Editing Popularity (section)

=== Aggression ===
The degree to which an individual is perceived as popular is often highly correlated with the level of aggression with which that individual interacts with his or her peers. There are two main categories of aggression, relational and overt, both of which have varying consequences for popularity depending on several factors, such as the gender and attractiveness of the aggressor.<ref name=Crick>{{cite journal |last1=Crick |first1=Nicki R. |last2=Grotpeter|first2=Jennifer K.|title=Relational Aggression, Gender, and Social-Psychological Adjustment |journal=Child Development|date=1 June 1995<!-- |year=2008 ???-->|volume=66|issue=3|pages=710–722|doi=10.1111/j.1467-8624.1995.tb00900.x|pmid=7789197 |s2cid=6647537 }}</ref>

The relationship also depends on culture. Prinstein notes that studies have found that increased aggression tends to correlate with higher social status in the United States, but lower social status in China.<ref name="Prinstein" />

==== Relational aggression ====
[[Relational aggression]] is nonviolent aggression that is emotionally damaging to another individual. Examples of relationally aggressive activities include ignoring or excluding an individual from a group, delivering personal insults to another person, and the spreading of rumors. Relational aggression is more frequently used by females than males.<ref name=Borch />

It has been found that relational aggression almost always has a strongly negative relationship with sociometric popularity but can have a positive relationship with perceived popularity depending on the perceived level of attractiveness of the aggressor. For an aggressor who is perceived as unattractive, relational aggression, by both males and females, leads to less perceived popularity. For an attractive aggressor however, relational aggression has been found to actually have a positive relationship with perceived popularity.<ref name=Borch />

The relationship between attractiveness and aggression is further intertwined by the finding that increased levels of physical attractiveness actually further decreased the sociometric popularity of relationally aggressive individuals.<ref name=Borch />

In short, the more physically attractive an individual is, the more likely they are to experience decreased levels of sociometric popularity but increased levels of perceived popularity for engaging in relationally aggressive activities.

==== Overt aggression ====
Overt aggression is aggression that involves individuals physically interacting with each other in acts such as pushing, hitting, kicking or otherwise causing physical harm or submission in the other person. This includes threats of violence and physical intimidation as well.

It has been shown that overt aggression directly leads to perceived popularity when the aggressor is attractive.<ref name=Cillessen-Rose /> Experiments that are controlled for levels of physical attractiveness show that individuals who are attractive and overtly aggressive have a higher degree of perceived popularity than attractive non-overtly aggressive individuals. This was found to be true to a small degree for females and a large degree for males.<ref name=Borch />

Attractive individuals who are overtly aggressive barely suffer any consequences in terms of sociometric popularity. This is a key difference between overt and relational aggression because relational aggression has a strongly negative relationship on sociometric popularity, especially for attractive individuals. For unattractive individuals, there is again a strongly negative relationship between overt aggression and sociometric popularity.<ref name=Borch /> This means that attractive individuals stand to gain a lot of perceived popularity at the cost of very little sociometric popularity by being overtly aggressive while unattractive individuals stand to gain very little perceived popularity from acts of overt aggression but will be heavily penalized with regards to sociometric popularity.