For preferred distance and popularity, it has been found that adults place themselves closer to others
they think have similar status than to others they think have higher or lower status (Lott &
Sommer, 1967). However, in Eder’s (1985) observational study with children, timing was crucial for
the association between proximity and popularity. Initially, children affiliated with popular peers during
lunch breaks in order to befriend them and hopefully gain status themselves. However, when a
status hierarchy was set, popular girls avoided contact with lower status peers. As a result, these peers
avoided the popular girls during lunch because they considered them snobbish and feared their rejection.
Based on these findings, one could hypothesize that children would place themselves close to
popular classmates at the beginning of the school year but farther away from them later in the year.
Because Study 2 was conducted during the second semester, we expected that (a) children would
place themselves farther away from classmates they perceived as popular and (b) children who were
popular among the majority of their peers would have a larger preferred distance to peers in general.
The goal of Study 2 was to test whether children’s liking and perceived popularity of their peers
were reflected in the way they positioned themselves relative to peers when they could make their
own classroom seating arrangement. We also wanted to replicate the findings of Study 1 regarding
the associations of interpersonal distance in the classroom determined by the teacher and liking
and popularity ratings. Therefore, we examined the following research questions in Study 2: