From Nerds To Normals

8/8/2019 From Nerds To Normals

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From Nerds to Normals: The Recovery of Identity among Adolescents from Middle School toHigh SchoolAuthor(s): David A. KinneySource: Sociology of Education, Vol. 66, No. 1 (Jan., 1993), pp. 21-40Published by: American Sociological AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2112783 .

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From Nerds to Normals: The Recovery ofIdentity among Adolescents fromMiddle School to High SchoolDavid A. KinneyUniversity f Chicago

Extensive attention has been given to understanding the nature ofadolescent identity, but little consideration has been given to theeveryday social experiences and processes by which the content ofteenagers' self-perceptions are formed and remain stable or changewithin educational settings. Since studies have focused on members of"popular" cliques or "deviant" subcultures, it is important to examinethe daily lives of teenagers whose peers have labeled them unpopular"nerds" in schools to document how these adolescents are able toovercome the stigma of this label. Using intensive interviews andobservations, this study delineated the impact of school activities, schoolsocial structure,and peer culture on the self-perceptions of nerds. Thefindings indicate that adolescents who were unpopular in middle schooland who became involved in high school activities and friendship groupswere able to recover by becoming self-confident and reconstructingthemselves as "normal"within a changing school social system.

P opularfilms andtelevision showsaboutadolescents and schools usu-ally include a certain type of teen-ager who is frequently ridiculed andrejected by his or her peers. Theseadolescents are often portrayedas awk-ward, intelligent, shy, unattractivesocialoutcasts with unfashionable hair anddress styles who sometimes attempt toget revenge on their peers who shunthem. Theyare called "nerds,""dweebs,""dorks,""geeks,""brainiacs,"and "com-puter jocks." Although these stereotypi-cal nerds appear in films and on televi-sion, do American secondary schoolstudents use such terms to label theirpeers?If so, what is life like forteenagerswho are so labeled? And if this experi-ence is distressing, as many peoplebelieve, how do teenagers deal with thestigma of being labeled nerds? Termslike nerd and dweeb' have been concep-tualized by researchers as social-typelabels that shape the content of adoles-cents' identity (see, for example, Brownand Lohr 1987; Larkin 1979; Schwartz

and Merten 1967). Since social scientistshave characterizedthe teenage years as acrucial time for the formation of iden-tity, it is important to investigate theextent to which teenagers use thesesocial-type labels and the impact theselabels have on adolescents' self-percep-tions.Iused observations and in-depth inter-views with teenagers in differentgradesand at differenttimes to collect informa-tion regardingthe everyday experiencesthat shape the trajectoriesof their con-cerns and identities. A recurrent themein the data indicated that some adoles-cents who were labeled by their peers asunpopular nerds in middle school wereable to embrace a more positive self-perception in high school that centeredon defining themselves as "normal."1 ngeneral, although the cognitive, psycho-

1 This focus on the nerds who becomenormal (their terminology) was one of therecurrentpatterns found in a larger ethno-graphic study of peers groups and peerculture at a high school (see Kinney 1990).SOCIOLOGYOF EDUCATION1993, VOL. 66 (JANUARY):2140 21


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22 Kinneylogical, and physical changes that takeplace duringadolescence have been welldocumented in the developmental liter-ature, this article presents a view ofchanges on the social side of life. Specif-ically, the data show that adolescents'daily negotiation of the school socialscene within and between groups pro-duced powerful emotions that had asignificant and ongoing impact on theirperceptions of themselves and others.Moreover,adolescents with the opportu-nities and resources to take advantage ofspecialized high school-sponsored activ-ities were actively able to affirm apositive personal identity.

RELEVANTLITERATUREGenerally, the form identity takesduring adolescence is presumed to havea significant impact on later life. Thus,social scientists have generated muchresearchand theory designed to increaseour understanding of identity formationduring the second decade of life. Al-though these researchers are fromdiffer-

