognitive, and behavioral reaction triggered by a partner’s real or anticipated interest in a relationship with another person (Parker, Low, Walker, & Gamm, 2005). In this study, we investigate associations of friendship jealousy with relational aggression, which is characterized by behavior that aims to damage another person’s social relationships or feelings of inclusion in a social group. Relational aggression is commonly associated with friendship conflicts (Grotpeter & Crick, 1996; Hawley, Little, & Card, 2007) and may be a coping strategy for some adolescents who experience jealousy within their friendships. Friendship jealousy has also been linked to peer acceptance in previous research (Parker & Gamm, 2003), and may be associated with other forms of peer status, such as popularity. Popularity is an index of social power and visibility within the peer group (Mayeux, Houser, & Dyches, 2011) and is associated with both positive characteristics (e.g., leadership) and antisocial behaviors (such as physical and relational aggression). Being popular may increase adolescents’ risk of experiencing friendship jealousy, as popular status is closely tied to friendship connections with popular peers and the loss of a friend can bring a loss of popularity in addition to the loss of a close companion (Marks, Cillessen, & Crick, 2012).

Research has shown there is a developmental progression in jealous experiences from childhood to adolescence. In an early study of jealousy, Selman (1980) observed that children did not express jealousy over friends, but young adolescents did, possibly because adolescents better understood that their friends’ activities with other peers can influence their own friendships. Research by Parker and colleagues suggests that friendship jealousy increases across the adolescent years (Parker et al., 2005). A key characteristic of friendship jealousy is the involvement of a third party, who Parker and colleagues (2005) call an “interloper.” In order for friendship jealousy to occur, the target must believe the interloping peer is a threat to the target’s friendship. Even if a friendship continues despite the target’s jealousy, the target may sense a decrease in the quality of the friendship or a lack of exclusivity in the relationship (Lavallee & Parker, 2009; Parker, Kruse, & Aikins, 2010). Experiencing friendship jealousy can damage an individual’s self-esteem and motivate him or her to act in ways to preserve the friendship and/or deter the interloper (Parker et al., 2005). Thus far, friendship jealousy has been conceptualized as a response to diminishing friendship quality. However, because friendships play a role in emotional well-being as well as peer status during adolescence, it is feasible that friendship jealousy is actually a response to two threats: diminishing friendship quality and losing one’s position in the social hierarchy. The salience of each of these threats as well as youth’s responses to jealous feelings might be highly dependent on their peer status. For instance, youth with high peer status might choose to use relational aggression, such as spreading rumors or gossiping, to deter an interloper because they have the social connections necessary to facilitate damage to an interloper’s friendships and reputation.

Adolescence is an important developmental period to investigate friendship jealousy for other reasons as well. Friendships take on increased developmental significance during adolescence, particularly for girls, for whom friendships can involve self-disclosure about sensitive topics (Zarbatany, McDougall, & Hymel, 2000). The threat of an interloper may be very worrisome to an adolescent who has told a close friend highly personal secrets. Finally, the very nature of friendship jealousy as a reaction to a potential threat to a friendship makes it an experience that might precipitate the use of a relationally aggressive response for some youth (see Andersen, Eloy, Guerrero, & Spitzberg, 1995; Culotta & Goldstein, 2008).

Friendship Jealousy and Relational Aggression

Jealousy has been shown to play a role in relationally aggressive behaviors such as social exclusion, spreading rumors, and gossip (Culotta & Goldstein, 2008). In a study by Pronk and Zimmer-Gembeck (2010), participants explained that peers who are perceived as threats to another peer’s social status, friendship, or feelings of inclusion are likely to be excluded by that peer or socially downgraded by that peer through gossip. Similarly, a study by Kuttler, Parker, and La Greca (2002) revealed that young adolescents consider jealousy a primary motivator for gossiping about peers. Adolescent interviewees in Pronk and Zimmer-Gembeck’s study described relationally aggressive peers as jealous of other peers’ social status, friendships, material possessions, abilities, and personal characteristics. Furthermore, the successful use of relational aggression helps jealous peers feel better by hurting the envied peer’s self-esteem or social status.

