A Chance to Be Kinder? Peer Status Profiles and Changes in Prosocial and Aggressive Behavior in Adolescence

Abstract: The well-known associations of peer status (acceptance and rejection) with prosocial and aggressive behaviors have mostly relied on peer status measures assessed at a single time point. This study adopted a person-oriented approach to examine longitudinal links between stable peer status profiles assessed at two time points and prosocial and aggressive behavior using latent profile analysis and latent transition analysis based on three waves of data collected among 324 Chilean adolescents (56.3% male, M age = 12.31, SD = 0.58). First, latent profile analysis identified four status profiles: moderately accepted, moderately rejected, controversial, and highly rejected. Second, we examined the 6-month stability of these profiles during the same academic year (seventh grade, Waves 1 and 2) with latent transition analysis. Results showed that the moderately accepted group was highly stable, with an 87% chance of remaining accepted at T2, followed by the highly rejected (78%), controversial (69%), and moderately rejected (49%), who had a 35% probability of moving into the accepted group. Third, we tested how stable status profiles at two time points predicted changes in prosocial and aggressive behavior during the transition from seventh to eighth grade (Wave 3). When the new academic year began, prosocial behavior increased for the moderately rejected group but not for the highly rejected group. Aggressive behavior decreased in the highly rejected and controversial groups. Implications for the role of stable peer status in the social behavior of early adolescents in educational settings are discussed, with particular attention to the transition to a new academic year.