Peer experiences of anxious and socially withdrawn youth: an integrative review of the developmental and clinical literature.

Prior research indicates that both anxious youth and socially withdrawn youth tend to experience challenges and difficulties in various aspects of their peer relationships and social functioning. While clinical psychology researchers have examined how anxiety relates to peer experiences using normative and clinically anxious samples, developmental psychologists have focused primarily on the peer experiences of shy and withdrawn children. Research from these two fields has progressed on related yet separate paths, producing similar results despite using different terminology and assessment techniques.

Opposites do not attract: social status and behavioral-style concordances and discordances among children and the peers who like or dislike them.

Homophily, a term used to describe the tendency to associate with similar others, serves as a basis for attraction among children. The converse may also be true. Dissimilarity appears to contribute to dislike.

Popularity, friendship quantity, and friendship quality: interactive influences on children's loneliness and depression.

A mediational model positing that the effects of popularity on children's loneliness and depression are passed through indexes of friendship experiences was tested using structural equation modeling. Children (193 3rd through 6th graders) completed a battery of sociometric and self-report questionnaires from which measures of popularity, multiple friendship dimensions (i.e.