ent disciplines, they all note the impor-tance of considering the socioculturalcontext of individual identity develop-ment. For example, prominent psychia-trists and social psychologists of humandevelopment (e.g., Douvan and Adelson1966; Erikson 1959, 1963; Sherif andSherif 1964; Sullivan 1953) have vieweda supportive adolescent peer group asthe primary social arena in which ado-lescents develop a healthy sense ofidentity as they experimentwith varioussocial roles and make decisions abouttheir present and future lives. Douvanand Adelson (1966, p. 179) capturedthestrong interplay between the immediatesocial milieu and adolescent identitydevelopment when they argued thatteenagers are "about to crystallize anidentity, and for this [they need] othersof [their] generation to act as models,mirrors, helpers, testers, foils." Simi-larly, pragmatic philosophers and soci-ologists, who developed the symbolicinteractionist framework (e.g., Cooley1902; Cottrell 1969; Goffnan 1959; Mc-Call and Simmons 1978; Mead 1934;Stryker1980), have stressed the impor-tance of everyday social interaction and

symbolic communication that allowshumans to think about themselves fromthe viewpoints of others as the keymechanism of identity formation. Forexample, Cooley's (1902) notion of the"looking-glass self" describes the pro-cess of imagining how we appear toothers and how this appearanceis eval-uated by others. These imaginationsdevelop during social interaction andproduce feelings, such as delight ordejection, that are directed toward theself. Interpersonal interaction and con-comitant self-feelings occur within andbetweengroups,andthese variousgroupsconstitute the relevant social structureand cultural landscape that providesfertile ground for the growth of individ-uals' identity.These two bodies of literature haveinspired numerous studies that haveincreased our understanding of identity.Forexample, psychologists have concep-tualized and operationalized the notionof "identity statuses" to study empiri-cally some of Erikson's ideas regardingidentity formation (see, for example,Grotevant1987; Marcia 1980; Matteson1977). However,althoughthe findings ofthese studies have highlightedthe impor-tance of two fundamental processesunderlying identity formation-the ex-ploration of alternatives and commit-ment to choices-this research has notsystematically examined the develop-ment of identity in termsof the everydayinterpersonal interactions within natu-rally occurringpeer groups that Eriksonand other influential social psycholo-gists alluded to in their writings. Sociol-ogists working in the symbolic interac-tionist tradition have demonstrated theimpact of both structuredrole identities(e.g., Burke 1980; McCall and Simmons1978; Stryker 1968) and more situa-tional, impression-management strate-gies (e.g., Goffnan 1959; Strauss 1959)on the development of self. However,these social psychologists have not seri-ously considered adolescents' role iden-tities and self-presentation techniqueswithin specific contexts, such as thesocial worlds of secondary schools.In their research on homeless people,Snow and Anderson (1987) reworkedearlier symbolic interactionist concep-


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24 Kinneynormals, who did not view themselvesand were not categorized as members of''popular"or "delinquent" crowds.Two studies have examined teenagerswho were labeled nerds or brainiacs-terms that connote being intelligent andsocial outcasts.Fordhamand Ogbu (1986,p. 220) documented that Black highschool students cope with the burden of"actingWhite"(workinghardto get goodgrades and getting good grades) andavoid being negatively labeled brainiacsby "divertingtime and effort into strate-gies designed to camouflage"their highlevels of academic achievement. Forexample, teenagerswho got good gradesoften engaged in "lunching" activitiesthat centered on clowning, which pre-vented their peers from becoming hos-tile toward them because they receivedhigh grades.Brown's (1989) preliminarydata analysis suggested that bright stu-dents in several high schools also usedstrategies,like clowning or underachiev-ing, to avoid the negative labels of brainand nerd. Although these two studieshave increased our understanding ofhow some teenagersdistance themselvesfrom negative social-type labels, theyfocused primarily on students' socialidentities and did not investigate thecontent of the teenagers' personal iden-tities over time. Also, given earlierstudies' focus on adolescent crowds atone point in time, these investigationsdid not seriously consider if the peergroup social structurethey documentedwas the same system that the teenagersperceived to "exist" (viewed as salient)throughout their secondary school ca-reers. To extend the findings of earlierstudies, I observed and interviewed stu-dents over a two-year period to investi-gate the nature of their school socialexperiences and perceptions of self,others, and the school social structureover time.

SETTINGAND METHODSThe research was conducted at a highschool that enrolled students from awide range of socioeconomic back-grounds, including a large group ofstudents from working- and lower-classfamilies. The school is located in a small

Midwestern city (population about60,000) and is attended by students fromthe city and surrounding rural areas.Although most of the students are White,a small number of African Americansalso attend.The school itself is relativelylarge, with approximately 400 studentsin each grade (9-12). This school wasselected because some of the studentshad participated in an earlier study ofsocial interaction and peer culture in alocal middle school (grades 6-8) con-ducted by Eder and her colleagues (Eder1985; 1988; Eder and Parker 1987; Parker1991; Sanford and Eder 1984). Thisresearch did not follow up all thestudents who were studied in the mid-dle school, but the extensive dataregard-ing the peer culture of the middle schoolfrom Eder's study provides an informa-tive point of referenceforunderstandingthe students' later social experiences inhigh school.Beginning in March 1987, I observedsocial interaction at the school betweenclasses, at lunch, and after school. I alsoattended the various after-school extra-curricularactivities to observe peer rela-tions among the participants and fans.These activities included football games;cross-country meets; girls' volleyballgames, gymnastics,and swimming meets;boys' and girls' basketball games; wres-tling and tennis matches;baseballgames;academic decathlon competitions; aca-demic- and athletic-awardbanquets;mu-sical and theatricalperformances; alentshows; and "battles of the bands" (com-petitions among students' rock and rollbands). These frequent observations ofadolescents in natural settings providedinformationabout everyday social inter-actions and behavior at various eventsthat served as data to be comparedwithmaterial from the in-depth interviews.Overall, I conducted and audiotaped81 interviews with both male and femalemembers of all the peer groups that thestudentsperceivedto exist at the school.2About half these interviews occurred

2 With the following exceptions: a crowdof youths fromnearbyruralareas(called the"grits") and isolates who were beyond thescope of this study and the female athleteswho were studied by another researcher.


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FromNerds to Normals 25with individuals and the rest with smallgroups. The small-group interviews re-sembled informal peer conversationsthat I frequently observed during andafter school in natural settings and arevital because discussions that emergeparallel the collective processes that arecrucial for identity development (Davies1982). The adolescents' emotional andfree-flowing language in these naturalconversationsandgroupinterviewstrans-mits information about themselves andothers, but also serves as a "tool forestablishing (i.e., maintaining, creating)social and psychological realities" (Ochs1990, p. 288; see also Berger and Luck-mann 1967). These group interviews arealso important,since concerns that wereagreed upon or argued about duringthese conversations provided useful datathat I compared with the data from theintensive individual interviews and ob-servations (Beckerand Geer 1960).3Four-teen interviews were follow-up inter-views conducted three months to a yearafter the first interview. Altogether,through he interviewsand social encoun-ters at school and at theirhangouts,I hadcontact with approximately 120 adoles-cents. The interviews ranged in lengthfrom40 to 120 minutes and took place innatural settings that the adolescentsnormally frequentedafterschool and onthe weekends, such as pizza and fast-food restaurantsor coffeehouses in thecommunity.Several nterviewswere con-ducted in a conference room in theschool library, and some took place atlocal parks during April and May.I attempted to carve out a neutralidentity for myself at the school bymaking and maintaining connectionswith students in a wide variety of peergroups and by being open to theirdifferent viewpoints (Lesko 1988). Dur-ing my initial contacts with the studentsand before I conducted interviews, Istressed that I would be the only one to

listen to the audiotapes and that neitherthe school nor any individual studentswould be identified. Moreover,I consis-tently and successfully used interview-ing techniques and strategies (e.g., vari-ous probes and displaying sympatheticunderstanding) outlined by RaymondGordon (1980) that facilitate communi-cation and promote positive relationsbetween the respondents and the inter-viewer. In addition, the interviewsservedas a catharsis (RaymondGordon 1980, p.113) because the adolescents frequentlyopened up and shared their feelingsabout their everyday experiences. I alsodistanced myself from adult authorityfigures (e.g., parents, teachers, the prin-cipal, and the school security guards) bydressing in jeans and casual shirts andby emphasizing my status as a collegestudent writing a paper about teenagers'high school experiences, By showing mygenuine interest in their daily lives anddistancing myself from adults, I devel-oped a high level of rapportwith theseadolescents,4which was reflected in thestudents' willingness to discuissdiscred-iting information about themselves andto invite me to their private activities(see Sherif and Sherif 1964). The follow-ing sections represent recurrent themesfrom the overall database that delineatehow mostly middle-classs teenagerswhowere labeled nerds came to view them-selves as normals. About one-thirdof theinterviewees fit this pattern.