Other research suggests that individuals may use subtle forms of aggression in order to avoid the social backlash that could come with overt aggression, while reaping similar benefits in terms of harm to others (Björkqvist, 1994; Xie, Swift, Cairns, & Cairns, 2002). For instance, peers who experience friendship jealousy presumably fear losing their friend’s approval and companionship, so they might try to hurt an interloper’s social status in a covert way to avoid a negative evaluation from their friend (Parker et al., 2010). Culotta and Goldstein (2008) studied the association between self-reported jealousy and physical and relational aggression among adolescents. Their results indicated that students who reported being more jealous in friendships also reported using more relational aggression and more proactive prosocial behaviors with peers. Proactive prosocial behavior differs from prosocial behavior in that it is goal-oriented and associated with aggressive cognitions (Boxer, Tisak, & Goldstein, 2004). This suggests that jealous individuals might strategically balance their relationally aggressive behaviors with prosocial behaviors in order to maintain their friendships.

Associations With Peer Status

Peer status can be conceptualized and measured in a number of ways, but a common approach in the peer relations literature is to distinguish between peer preference and popularity and to investigate related developmental processes (Cillessen, Schwartz, & Mayeux, 2011). Peer preference is an index of liking or preference and is typically associated with prosocial behavior and positive adjustment outcomes. Popularity is an indicator of social power and social visibility in the peer group, and is characterized by a more mixed profile of prosocial and aggressive or otherwise antisocial behavior (Mayeux et al., 2011). Some researchers suggest that adolescents gain and maintain popularity by using a combination of prosocial and aggressive behaviors in peer interactions (Adler & Adler, 1998; Hawley, 2003; Hawley et al., 2007; Puckett, Aikins, & Cillessen, 2008). For example, middle school popularity is linked not only with social ingratiation such as flattering others and extending party invitations (Findley & Ojanen, 2013) but also with aggressive behaviors such as social exclusion and physical aggression (Mayeux et al., 2011). An important difference between popularity and peer preference is that youth with high peer preference are well liked by the majority of their peers and disliked by few, while popular adolescents are not necessarily liked by the majority of their peers (Adler & Adler, 1995; Eder, 1985). In fact, it is common for popular individuals to be nominated by peers as disliked (Cillessen & Mayeux, 2004; Smith, Rose, & Schwartz-Mette, 2010).

Theoretically, proneness to friendship jealousy has negative implications for peer status, but empirical research on the association between friendship jealousy and peer status is limited. In a study by Parker and Gamm (2003), adolescents who were known by peers for being possessive of their friends and who expressed friendship jealousy were not only disliked by their peers in general, but they also had more enemies in their peer group than nonjealous peers. The friendships of jealous individuals are characterized by higher levels of conflict (Deutz, Lansu, & Cillessen, 2014; Lavallee & Parker, 2009), but whether this pattern is also reflected in lower levels of peer preference is unclear. Adolescents with high peer preference may not be as prone to jealousy because they are liked by many of their peers and have many friendship opportunities. Youth with high peer preference who do experience friendship jealousy likely cope with their jealous feelings in socially competent, nonaggressive ways, further promoting their high levels of preference by peers. However, adolescents with low peer preference have been shown to have more socially incompetent responses to social conflict, especially when those individuals are also aggressive (Dodge, McClaskey, & Feldman, 1985).

Research on the link between friendship jealousy and peer popularity is just as sparse. Recent research suggests that having friendships with popular peers might be even more effective for boosting an individual’s popularity over time than an individual’s prosocial and aggressive behaviors (Marks et al., 2012). Because of this, interlopers who challenge friendships that confer popularity might be seen as particularly threatening (Dijkstra, Cillessen, & Borch, 2013). Losing a friendship might jeopardize a popular individual’s social status more than that of a less popular individual because popular peers tend to be disliked by peers outside of their group. If popular peers lose a friendship, they might have more trouble making new friends than peers who have high peer preference and are liked by most of their classmates. Popular adolescents who experience friendship jealousy may be more likely to retaliate via relational aggression as a means of protecting or defending their status.

This study contributes to the very small literature on the association of friendship jealousy with peer status and represents the first study that we are aware of to measure associations between friendship jealousy and popularity. However, more central to our inquiry is the moderating role of peer status in the link between friendship jealousy and relational aggression, which is also a novel contribution of the project. Jealous adolescents might be more willing to engage in relational aggression if they feel that the stakes are high enough. For example, popular youth who worry that the loss of a popular friend will lead to a decrease in their own social position may aggress out of a desire to maintain that social power (Marks et al., 2012), but jealous adolescents who are unpopular might aggress to defend the few close friendships they have.

