Although the word 'clique' or 'cliquey' is often used in day-to-day conversation to describe relational aggression or snarky, gossipy behaviors of groups of socially dominant teenage girls, that is not always accurate.
[6] In these situations, cliques are described as "social grouping[s] of persons that exhibit a great deal of peer pressure on its members and is exclusive, based on superficial differences".
[1] Researchers, however, question these assumptions: based on empiric data from both experiments and ethnographies they suggest that clique structure characterizes many friendship networks within any given school, not all of which negatively affect adolescents.
[3]: p.156 Consistent group identities thus allow individuals to cope with the anonymity and intimidation that often accompany the transition into large secondary schools.
[10] During late adolescence, the organized clique structure typically dissolves into associated sets of couples, which then remain the primary social unit into and throughout adulthood.
[14] A number of recent studies confirm that regardless of gender, ethnicity, or socioeconomic status, adolescents tend to fall into one of three categories: group members, liaisons, and isolates.
[1] Socio-metric status is determined by fairly universally valuable characteristics including social skills, friendliness, and sense of humor.
[16] Regardless of popularity type, highly popular individuals influence local norms and behaviors in similar ways: "adolescents are easily swayed by the opinions of high-status peers to endorse activities they might otherwise reject and to run the other way from activities endorsed by low-status peers, even if they secretly enjoy them".
[10] Several recent studies proved the discriminant validity of the two groups and found that perceived popularity in high school is predictive of alcohol use, sexual activity, and smoking.
"[7] Similar taste in music and clothing signal others with potentially shared interests and values and often suggest the leisure activities and substance use patterns of which they approve.
observational study on antisocial, aggressive boys established that clique members tended to live in the same neighborhood, where they met and bonded through unstructured, unsupervised activities.
[20] Research shows, however, that both internalizing and externalizing behaviors are negatively related to the subjective sense of strong, reliable group belonging, even controlling for adolescent age, gender, ethnicity, family structure, and parents' educational level.
Because the contemporary school system divides children by age and structures the majority of most adolescents' time and social exposure, age is the most universal common factor among clique members; notable exceptions include friendships formed in neighborhoods or on the internet and those initiated with early-maturing pubertal girls, all of which are often detrimental to the younger friend.
[22] A diverse array of follow-up studies have confirmed that class-consciousness steadily increases throughout adolescence, so that by mid-adolescence clique membership across significantly different social backgrounds is highly anomalous.
This is because various factors disadvantage black children, affecting performance in some cases and adult decisions in others so that in many cases black children are disproportionately likely to be placed in lower tracks, regardless of intelligence or performance[32] resulting in uneven distribution between tracks in the majority of American high schools.
So for the example where the individual was treated based on their athletic abilities rather than their intelligence, that person will likely focus their attention more on sports rather than doing well in school, causing them to become even more like the clique they are a part of.
The focus of these authors' research[11] was to discover the different emotional and social effects that members of the same cliques share.
The researchers did this by having students rate their classmates on several characteristics; bright, fun, bully, withdrawn, athletic, prosocial, reactive aggression.
They then measured differences among groups by asking children questions regarding peers social status and behavioral characteristics.
They found that competent and average groups showed positive characteristics such as good interpersonal skills, whereas withdrawn, incompetent/aggressive and tough cliques lacked emotional well-being and social satisfaction.
In one 4-year study of 451 children from age nine to twelve, Miranda Witvliet along with Pol A. C. van Lier, Mara Brendgen, Hans M. Koot, and Frank Vitaro examined longitudinal associations between clique membership status and internalizing and externalizing problems during late childhood.
[35] In this quasi-experiment the researchers aimed to discover if clique membership status was linked to increases in children's psychopathology.
In the study, clique membership status was identified through social network analysis, and peer nominations were used to assess internalizing and externalizing problems.
Through use of behavioural descriptions on the Pupil Evaluation Inventory (PEI), peer nominations of externalizing and internalizing behaviors were obtained.
Through this study, Witvliet, van Lier, Brendgen, Koot, and Vitaro noted that externalizing problems increased among clique members.
They found that clique members compared with isolated children showed, on average, an increase in externalizing problems across that same period.
The researchers claimed that these results support the hypothesis that clique membership protects children against developing internalizing problems.
[3]: p.159 [26] The chronological relationship between changing gender dynamics and the dissolution of organized, hierarchical cliques is well-established, but not fully understood.
[3]: p.165 One possible explanation for this progression argues that children are socialized from childhood to conform to gender roles and during early adolescence cognitive developments promote active self-presentation and anxiety over peer-perceptions; as a result, early adolescents become more consciously aware of both the benefits of conventional gender identity and the threat of ridicule or rejection in response to unorthodox behavior.
Perhaps the most consequential finding from the empirical study of adolescent cliques is that they are not an inherently negative force, but rather part of normative development in our society.