RECURRENTTHEMESInterviewdatafrom membersof all thedifferent peer groups indicated that the

3The ability to drawon observationaldataand having small-group interviews that re-semblenaturalpeer conversationsareimpor-tant, since data from individual interviewsarethe adolescents' reflective identificationsof the collective processes and public eventswithin which identity formationoccurs.

' In addition, I have frequently been toldby colleagues and friends that my youthfulappearance probably helped me build rap-port. On a number of occasions I wasmistaken for a student at the high school byteachers, counselors, and students, to whomI had not yet had a chance to introducemnself as a researcher romthe university.Otherunpopularmiddle school studentswho were from working-class homes typi-cally became involved in either the heavy-metal rock music crowd ("headbangers")orthe groupof primarilyrural eenagers "grits")at this high school, but an analysis of thesestudents is beyond the scope of this article.


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26 Kinneyadolescents consistently and vividly re-called their middle school experience asbeing divided into two distinct crowds:the unpopular nerds or dweebs and thepopular trendies. Membersof the trendycrowd were also referred to as thepreppies, jocks, or the in-crowd andconsisted of roughly 20 percent of themiddle school population. Male ath-letes, cheerleaders,and their best friendsmake up the vast majorityof the trendycrowd and are the most popular amongtheir peers in the school because of theirvisibility (Canaan1987; Eder 1985).This visibility is generated and main-tained by athletes' and cheerleaders'frequent public performances at well-attended school sports contests andpep rallies. For example, many teenag-ers noted that "everybody knows" whothe popular people are and what theydo; they are the ones who are "no-ticed" or "recognized" by everybody.Teenagers who were unpopular inmiddle school described their popularcounterparts as having "the ability togain recognition from everybody else,and you more or less get your choice ofwhat to do or who to go out with. It'sjust, everybody would like to be likethat." In addition to having a choice ofactivities and dating partners, bothtrendies and nerds noted that popularpeople "have the most fun" and arealways invited to private parties onweekends. In short, the peer culture6ofthis middle school was defined primar-ily by the activities and concerns of theleading crowd of male athletes, cheer-leaders, and their best friends. Theseteenagers emphasized traditional gen-der roles (achievement, competition,and toughness for boys; attractiveness,appearance, and interpersonal relationsfor girls) and maintaining their highpeer status, which required limiting thesize of their group by excluding peerswho did not meet their standards (Eder1985; Eder and Parker 1987; Parker1991).

Nerds in Middle SchoolAdolescents who were not trendiesended up by default in a large mass ofstudents who were labeled "unpopular."

As one young woman, Sarah, who wasnot a member of the elite group inmiddle school, recalled when she was ajunior in high school:Example 1Middle school was very different fromhigh school forme. I had a horribletime inmiddle school-I hated it! . . . I didn't likemyself at all and therefore I really hadtrouble kind of interacting with otherpeople, too, and you know when you'retrying to surround yourself with one littlegroup to feel secure sometimes that worksand sometimes it didn't. For one thingthere is a lot of stereotyping going on, andpeople are very narrow-minded . . . inmiddle school and judgmental,too, and soif you are different in any way ... there isalmost some kind of "in" person youshould be in middle school.... You know,it's a certain look and a certain life-style,and I just never fit into that, and so Ialways felt like people were coming downon me and on my other friends, too; it wasa lot more chaotic. I feel like it has toneddown a lot in high school-like my classesare a little morecalm;it could be that theyare all stoned but ahh-7

As Sarah recalled, middle school was adifficult time, characterized by not lik-ing herself, problems interacting withher peers, and frequent experiences withstereotyping. (Rosenberg 1965, using dif-ferent research methods, found similarcharacteristics to be strongly related tolow levels of self-esteem among adoles-cents.) She also discussed being stronglyaware of "some kind of 'in' person" whoshe thought she was expected to be, butnever became, and she related thisperception to people "coming down on"her and her friends.Although Sarah did not label herself a

6 "A stable set of activities or routines,artifacts,values, and concerns that childrenproduce and sharein interactionwith peers"(Corsaro and Eder 1990, p. 197).

'All quotations are from tape-recordedinterviews. Material in brackets is for clarifi-cation, and pseudonyms are used to refer topeople and places. The quotations have beenedited slightly to remove 'extraneous mate-rial, indicated by dots (. . .); hesitations,indicated by dashes (--- -); false starts, and theinterviewer's frequent use of "back-channel"remarks ("uhm," "yeah").