Gender and Jealousy

Boys and girls tend to report similar levels of vulnerability to jealousy until they reach middle school, at which point girls begin to report more vulnerability to jealousy than boys (Parker et al., 2010). In a recent study, adolescent girls reported higher friendship jealousy than adolescent boys, even though girls and boys reported the same levels of friendship satisfaction (Deutz et al., 2014). Accordingly, research has shown that adolescent girls are more likely than boys to make social comparisons in the first place and are especially likely to make negative social comparisons (Harter, 1990). Gender differences in proneness to friendship jealousy are thought to be due to the differing natures of same-sex friendships (Parker et al., 2005). Girls are known to develop closer friendships starting in early adolescence. Girls’ friendships at this age are characterized by emotional dependence and support, intimate self-disclosure, and expectations of loyalty and empathy (Buhrmester, 1996). According to Berndt (1982), adolescent girls value the exclusivity of their friendships and are less likely than boys to include outsiders in their conversations and activities. Boys, on the other hand, tend to engage with a larger group of friends at lower levels of emotional intimacy (Maccoby, 1990). Girls also express more concern than boys about the status of their friendships and peer evaluations (Rose & Rudolph, 2006). Thus, the threat of losing a friendship may be especially threatening to girls. We investigate gender differences in friendship jealousy in the current study, as well as the moderating role of gender in the link between friendship jealousy and relational aggression.

Summary and Hypotheses

The overarching goal of this study was to examine the interplay of friendship jealousy, peer status, and relational aggression during a developmental period characterized by the prioritization of popularity and a keen sensitivity to friendship-related issues. The study had three specific goals. First, we examined the associations among relational aggression, friendship jealousy, and peer preference and popularity. We anticipated that jealousy would be positively correlated with relational aggression, because relational aggression is one powerful strategy of coping with potential interlopers. Given the importance of establishing the “right” connections with popular peers for one’s own popularity (Eder, 1985; Eder & Kinney, 1995; Marks et al., 2012), we also anticipated a positive association between friendship jealousy and popularity, as popular peers may have more to lose status-wise when an interloper is present. Based on prior research regarding how jealousy is perceived by peers (Parker et al., 2005), we hypothesized a negative correlation between jealousy and peer preference.

Second, we explored both forms of peer status as moderators of the association between relational aggression and jealousy. We expected the positive association between relational aggression and jealousy to be strongest among adolescents of high popularity, in line with previous research on aggression and social status that showed relational aggression is strongly associated with popularity. In terms of the role of peer preference, we expected the association between friendship jealousy and relational aggression to be negative for adolescents with high peer preference, but positive at low levels of peer preference. Well-liked youth have been shown to respond to conflicts in nonaggressive ways, which perpetuates their preference by peers, but peers who have low peer preference have been shown to respond to conflicts in less socially competent ways (Dodge et al., 1985).

Third and finally, we explored the role of gender in friendship jealousy. In terms of adolescents’ experiences of friendship jealousy, we anticipated that girls would report stronger jealousy than boys. We also investigated gender as a moderator of the associations of friendship jealousy with relational aggression and peer status. Specifically, we expected the link between relational aggression and jealousy to be stronger for girls than it is for boys because girls have been shown to expect greater levels of loyalty and emotional support in their friendships than boys, and girls have been shown to feel greater anger and sadness about violations of friendship expectations than boys (Clark & Ayers, 1993; MacEvoy & Asher, 2012). We anticipate that the aggression-jealousy link will be particularly strong for girls who are also popular. Relational aggression is frequently associated with valuing popularity and being popular during adolescence (Dawes & Xie, 2014; Ojanen & Findley-Van Nostrand, 2014), and jealousy is a commonly cited reason for engaging in relationally aggressive behaviors, such as gossiping and spreading rumors (Culotta & Goldstein, 2008; Pronk & Zimmer-Gembeck, 2010). Popular girls might have more to lose in terms of social status than their less popular counterparts if a friendship deteriorates, so they might use more relational aggression to maintain their place in the social hierarchy, especially to defend their position from interlopers (Merten, 1997).

