Popular: The Power of Likability in a Status-Obsessed World

"Mitch Prinstein is a fabulous psychologist who studies social intelligence. I only chose books that I think are great science, but also really well-written. Prinstein wrote a wonderful book, very warm and relatable. There are a lot of great stories, and it’s a terrific summary of more or less everything that’s known on the topic of popularity. Popularity is an inescapable part of life—especially for adolescents and teenagers and the people who love them, but for everybody in many facets of life. His work (and this book) shows that there are ways to go about the popularity game that are bad for you and for others. The thing about the chicken-and-egg question is that for almost everything that I study—grit, popularity, productivity—the relationship between the attribute and achievement is truly reciprocal. In other words, there is no real good answer to your question, because they follow each other. For example, kids who are more socially adept and have more friends do better in school, which probably helps them have more friends. Both my intuition and the science show that most things feed into each other. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter That’s why we can get into virtuous cycles. Kids who are happy are healthy and tend to do well in school, which makes them happy and healthy. It also means that there are vicious cycles—people who start to get depressed and become socially isolated and stop sleeping well. Performance slips, causing a continued downward spiral. What we want are upward spirals."

"The title of the book takes me back to high school. Who was popular? Where are those people now? In this book, Prinstein discusses and presents research on our innate and universal need for status and likability. When people say they don’t care about status or when they claim indifference to what other people think of them, it sounds cool; however, we sense that it isn’t true. It is part of human nature to care about how others regard us. Prinstein writes that popularity is based on likability as well as status, but that it’s difficult to simultaneously convey both these characteristics. Research on social perception shows that we evaluate other people according to these two fundamental dimensions of social perception. When we meet someone, we gauge their warmth. This happens almost instantaneously on a primal level. Do I like this person? Their perceived warmth indicates whether we can establish a friendship with them. Do I want to spend time with this person? If I host a cocktail party, will I invite them? The other important aspect of social perception is competence. We appraise their intelligence and capability. Do I want to work with this person? Can I delegate a task to this person? We gauge competence fairly quickly, though it might take a moment longer than it does to assess warmth. Demonstrating warmth and demonstrating competence require two completely different strategies. I will seem warm and trustworthy if I smile, if I agree, or if I give gifts; however, I’ll seem smart and competent if I don’t smile as often, if I occasionally disagree, and if I do not give gifts. Because demonstrating likability and status require opposite strategies, it is difficult to embody both qualities at the same time. The book explores why we care so much about this and why it’s so hard. Back in high school, we may have been competent and nerdy, or maybe we were likable and sweet, but only a few people were incredibly popular. I find this dichotomy and these different strategies very interesting. Everyone wants to be the lovable star. We don’t want to be the incompetent jerk, nor do we want to be the competent jerk. I believe we can all benefit from knowing about warmth and competence and how these judgments influence our impressions. That’s why I think this is a useful book."