Is Instability of Social Status Related to Risky Behavior?
Adolescence is a time when what other people think of you suddenly matters a lot. Teens become highly sensitive to social evaluation and deeply motivated to gain the approval of their peers. In that context, being seen as “popular” or “cool” quickly becomes a powerful social goal.
Past research shows that one reliable way to gain or maintain that kind of status is to break rules. Youth who are high in social status are more likely to skip school, bully others, use substances, and engage in other “pseudomature” behaviors that look grown-up but come with real risks. Peers notice who’s at the top of the hierarchy and often imitate those behaviors in hopes of moving up the ladder themselves.
What we know less about is who is most likely to copy these high-status peers—and why. My work with Dr. Jaana Juvonen seeks to answer that question by focusing on a new idea: status instability.
A New Lens: “Status Instability”
Rather than looking only at whether a teen is popular or not, I asked:
What happens when a young person’s social status is unstable—when they’ve been “cool,” but that coolness has gone up and down over time?
I drew inspiration from social psychology research on status threat. In adult intergroup and workplace settings, when a high-status group or person feels their position is threatened, they’re more likely to engage in defensive or even harmful behavior to protect their standing.
I wondered whether something similar might be happening among adolescents:
If you’ve tasted high status in middle school,
and your popularity has bounced around (rather than stayed steady),
do you feel more pressure to prove yourself when you arrive in high school?
My prediction was that this instability of social status would amplify the link between being popular and engaging in precarious conduct—behaviors that are risky, antiauthority, or rule-breaking, but that can boost a teen’s social reputation.
What I Studied
I used longitudinal data from 5,991 ethnically diverse students originally recruited from 26 public middle schools in California. Students were surveyed:
in 6th, 7th, and 8th grade (middle school), and
again in 9th and 10th grade (high school).
From those who participated in at least two middle-school waves and at least one high-school wave, my analytic sample included 4,047 adolescents (54% female) who later transitioned to 194 high schools.
Measuring Social Prominence (“Coolness”)
Each year in middle school, students received a roster of grademates and nominated peers who were considered “cool.” From these nominations, I created:
Average social status: how often a student was nominated as “cool” across 6th–8th grade.
Status instability: how much those “coolness” scores fluctuated across the three years relative to each student’s average. Higher values = bigger ups and downs in status.
Measuring Precarious Conduct
In 9th and 10th grade, I examined two kinds of behavior:
Deviant school behaviors
e.g., skipping class, getting kicked out of class, disrupting teachers.
Selecting into risky contexts
e.g., going to parties where people were using alcohol or marijuana, riding in a car with someone under the influence.
To reduce social-desirability bias for illegal or high-risk behaviors, I asked about contexts rather than direct substance use.
I controlled for sex, ethnoracial identity, and parental education, and used multilevel modeling to handle the fact that students were nested in schools.
What I Found
1. Popular teens do more precarious stuff
First, I replicated a well-documented pattern:
Teens who were more socially prominent in middle school reported more deviant school behavior and more selection into risky contexts in both 9th and 10th grade.
This held even when I controlled for status instability.
2. Instability makes the status–risk link stronger
The more interesting finding came from the interaction:
For teens whose popularity had fluctuated a lot in middle school (high status instability), the link between earlier social status and later precarious conduct was especially strong.
For teens whose status was more stable, that link was weaker—and sometimes nonsignificant.
Put simply:
Teens who knew what it feels like to be cool, but whose coolness was shaky, were the most likely to engage in rule-breaking and risky behaviors during the first two years of high school.
This pattern was consistent across both types of behavior and across both years.
3. Broader demographic patterns
I also found:
Girls generally reported fewer risky contexts than boys.
Youth with college-educated parents reported fewer risky contexts in 9th grade.
East/Southeast Asian youth reported lower levels of precarious conduct than White peers, while Latine/x youth reported somewhat higher levels in 9th grade.
Why This Matters
These findings suggest that it’s not just who is popular that matters—it’s how secure or unstable that popularity has been.
Teens who’ve experienced high status but also lost it or felt it wobble may:
feel more threatened when entering a new social environment,
be especially motivated to reclaim or protect their status,
and turn to high-visibility risky behavior (skipping school, partying, breaking rules) as a social strategy.
This helps explain why some students are more susceptible to peer influence than others.
Limitations & Future Directions
A few limitations shape how these findings should be interpreted:
I did not have peer-nominated popularity data in high school because students dispersed across nearly 200 schools.
Risky behavior measures relied on self-report, with indirect measures chosen to reduce social desirability.
I could not include identical measures of deviant behavior from middle school, making it harder to parse new vs. continuous behavior.
Future research could:
Track popularity across the actual middle-to-high-school transition,
Compare instability in likability vs. status,
And examine how ethnoracial and socioeconomic contexts shape feelings of status threat.
Implications for Schools and Programs
Educators and practitioners can use these findings to:
Identify hidden risks: Teens with unstable social status histories may be at elevated risk for status-seeking risky behavior.
Channel status needs into prosocial roles: Leadership roles, peer mentoring, and structured peer-praise programs give teens healthier ways to gain recognition.
Shift norms: When schools visibly reward prosocial behavior, it becomes easier for teens to gain social standing without resorting to risk-taking.