Adolescence is a developmental stage marked by an increased focus on social status (LaFontana & Cillessen, 2010). During this period, adolescents often strive for two types of peer approval: peer acceptance, where they aim to fit in and be liked, and social recognition, where they seek to stand out, gain admiration, or exert influence within their peer group (Dawes & Xie, 2014). While aggression and bullying are often seen as effective means of attaining popularity, prosocial behaviors, such as defending victims of bullying, can also boost one’s social status (Lambe et al., 2019). The classroom serves as a crucial social context in which students interact with peers and engage in social learning (Eccles & Roeser, 2011). Classroom norms—shared beliefs about what is appropriate—shape behavior through rewards for conformity (approval, status) and social sanctions for deviation (Laursen & Veenstra, 2021). These norms can apply to the entire class or be set by a subgroup of influential, popular students who act as powerful socializing agents, known as the popularity norm (Veenstra & Lodder, 2022). Two types of popularity norms are frequently studied: prosocial and aggressive (or bullying), characterized by the relationship between popularity and either prosocial or aggressive/bullying behavior. They can vary significantly between classrooms, thereby affecting students’ social interactions, behavior, well-being, and social status. In classrooms with stronger aggressive popularity norms, for example, students experience higher levels of peer rejection, increased victimization, lower academic performance, and a less positive overall school experience (Dijkstra & Gest, 2015). Alongside popularity norms, a classroom’s social dynamics can be influenced by how classmates like or dislike bullies and prosocial students (bullying likability or bullying rejection norms; prosocial likability or prosocial rejection norms). In our study, we aimed to identify latent profiles of classrooms based on bullying and prosocial popularity norms, likability norms, and rejection norms, and to examine how these profiles differ in classroom-level bullying, victimization, bystander behavior (defending and reinforcing bullying), and popularity and likability goals.

Classrooms were the main units of analysis, with 328 classrooms in 118 elementary schools participating (N = 6379; 50% female; 0.1% reporting as nonbinary; age range 12–16, Mage = 13.43, SD = 0.64). Six types of classroom norms were investigated: bullying popularity norms, prosocial popularity norms, bullying likability norms, prosocial likability norms, bullying rejection norms, and prosocial rejection norms. Popularity norms were defined as the within-classroom correlation between peer-reported bullying/prosocial behavior and perceived popularity; likability norms were defined as the correlation between bullying/prosocial behavior and likability nominations; and rejection norms were defined as the correlation between bullying/prosocial behavior and rejection nominations. Bullying, victimization, and bystander behavior were measured with the Adolescent Peer Relations Instrument: Participant Roles (Parada, 2006), and popularity goals were assessed using the measure developed by Li and Wright (2014).

A latent profile analysis (LPA) in Mplus identified a four-profile solution: (1) a profile with high prosocial popularity norms, (2) a profile with high aggressive popularity norms and normative likability and rejection norms, (3) a profile with low popularity norms of both types and normative likability and rejection norms, and (4) a profile with high aggressive popularity norms, low prosocial popularity norms, high aggression likability norms, and low aggression rejection norms. A comparison of these profiles in terms of bullying, victimization, bystander behavior, and popularity goals revealed that classrooms characterized by the Low Popularity Norms profile (Profile 2) displayed the lowest levels of bullying and victimization, more constructive bystander behavior, and the lowest popularity goals. The implications of these findings for effective bullying prevention in early adolescence will be discussed.

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