Method

Participants and Procedure

Participants were 318 adolescents attending a charter middle school in the midwestern United States. One hundred four students were in Grade 6 (52% girls), 108 students were in Grade 7 (47% girls), and 106 students were in Grade 8 (50% girls). Although information on individual ethnic background was not collected, the student body of the school is 91% Hispanic. Roughly 93% of the students are eligible to receive a discounted or free lunch.

This project took place in the fall semester of the school year. All students in the school (N = 389) were sent home with parental consent forms written in both English and Spanish. Parents were asked to discuss the research with their child and to return the form with their choice (consent or refusal of consent) noted. Only students who returned the consent forms and provided their own verbal assent were allowed to participate. Three hundred eighteen students returned a signed form providing consent, and all of those students provided their own assent to complete the study. The overall consent rate was 83%, with consent rates of 81% in sixth grade, 84% in seventh grade, and 83% in eighth grade. Data collection took place in the cafeteria during school hours across three different class periods (one class period for each grade). A research assistant distributed the questionnaire to the students and read the directions out loud. Participants were given 45 minutes to complete the questionnaire. Students at the school had a snow cone party as an expression of thanks by the researchers.

Measures

Peer preference and popularity

Traditional sociometric methods were used to measure peer preference and popularity (Coie, Dodge, & Coppotelli, 1982). For all sociometric items, participants were asked to write the first name and last initial of any peer they wished to nominate. Nominations were made via free recall (no rosters of names were given). Asking students to provide information about their peers without the use of rosters has been done successfully in prior research on peer relations (e.g., Cairns, Cairns, Neckerman, Gest, & Gariépy, 1988; Moody, Brynildsen, Osgood, Feinberg, & Gest, 2011) and was described in early writings on sociometry as a satisfactory procedure (e.g., Gronlund, 1959). For peer preference, participants were asked to nominate peers in their grade they liked the most and the peers they liked the least. Participants were told they could nominate as many same- and cross-sex peers as they wanted. For popularity, the participants were told to nominate the peers who were the most popular and the peers who were the least popular in their grade. A continuous measure of popularity was computed by subtracting the standardized number of least popular nominations from the standardized number of most popular nominations. This difference score was again standardized to a mean of zero and a standard deviation of one within each grade for ease of interpretation. The same method was used to compute a continuous measure of peer preference. The standardized number of liked most nominations was subtracted from the standardized number of liked least nominations. This difference score was again standardized.

Relational aggression

Two peer-nomination items were used to measure relational aggression. On the first item, participants were told to write down the names of the students in their grade who exclude others from their group. The second item instructed participants to write down the names of the students who gossip or spread rumors about other kids. Nominations for each item were counted for each student and standardized to z scores within each grade with a mean of zero and a standard deviation of one. A continuous measure for relational aggression was computed for each participant by averaging the standardized numbers of nominations received for the two relational aggression items. The relational aggression items were strongly correlated with each other (r = .75, p < .001).

Friendship jealousy

To assess individuals’ proneness to jealousy, we administered the Friendship Jealousy Questionnaire (FJQ), developed by Parker and colleagues (2005). The version of the FJQ used in this study was developed for use with young adolescents. The FJQ is composed of 15 vignettes based on hypothetical situations with a best friend and an interloper. Participants were told to imagine themselves in the situation illustrated in each vignette, and report the level of jealousy they would feel in the situation using a 5-point scale that ranges from (0) would never be jealous to (4) would definitely be very jealous. The presence of an interloper poses a threat to the exclusivity of the relationship between the target and his or her best friend. The actions in these vignettes are meant to be ambiguous in the sense that no outright rejection is expressed by the best friend, but participants could interpret the best friend’s behavior as favoring the interloper over the target. An example vignette is, “How jealous would you be if you found out that your best friend went to a new store with another kid from your group, when you and your best friend had made plans to go together?” One item was excluded from this study due to concerns that it was inappropriate for use with very low-income participants (“How jealous would you be if you gave your best friend a birthday present, and he or she got an even better one from another kid in your group?”). The internal consistency for the 14 items used in the study was excellent in each grade: α = .94 for sixth grade, α = .95 for seventh grade, and α = .95 for eighth grade. Friendship jealousy scores were computed by averaging across all 14 items.

