Friendships of aggressive youth: considering the influences of being disliked and of being perceived as popular.

Past research provides conflicting evidence regarding whether aggressive youth have problems in the domain of friendship. The current study tested whether being disliked by peers exacerbates the negative effects of aggression on friendship and whether being perceived as popular by peers mitigates these damaging effects. Participants were 607 third-, fifth-, seventh-, and ninth-grade students. Support for the hypothesis that being disliked or being perceived as popular would moderate relations between aggression and friendship adjustment was found for the association between relational aggression and friendship conflict. Specifically, relational aggression was associated with having conflictual friendships for youth who were disliked but not for youth who were perceived as popular. In addition, similarity between friends was found in terms of how aggressive youth were as well as in terms of how disliked they were and how popular they were perceived to be. Implications for the well-being and development of aggressive youth are discussed. Copyright 2004 Elsevier Inc.