Children’s Awareness of Peer Rejection and Teacher Reports of Aggressive Behavior

Abstract

Lack of awareness of one’s negative social reputation is linked to aggressive behavior among older school-age children. The present study extends this research to the first year of elementary school. The first goal was to compare generalized and dyadic perspectives in studying discrepancies between children’s actual and perceived rejection. The second goal was to determine whether discrepancies between actual and perceived rejection are related to sociometric status. The third goal was to examine whether discrepancies between actual and perceived rejection are related to aggressive behaviors at school. Actual peer rejection was measured with peer negative nominations, perceived peer rejection with students’ self-ratings and meta-perceptions, and aggressive behavior with teacher ratings. The discrepancies between actual and self-perceived rejection were substantial in the total sample. Furthermore, non-rejected children had higher scores than rejected children in dyadic overestimation (identifying peers who they believed disliked them but did not), while it was the reverse for dyadic underestimation (not identifying peers who in fact disliked them). High levels of dyadic underestimation were negatively associated with the concurrent aggressive behavior. Rejected children’s underestimation of their peer rejection appeared to have protective effects on antisocial and aggressive problems. Findings are discussed in terms of theories of symbolic interactionism and social information processing.