Results

Preliminary Analyses

A MANOVA tested for mean-level gender differences in all four variables: peer preference, popularity, relational aggression, and friendship jealousy. Gender was coded as a dichotomous variable (1 = girls, 0 = boys). Relational aggression showed significant differences by gender, F(4, 313) = 9.15, p < .01, with girls being nominated as relationally aggressive more often than boys ( $\bar{X}$ = 0.20 and $\bar{X}$ = −0.14, respectively). Friendship jealousy also showed significant differences by gender, F(4, 313) = 31.55, p < .001, with girls reporting more friendship jealousy than boys ( $\bar{X}$ = 2.08 and $\bar{X}$ = 1.40, respectively). Peer preference and popularity did not differ by gender.

Table 1 presents the intercorrelations among peer preference, popularity, relational aggression, and friendship jealousy, separately by gender. Social acceptance was positively correlated with popularity for girls (r = .46, p < .001) and boys (r = .41, p < .001). Relational aggression was negatively correlated with peer preference for girls (r = −.19, p < .001), but was unrelated to peer preference for boys (r = −.08, ns). Relational aggression was moderately positively correlated with popularity for both genders (r = .49, for boys; r = .42, for girls; both ps <.01).

Table 1.

Intercorrelations Among Peer Status, Relational Aggression, and Friendship Jealousy by Gender.

	1.	2.	3.	4.
1. Peer preference	—	.46**	−.19*	−.15^†
2. Popularity	.41*	—	.42*	.02
3. Relational aggression	−.08	.49*	—	.09
4. Friendship jealousy	−.01	.03	.00	—
Girls/boys, $\bar{X}$ (SD)	0.11 (1.06)/−0.01 (0.92)	0.04 (0.98)/0.01 (1.11)	0.20 (1.29)/−0.14 (0.50)	2.09 (1.07)/1.40 (1.12)

Note. Correlations for girls are presented above the diagonal. Bolded values indicate a significant difference by gender.

†

p = .06. *p < .01. ** p < .001.

Associations of Peer Status and Friendship Jealousy in Predicting Relational Aggression

In order to further investigate the associations of friendship jealousy with peer status and relational aggression, as well as the moderating role of peer status in the link between jealousy and relational aggression, hierarchical linear regression was used. Relational aggression was the dependent variable in this analysis. The model comprised the following steps. Gender, peer preference, popularity, and friendship jealousy were entered in Step 1. The two-way interactions of Friendship Jealousy × Peer Preference, Friendship Jealousy × Popularity, and Friendship Jealousy × Gender were entered in Step 2. In Step 3, a three-way interaction among gender, friendship jealousy, and peer preference was entered, as well as a three-way interaction among gender, friendship jealousy, and popularity. Gender and friendship jealousy scores were centered before being entered in the analysis or used in computing the interaction terms. The peer-nomination variables were transformed to z scores prior to the analysis, so no further centering was needed. The significant interaction terms were examined using prototypical plots in the manner described by Aiken and West (1991). This procedure involves estimating the association between friendship jealousy and relational aggression at high and low levels of peer status, based on ±1 SD. Significant interaction terms involving gender were also probed by plotting the regression lines separately for girls and boys. Simple slopes analyses were used to determine whether the slopes of the regression lines for each moderator were significantly different from one another. Results from this analysis are presented in Table 2.

Table 2.

Predicting Relational Aggression: Gender, Popularity, Peer Preference, and Friendship Jealousy.

	β	t	p	Adjusted R²	ΔR²
Step 1				.31*	.31*
Gender	.18	3.73	.001
Peer preference	−.41	−7.93	.001
Popularity	.56	10.95	.001
Friendship jealousy	.01	0.21	.84
Step 2				.36*	.05*
Friendship Jealousy × Gender	.06	0.99	.32
Friendship Jealousy × Peer Preference	−.25	−4.77	.001
Friendship Jealousy × Popularity	.18	3.62	.001
Step 3				.38*	.02*
Gender × Peer Preference × Friendship Jealousy	−.25	−3.45	.001
Gender × Popularity × Friendship Jealousy	.03	0.39	.70

Note. Gender was dummy-coded, girls = 1, boys = 0.

p < .01.

A total of 38% of the variance in relational aggression was explained by the specified model. In Step 1, gender, peer preference, and popularity were all significant predictors. Girls were higher than boys on peer-nominated relational aggression (β = .18, p < .001). In line with many previous studies of peer status and relational aggression, peer preference had a significant negative association with relational aggression (β = −.41, p < .001), while popularity had a significant positive association with relational aggression (β = .56, p < .001). Friendship jealousy was not a significant main effect predictor of relational aggression.

