Popularity, friendship, and emotional adjustment during early adolescence.

Early adolescence is one of the most challenging developmental periods of the life span. During this time, the nature of interpersonal relationships changes as youngsters begin to function in a vast array of new environments. As part of these changes, the establishment of healthy relations with peers and the development of a sense of emotional well-being become increasingly important. In this chapter, we bring these two aspects of early adolescent development together to show how peer relations and emotional well-being are interrelated during this developmental period. In particular, we present a model of the associations between relationships with peers and feelings of belongingness and loneliness during early adolescence. Our first goal in this chapter is to describe the two aspects of peer relations that have received the most attention in the social-developmental literature. These two constructs are popularity and friendship. In this discussion, we point to the conceptual distinctions between these two domains of experience with peers and we propose that they may become increasingly distinct forms of experience during adolescence. We also discuss the reasons why it is important to study popularity and friendship simultaneously. Next, we indicate why popularity and friendship are expected to be related to different aspects of adjustment. In this discussion,