Examining Social Status Profiles with Gender, School Attended, SES, Academic Achievement and Wellbeing in Urban China

Previous research has produced inconsistent findings about the relationships between aggressive and prosocial behavior with likeability and popularity. This study utilized latent profile analysis to identify naturally occurring social status profiles with these indicators and to explore their associations with gender, school attended, subjective social status, academic achievement, and wellbeing. The study recruited 818 (aged 12-15 years, 46% girls) Chinese adolescents and revealed four unique social status profiles: high aggressive-low likeability, low social status, average, and high prosocial-high social status groups. A bi-strategic profile did not emerge. The low social status and high aggressive groups exhibited the lowest academic achievement and wellbeing suggesting that more attention should be devoted to these students both in school and in future research.