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From Nerds to Normals 27nerd or a dweeb (terms that connotebeing unpopular), these terms were usedfrequently in natural-group conversa-tions in high school and when theyouths reflected back on their middleschool experiences. For example, twoformer unpopular young men said:

Example2Ross:And middle school-.Ted:We were just nerds. I mean-.Ross:Yeah-Ted: people hated us.Ross: Well, they didn't hate us, but weweren't-Ted: popular. Which was either youwere popular or you weren't.Ross:In middle school it's very defined.There's popular people and unpopularpeople. It's just very-rigid. You werepopularor unpopular.That's it.Ted: And there wasn't people that werein between.Ross:Oh no!Ted: You just had one route [to becom-ing popular],and then therewas the other.And we were the other, and-basicallyyou were afraid of gettinglaughedat aboutanything you did because if you did onethingthatwas out of the ordinary,and youweren'texpected to do anythingout of theordinary, then you were laughed at andmade fun of, and you wouldn't fit thegroupat all, and then, of course, you wereexcluded and then you didn't even exist.Ross:You got "nuked,"so to speak.

Ross and Ted used the label nerd inretrospect and clearly perceived "veryrigid" boundaries between popular andunpopular youths in middle school.Independent data from some trendyyoung men about Ted corroborate Ted'srecollection of himself as a nerd. Thesepopular athletes excitedly described himin the following terms: "He had realshort hair like a nerd. He was the biggestnerd of the school." These trendies alsoexpressed the importance of avoidingunpopular students in middle school,saying:

[We]always had that one group-we hadall the good-looking girls and that is theone [group]that everybody wanted to bein. At lunch we sit at our own table [but] fyou go out to lunch with the wrongperson,rumorswould go around that you went tolunch with a geek!It is important to note that both Sarah

in Example 1 and Ross and Ted inExample 2 mentioned that being "differ-ent in any way" or acting "out of theordinary" was a sure way to drawnegativeattention ("gettingnuked")fromtheir peers. These comments reflect un-popular adolescents' awareness of theexpectationsof the popular group,whosemembers were described as being quickto "make fun of" and "exclude" thosewho are different in middle school.8Many high school students distinctlyrememberbeing ridiculed, shunned, andignored by their more popular peers inmiddle school. Since the popular crowdserved as a reference group for many ofthe unpopularstudents, the ridicule andrejection that the nerds experiencedfrom the trendies was highly salient.Specifically, in terms of Snow andAnderson's (1987) writings about iden-tity, the unpopular teenagers' social(imputed) and personal (self-attributed)identities were not distinct. These ostra-cized and isolated teenagers incorpo-ratedtheir popular peers' perceptions ofthem into their own thoughts and feel-ings about themselves. This finding isconsistent with writings by developmen-tal psychologists, who have noted thatearly adolescents have difficulty distin-guishing their own identities from oth-ers' views of them (see the review byHarter1990).

Outsiders' and Insiders' Viewsof NerdsSome nerds were singled out for theirsuperior academic performance.Otherswere viewed primarily as having lowlevels of social skills (e.g., being shy,nervous, or embarrassedaround others)and dressing out of fashion (e.g., "realstraight,""square,"and "goody-goody").8The readiness and cheerfulness withwhich the two trendies negatively describedTed and their fervor about avoiding unpopu-lar peers expressed in Example 3 closelycorrespondedto the nerds' perceptions andexperiences presented in Examples 1 and 2.Moreover, this small-group interview withthe trendies paralleled their natural conver-sations, which are important for identityformation.


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28 KinneyMany of them were believed to havesome combination of these characteris-tics. As Mary, who was a high schooljunior, noted:

Example 4They go home and do their homework,they watch TVand they go to bed and theygo back to school and do their homework.I mean they probably don't even talk onthe phone! They just, they don't have anylife outside of school, and I justcan'trelateto them!Similarly, Isaiah, a star male athlete whowas a high school senior, discussed hisview of the nerds, whom he called the"geeky" crowd:

Example 5Then there is kind of a geeky crowd, Iguess you could say, the really smart kids.They really have sort of a screwed-upvalue system as far as I'm concerned. Imean they put so much emphasis onstudying and doing homework and gettingreally greatgrades that they ... are missinga lot of the fun. They really are; I meanthey don't do anything but study. I guessthere is nothing really wrong with that, Imean studying is good, but I can't imaginegoing home and simply studying all nightlong and doing nothing else, which isbasically what they do, and they get greatgrades. But, as far as I'm concerned, theirwhole value system is messed up 'causethey've missed high school. High school isdoing yourwork and studying, and there isa time for studying and a time for havingfun!

