Popular

Having a 9-year old daughter who has moved to a new school, is discovering the boons and banes of being popular, and recently binge-watched 13 Reasons Why, the word ‘popularity’ has been a little bit off-putting for me these days. That I was till I read Mitch Prinstein’s Popular. And the truth dawned on me — there are more ways to get what you want and still staying human, than the standard high school, mean girls way of being popular.

A leading psychologist, Prinstein examines the much-explored territory of popularity, albeit from a different angle. As children, if we were sane, logical and ‘good kids’, we were not popular, and our parents told us popularity did not matter. As parents, we do the same with our kids. But as research show, popularity does affect our lives in myriad ways — professional success, relationships, happiness and mental peace. But then there are good reasons why we may not always want to be the most popular.

As he explains repeatedly, there are two kinds of popularity, but only one of them is good. There is a clear distinction between attainment of status and projection of likeability. Attainment of status implies attention-seeking behaviours in the pursuit of fame, wealth, and power. And as a child, power means how many friends you have and how many people like you in school. Likeability, on the other hand, involves empathy, kindness and humour. Unfortunately, in school these two types of popularity are inversely proportional. Those who hanker after attainment of status are not too likeable, while those who are genuinely likeable do not care about attaining status.

The book examines why popularity plays such a crucial role in our personality development. How we understand the dynamics of popularity, and try to achieve it, ultimately defines what kind of people we will be, and how our lives will turn out. Our popularity affects our health, choice of profession, and even our lifespan/mortality in ways we never would have thought. More than intelligence, access to money or education, research shows that our popularity as children influences how successful and happy we would be as adults.

It’s not all bleak though. Fortunately, likeability is more powerful; as we grow older, we realise the society prefers those who can be liked. Teenage mean girls and bad boys are not what any potential employer wants. People want to employ someone they would like being with, nobody wants an arrogant or selfish attention-seeker. Hence, being likeable eventually turns out to be much more profitable in the long run, likeability translates to popularity as you grow older.

Likeable kids turn into likeable adults, and likeable adults prosper. As parents, teachers and caregivers, we can influence a child’s likeability by the right coaching — in terms of communication, behaviour, mindset and emotions. As a father, this book appealed to me a lot. It was a way of letting my daughter know that what we have told her all along is true — being humane is all that matters, the rest will fall into place if she remembers to be humane. As a leader, this is even more appealing as I let my team know that there is research backing me. Contrary to what our parents told us, now we know that scientifically popularity is a social measure that is in the immediate background of our life, forever. How we achieve that popularity is what defines our life, and here’s hoping more and more people choose the right way.