How To Be Popular

I f I asked you, "what makes someone popular," I bet you would already know the answer. Rosalind Wiseman has asked hundreds of students this question and discovered that nearly everyone already knows. To be popular, girls and boys need the following:

Girls must be:

Pretty

Outgoing

Have Money

Athletic

Have attractive guy friends

Boys must be:

Strong

Tough

Athletic

Handsome

Have attractive girlfriends

The science that explains why these things make someone popular is simple. The qualities listed above make someone attractive and when someone is Attractive they benefit from "Input of Energy" which can be thought of as a certain "special attention." The more attractive you are, the more input of energy you get as shown in the picture. Input of Energy is what makes someone Popular.

Input of Energy, or special attention, flows up the more attractive a person is. What is the mystery if everyone already knows the answer? Why do websites like WikiHow and books like How to Be Popular keep giving the same advice that obviously doesn't work? The reason is because being well liked and being Popular ARE NOT the same thing.

This is nicely demonstrated in the movie Mean Girls. It shows the very popular Gretchen Wieners falling from a stage because no one actually likes her. Websites such as WikiHow get “popularity” confused with “liking.”

Gretchen falling proving liking and popularity are not the same thing.

If you want to be well liked you need to:

Girls & Boys must:

Be kind

Help friends

Be trustworthy

Be friendly

Etc...

B eing really well liked will not make you Popular. The WikiHow article should really be titled, "How to Be Well Liked" and not, "How to Be Popular." People often think that the feelings of attraction and liking are the same but they are not. The brain chemistry that creates liking is different from the brain chemistry that creates attraction. If you want to learn more about this, check out the pioneering work of scientist Kent C. Berridge and the Incentive Salience Model.

The brain chemistry that causes liking is different from that which causes attraction.

B ecause being liked and being popular are not the same thing, all students can be drawn onto the graph shown below. There are eight typical students on this graph called the Student Map. You can probably recognize most of them.

The Student Map

There are three axes:

Liking

Disliking

Popularity.

So what's the moral of the story? If you want to be Popular, you must be those things listed in the first table.

I f you want to be well Liked, you must do those things in the second table. Don't get the two confused. It's possible to be both (or neither) but being popular doesn't cause you to be well liked and vice versa.

Being popular ≠ being well liked

Being well liked ≠ being popular

Luckily, real life is a little more complicated and not so brutally simplistic. However, this article is enough to answer why there is so much confused and hopeless advice in books and on the internet.

For more information, check out our FAQ on Popularity, ‘Some Questions Answered’.