These statements reflect the commonview that nerds focus so much on theiracademic achievement that they do nothave a social life. In middle school nerdstended not to date or attend parties.Unpopular teenagers recalled feelinglike "outsiders" or "social outcasts" inmiddle school on the basis of their socialencounters and comparisons with mem-bers of the trendy crowd, who had manyfriends. For example, one young mannoted: "I was just a loser, I didn't havefriends." Another unpopular teenager inmiddle school remembered worryingthat "no one" would like him in the"big, vast high school." Boundaries be-tween trendies and nerds were de-scribed as being "pretty thick" or like"huge barriers" that kept popular and

unpopular people "really separated."9The following two quotations (from amale high school senior and a femalehigh school junior, respectively) sum upthe middle school experiences of thenerds:

Example 6Middle school was not too fun-just likeme and Jeff were friends. I had glasses andI had-I guess I was like a "nerd" youknow. We both had glasses, we both hadthe same kind of (real short, funny-looking) hair, and people kind of pickedon us and stuff. Pushed us around-Example 7I wanted to [be in the trendy group] but Iwasn't; I never had a lot of friends. Ialways had one or two friends, and wewere always dressing pretty trendy andstuff like that, but we never really hadtrendy friends.

Nerds' Transition to High SchoolAlthough the nerds reported havingtroubling social experiences in middleschool, they viewed their transition to

high school as being accompanied bysome positive changes. Along with thetransition came increased opportunitiesfor membership in a greater variety ofgroups and a lessening of the desire forachieving schoolwide popularity thatwas so pervasive in middle school.These themes are illustrated in thefollowing comments by two juniors, Boband Ellen:Example 8Bob: You had popularpeople-Ellen:and unpopular people-in middleschool-either you were considered a nerdand nobody liked you or else you werehangingout with the cheerleadersand thefootballplayersand stuff like that, and thatwas the most important .. and then whenyou get into high school, it really doesn'tmatteranymore because people don't care[whether they're not in the popularcrowd] -'Overall, these findings from the highschool students' recollections of middleschool are highly consistent with the resultsof sociometric and observationalstudies ofpeer relations and peer culture at the samemiddle school (see Eder 1985; Eder andKinney 1988; Parker1991).


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FromNerds to Normals 29Bob:and there'smore groups[in highschool]....

As these students observed, the transi-tion to high school was characterizedbya more highly differentiatedsocial scene,based on a larger number and greatervariety of groups and students. Manystudents commented on the diversity ofthe high school, noting the existence ofgroups like the headbangers and punkrockers-two groupsthat did not exist atthe middle school. Moreover, other in-terviews and observationsindicated thatthe trendies felt challenged by membersof these new groups, who were visible(because of their "outrageous" appear-ance and "rowdy" behavior) at theschool. Along these lines, some of thetrendies ostracizedmembersof the head-bangers and punk rockers, whichseemed to reduce the amountof negativeattention they directed at the nerds.Members of the subcultures, especiallythe headbangers,criticized the trendiesand competed with them forschoolwidepopularity. In general, students enteringhigh school confronted a more diversesocial structure hat consisted of a greaternumberof peer cultures and peer groupsand in which the trendies' earlier mo-nopoly on visibility and popularity wasdiminishing.10In addition to the growing diversity ofthe social structure, many juniors andseniors believed that this stratificationsystem was becoming more open rela-tive to their experiences in middleschool and early in high school. Juniorsand seniors discussed this change interms of the "disintegration" of earlier''rigid"groupboundariesand thatthings"'evenedout" between crowds as theymoved through high school; freshmenand sophomores did not note suchchanges, but expressed how "happy,""glad," and "relieved" they were to bein high school.