In Step 2, the interaction term of friendship jealousy and popularity predicted relational aggression (β = .18, t = 3.62, p < .01). Prototypical plots revealed a positive relationship between relational aggression and friendship jealousy at high levels of popularity (simple slopes: β =.15, t = 2.36, p < .02) and a negative relationship between relational aggression and friendship jealousy at low levels of popularity (β = −.21, t = −3.34, p < .001; see Figure 1).

Figure 1.

Popularity moderates the association between friendship jealousy and relational aggression.

The interaction term of friendship jealousy and peer preference predicted relational aggression (β = −.25, p < .001). Prototypical plots revealed a positive association between relational aggression and friendship jealousy at low levels of peer preference (simple slopes: β =.19, t = 2.67, p < .01), but a negative association between relational aggression and friendship jealousy at high levels of peer preference (β = −.25, t = −3.55, p < .001). This was further qualified by a significant interaction with gender in Step 3 (see Figures 2 and 3). The three-way interaction of gender, peer preference, and friendship jealousy was significant (β = −.25, p < .001). At high levels of peer preference, simple slopes analyses indicated no gender differences in the association between jealousy and relational aggression (t = −1.06, ns). At low levels of peer preference, there was a positive association between friendship jealousy and relational aggression for girls (simple slopes: β = .37, t = 2.90, p < .01), but this association was not significant for boys (simple slopes: β = .04, t = 0.99, ns).

Figure 2.

Peer preference moderates the association between friendship jealousy and relational aggression.

Figure 3.

Gender moderates the association between friendship jealousy and relational aggression at low levels of peer preference.

The sample studied here included three grades in middle school, including a posttransition year (sixth grade). To investigate possible developmental changes in the associations we tested, these same analyses were conducted with grade level as both a main effect in Step 1 and as a moderator of the associations in Steps 2 and 3. Including grade level did not increase the variance explained by the model, nor did grade level emerge as a significant main effect or moderator.

Discussion

The current study investigated the role of peer status in the association between friendship jealousy and relational aggression in adolescence. Friendship jealousy was not correlated with relational aggression or peer status at the bivariate level, and friendship jealousy did not have a significant main effect in the prediction of relational aggression in a regression analysis. However, both popularity and peer preference moderated the association between friendship jealousy and relational aggression. The association between friendship jealousy and relational aggression was positive at high levels of popularity, but negative at low levels of popularity. The association between friendship jealousy and relational aggression was positive at low levels of peer preference, but negative at high levels of peer preference. These findings indicate that adolescents’ perceptions and expressions of friendship jealousy and use of relational aggression are closely tied to their peer status, though further research is needed to specify causal links among the variables studied.

As expected, girls reported experiencing more friendship jealousy than boys. This finding aligns with previous research that attributed gender differences in proneness to jealousy to the differing natures of same-sex friendships. Girls develop closer friendships than boys in early adolescence, and boys tend to engage with a larger group of friends at lower levels of emotional intimacy (Maccoby, 1990; Parker et al., 2005). Because girls have greater emotional investment in their friendships, they experience more distress when the exclusivity of their friendships is threatened (Berndt, 1982; Parker et al., 2005). Furthermore, girls gain and maintain social status through their friendships with girls of higher social status, and this often results in the abandonment of former friends, so girls perceive interlopers as threats to both friendship quality and social status (Eder, 1985). Unlike girls, boys primarily associate popularity with extracurricular activities and achievements, so friendships may not be as important to boys’ perceptions of peer status (Adler & Adler, 1998; Adler, Kless, & Adler, 1992; Eder & Kinney, 1995). Because boys experience lower levels of emotional intimacy in their friendships than girls and rely less on their friendships for peer status than girls, boys might also be less likely to perceive interlopers as threats (Berndt, 1982; Parker et al., 2005; Rose & Rudolph, 2006).

