Angel Zhang

Abstract：

Social Hierarchy exists in both Chinese and American high schools and distinct characteristics might effect their position in high school society. One experiment is used to explore the characteristics that decree. First is that high ability does not always lead to improvement in social hierarchy. Second is that there is also cultural differences between Chinese and American high school society that may contribute to the different factors that define “popular students. Third is that there are also differences between freshmen sophomore， junior and senior in high school. This is exploratory research which we seek to understand the bases of social hierarchy cross cultural and develop hypothesis we can test in factual research.

Introduction：

Cloris and Maliah are students in an American high school. Mariah is “popular”， she has a stable friend group and seems to be the main leader in that group. She never has time to be alone， since she is surrounded by people all the time. If she dislikes someone， people would start to be critical of that person. Cloris is not “ popular” and her life has nothing to do with “ popular”. She is less likely to be a leader among students. Of course， few people in school cares about who she dislikes. So her personal preference has very little impact on others whereas Maliah can easily manipulate people and effect their way of doing things based on her preference. What decides their influence in high school students？

Status is a persons standing and importance in relation to other people in society. In high school situation， it is when students first begin to fit in society that assembles adults world. High school is also the time when students develop their brain most rapidly. Their cognition and values would experience a breakthrough at this time. The hierarchy in China and America is very different， thus the social hierarchy in high school is different. The factors that define the hierarchy are related to both physical and social aspects. In this research， a survey is done to explore the importance of each factor.

Literature review：

In Cameron Andersons social hierarchy study “ Who Attains Social Status？ Effects of Personality and Physical attractiveness in Social Groups”， he mainly focuses on studying face-to-face status. He also chooses effective samples： samples of his physical attractiveness are basically depended on two different dimensions of beauty： physical and dynamic. In addition， in the design of the physical attractiveness measurement， each participant knows nothing about the people in the video， which exempt the possibility of the effect of personality. The flaw of this research is the samples of all male and all-female groups are not from the same place. Since different region has different view of physical attractiveness， personality， and status， a mistake might happen. Also he uses Big Five Personality traits to test peoples characteristics. For example， if people really enjoy talking to people， then they belong to extraverted group. In order to examine their status， he uses 2 value to determine participants status： peer ratings of prominence on a 4-point scale ranging from 1（dont know at all） to 4 （know extremely well） and an objective life-outcome data which based on real life position and offices. The situation in school is quite different. Since students in the same private school have little disparity of educational resource and family background， the main factors that affect their social status in school are mostly about their own characteristics. So this survey focuses on the characteristics of students instead of their social position. （Argument： potential cultural difference gender Chinese content social hierarchy differently）（data>>argument >>rational） The argument

Hypotheis：

1.There is difference between female and males view of the importance of “sports”

2.There is difference between Chinese and American high school students view of GPA because of its cultural difference.

Result：

Through comparing 2 different groups of data of male and female， we found that “humorous” ，“sports ability”， “good-looking” ， and “rich” are important to both male and females popularity. However， when it comes to sports ability， the mean rating of male is while female is， which means men views sports ability more important than womens view.The interesting finding is， male tends to consider rich not so important as women does. They put “nice” before it. The males average score of “rich” is 2.03 while nice is 4.35. For women， the score of “rich” is 3.44.

Further Study：

For good-looking， there is a question that needed further study： whether male think females appearance is important or males appearance is important. When they judge the importance of factors they use a model of fame sex or the other sex？