Problem:
How can I make notes with bullet points in this paragraph? Can peer status change? In general, children's peer status is quite stable over time. Popular children do sometimes lose their high status, and neglected children occasionally gain some social acceptance, but rejected children are unlikely to change their social status (Coie & Dodge, 1983). In part, this stability is the result of reputational bias, the tendency of children to interpret peers' behavior on the basis of past encounters and impressions (Hymel et al., 1990). When children are asked to judge peers' negative behavior, they are likely to excuse a child whom they earlier liked, giving that child the benefit of the doubt, but they do not excuse a peer whom they didn't like. Reputation colors children's interpretations of peers' actions and helps account for the stability of children's status across time (Denham & Holt, 1993; Hymel, 1986). However, reputation is not the only contributor to stability of peer status. The behavior and characteristics of the children themselves also contribute. Proving this point, when researchers brought boys together and assigned them to new social groups, the boys tended to attain the same peer status as they'd had before-even though the boys in their new groups had no knowledge of their earlier reputations (Coie et al., 1990). Boys who had been widely accepted before were popular again; boys who'd been rejected continued their depressing isolation. Need Assignment Help?