Contrary to our hypothesis, friendship jealousy was not correlated with relational aggression for either girls or boys. Adolescents who experience jealousy toward an interloper have many choices when it comes to coping with their feelings, and the decision to use relational aggression likely depends on many factors (including the individual’s peer status, as we describe below). Some of those factors may include the peer status of the interloper and dispositional characteristics of the adolescent, such as emotional and self-regulatory capabilities and their level of self-efficacy for making new friends. Characteristics of the friendship itself may also play a role. For example, if the friendship is high-quality and involves a high level of intimacy, the use of relational aggression might feel justified in order to protect the friendship and the secrets it protects (see Benenson & Christakos, 2003).

For adolescents with high peer preference, the association between friendship jealousy and relational aggression was negative. In line with previous research on the qualities of well-liked youth, it may be the case that young teens who are preferred by their peers have peer-valued characteristics and social abilities that make them easy for peers to like, and this may be yet another indicator of this underlying pattern (Rubin, Bukowski, & Parker, 2006). Even when faced with insecurity about their friendships, well-accepted adolescents likely find coping mechanisms that do not involve harming others. Adolescents who are well liked and highly jealous might realize that jealous behavior can result in decreased peer preference, and that using prosocial behaviors with peers leads to more positive social outcomes and is more likely to result in the maintenance of the original friendship. Thus, preferred but highly jealous youth might respond to their jealousy by seeking relationship-oriented solutions and being kind to their peers, rather than being manipulative or mean to their peers. For example, an adolescent with high peer preference who experiences jealousy about an interloper might choose to get to know the interloper or find a way to spend time all together, rather than try to interfere with their friend’s new friendship. Another possibility is that well-liked youth recognize that they have many friends and do not experience the same concern over interlopers as youth with fewer friendships; they may feel jealous, but rather than aggressing, they may simply turn to other friends for companionship.

At low levels of peer preference, gender moderated the link between jealousy and relational aggression. At low levels of jealousy, both boys and girls with low peer preference were nonaggressive. However, girls with low peer preference who reported strong feelings of friendship jealousy were significantly more relationally aggressive than boys with low peer preference, for whom the link between jealousy and relational aggression was negative. In general, adolescent girls who are disliked by peers and experience high friendship jealousy might be extremely protective of the few friendships they do have and feel the need to defend their friendships from interlopers. Adolescent girls’ friendships are characterized by greater intimacy, self-disclosure, and validation than are boys’ (Zarbatany et al., 2000), and thus the threat of a loss of a friendship might be particularly frightening for girls of low peer preference who have fewer friendships to begin with. If threatened friendships involved a high level of self-disclosure about personal behaviors and feelings, poorly accepted girls may be more likely to react aggressively out of a concern that their secrets may be told to the interloper (Benenson & Christakos, 2003). Boys with low peer preference who feel jealousy about interlopers may feel distressed about the potential loss of the friendship, but the lack of intimate exchange may mean that they do not feel the loss as a betrayal.

Popularity was strongly associated with relational aggression, and popularity also moderated the association between relational aggression and friendship jealousy. At high levels of popularity, we found a positive association between jealousy and relational aggression. At low levels of popularity, the association between friendship jealousy and relational aggression was negative. Popular adolescents who experience high levels of friendship jealousy may be hypervigilant about the possibility of an interloper interfering with their friendships. Popular adolescents’ social status is closely tied to their friendships and social connections, so popular youth may feel the need to protect their friendships in order to keep other peers from challenging their place in the social hierarchy (Dijkstra et al., 2013; Dijkstra, Cillessen, Lindenberg, & Veenstra, 2010; Marks et al., 2012). Because relational aggression is most effective for adolescents with many social connections, the easiest way for a popular, jealous adolescent to deter an interloper may be to damage the interloper’s social relationships and social reputation via relational aggression. Pronk and Zimmer-Gembeck (2010) argued that individuals with desirable characteristics who threaten the social hierarchy are especially likely to be victims of relational aggression because their characteristics elicit jealousy from their peers. Particularly, individuals who are physically attractive and who have high peer status have been shown to elicit more jealousy than average peers (Mayeux, 2011). Although the jealousy vignettes in that study targeted romantic jealousy, this effect might generalize to friendship jealousy, especially during adolescence when peer status is a primary concern. Assuming interlopers among popular peers possess jealousy-eliciting characteristics, it is plausible that popular youth who are jealous are especially likely to use relational aggression because they perceive interlopers as formidable threats to their friendships and popularity.

Unpopular adolescents who experienced strong friendship jealousy showed lower levels of relational aggression. One explanation for this outcome may be that unpopular youth have smaller social circles than their more popular peers, and thus their opportunities to enact relational aggression are more limited. Another possible explanation worthy of further inquiry is that, because they are marginalized in their social world, unpopular adolescents may not feel a very strong sense of agency about even their closest relationships at school, and might respond by internalizing their distress rather than trying to take action. They may also be highly protective of the friendships they have, given their marginalized status in the peer group, and cope with their own jealousy in other ways. Aggressing against someone who has become well liked by a friend may be seen as a rash choice that threatens precious existing friendships.

Limitations and Future Directions

This study has a number of strengths, including a high participation rate and a sociometric assessment of peer status and relational aggression. This study also investigates peer status as an important moderator of the link between friendship jealousy and aggression, which has important implications for our understanding of adolescent aggression, as well as peer relations from the broad level of intergroup dynamics to the narrow level of interpersonal friendships. However, the study also had important limitations to consider. We used a cross-sectional, correlational design that does not enable the study of developmental processes or causal links between the variables studied, and as a result, many of our interpretations and conjectures about the nature of these associations are speculative. The school from which the participants were recruited was very community-oriented, with high parental involvement. It is possible that students at this school exhibit less aggression overall, compared with other samples of adolescents. Furthermore, we used peer nominations of general, context-independent forms of relational aggression, and this might have affected our results in a couple of noteworthy ways. First, our nominations measure social reputations and behaviors that peers have experienced themselves, and thus might not have captured the nuances of our participants’ more covert forms of aggression. This likely limited our ability to detect significant associations between relational aggression and friendship jealousy. Second, the context-independent nature of the items meant that participants were not thinking specifically of friendship processes when nominating peers, which limited our ability to measure relational aggression as a true reaction to friendship jealousy. More targeted questions about peers’ (or adolescents’ own) use of relational aggression as a coping strategy would have strengthened our design.

Our findings suggest that the associations of friendship jealousy with peer status and aggressive behavior are important avenues of continued study. Many interesting questions about the role of friendship jealousy in peer relations remain. For example, it remains unclear whether the peer status of an interloper influences the level of jealousy he or she elicits from peers, or how the interaction between the status of the interloper and the perceiver might play a role in jealous feelings and in the kinds of responses (such as relational aggression) the perceiver chooses. We focused explicitly on relational aggression in our study, but future research should investigate whether similar patterns emerge for other forms of aggression. The adolescents we surveyed were primarily Hispanic, which begs important questions about the possible role of race and ethnicity in friendships that we were unable to test because of the homogeneity of our sample.

Furthermore, studies have shown that social comparison is most commonly directed at people of similar characteristics and social status. Because jealousy is triggered by negative social comparisons, and jealousy is a common motive for relational aggression, it is possible that relational aggression occurs frequently within adolescent friendships. In future research, it would be useful to determine whether jealous youth direct more aggression toward their friends or peers outside of their social group, and whether this differs across levels of peer status.

The findings of this study indicate that adolescents vary considerably in how much friendship jealousy they experience. While we cannot make causal inferences based on these cross-sectional data, adolescents may also use a variety of coping mechanisms to handle that jealousy. Some adolescents may cope by trying to protect the exclusivity and intimacy of that friendship, perhaps using relational aggression as a tool. Others may try to strengthen the existing friendship and hope that this strategy is adequate. Still others may simply watch as their close friend eventually grows more distant. Close friends often become integrated into multiple contexts of the developing teen, including school, family, and extracurricular life. Given the importance of friendships in adolescence, understanding the variety of coping strategies adolescents use, how effective they are, and what psychosocial “side-effects” they might have is an important endeavor that has implications for parents, educators, and school counselors, among other professionals who work with adolescents.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the parents and students who made this research possible. Special thanks go to the administration and staff of the middle school in which the research was conducted.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author Biographies

Caroline Kraft is a doctoral candidate in psychology at the University of Oklahoma. She completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Kansas. Her research interests include the interplay between popularity, relational aggression, and emotions.

Lara Mayeux is an associate professor in the department of Psychology at the University of Oklahoma. She received her PhD in developmental psychology in 2003 from the University of Connecticut. Her research interests include peer status, physical and relational aggression, social goals, and social self-perceptions in childhood and adolescence.

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