Nerds' Increased ConfidenceAlong with the more open and diversesocial structure, another recurrent pat-

tern in the data was some adolescents'lessening concern with obtaining school-wide popularity, which was facilitatedby their involvement in school-spon-sored activities in which participationby juniors and seniors created a support-ive social environment. Many noted thatas freshmen and sophomores, they hadthe opportunity to feel secure and gainconfidence in themselves because oftheir acceptance by and approval fromtheir older teammates. Regarding thistheme, Ross and Ted stated:

Example 9Ross: We were goons in middle school-We'renot as shy [anymore]--.Ted: Exactly. I got the attitude when Imoved frommiddle school to high schoolthat I don't give a damn what people aregonna think. Because in middle schoolyou'realways afraidof offendingsomeone.Ross:And therewasn'tany way for us toget out of it anyway-.Ted:And once you get to high school, ifyou can find some crazier upper-classpeople and hang around with them, thepossibilities are limitless. I mean we gothere; we met some crazier upper-classpeople [throughparticipating n a "minor"sport],who justbasically gave us the idea,"Goahead. Go for it!"Ross: . . . Don't worryabout it so much.Stop being so self-conscious!These comments (e.g., "afraid of of-fending someone") illustrate the sa-lience of the popular group's normsregarding proper behavior and appear-ance in middle school. However, makingnew friends through participation in aschool activity provided both a support-ive group and a new reference group thatserved as a haven from the trendies'expectations and evaluations, where theseformer nerds did not have to be "soself-conscious" or "give a damn whatpeople are gonna think."The comments presented in Examples

8 and 9 (and in Example 2), along withother numerous stories told in thesesmall-group interviews, flowed one afterthe other as these teenagers talked rap-idly and emotionally about their presentand past experiences. Their quick deliv-

10Inadditionto the headbangersand punkrockers,the students describedothergroups,labeled "hippies," "skateboarders," nd the"grit-headbangers,"who representedthe di-versification of the social structureand thedevelopmentof alternativepeer cultures (seeKinney 1990).


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30 Kinneyery, discussion of discrediting informa-tion, and frequent smiles and warmglances at each other suggested that theywere close friends. Moreover, I fre-quently observed them hanging out,talking, and laughing togetherand withtheir friends in and out of school.Members of these two different smallgroupsopenly discussed their hopes andconcerns in a supportive group environ-ment where they received unqualifiedacceptance. From the perspective devel-oped here, the spontaneous, cheerful,and caring natureof their comments andnonverbal expressions both reflect andcontinually construct their positive andconfident self-perceptions (Berger andLuckmann 1967; Davies 1982; Ochs1990). Alternatively stated, these ongo-ing interpersonal interactions emanatefromand continually supportthese teen-agers' recovery of identity from theirpreviously stigmatized state. From amethodological standpoint, the small-group interviews were successful be-cause the discussions that emergedclosely resembled the form and contentof the everyday peer-group conversa-tions.These social changes appear to paral-lel the psychological growth in adoles-cents' cognitive capacities. Developmen-tal psychologists (e.g., Selman 1980)have suggested that early adolescence(roughly the middle school years) ischaracterizedby an increased ability toreflect about oneself and to take theperspective of others. However, thesenew skills may not be used effectively orcontrolled adequately. As Elkind (1967)argued, many young teenagers are un-able to differentiate their own frequentself-reflections from what they thinkothers are thinking about them. Hetermedthis exaggeratedegocentrism the"imaginaryaudience," since adolescentsimagine that others areas absorbedwiththeir appearanceand actions as they are.This notion captures the nerds' middleschool experiences, in which their highhopes but frustratingquest to be popularended up paralyzing them socially be-cause they were so scared of "offendingsomeone" that they became shy and felt"therewasn't any way for us to get out ofit." In other words, the social scene of

the middle school appears to accentuatethe insecurity and confusion that earlyadolescents normally experience.With continued cognitive develop-ment and the transition to high school,the nerds' relevant social and psycholog-ical reality changed because they wereable to surround themselves with peerswho provided positive reflected apprais-als and more favorable social compari-sons. These supportive relationships werethe basis for the nerds' construction ofmore positive self-conceptions, sincethey collectively reduced the contextualdissonance (Rosenberg 1979) that earlierhad a negative effect on their self-perceptions.Other students also recalled that thetransition to high school allowed themto explore a number of activities, such asjournalism, the yearbook, music, theater,the chess club, academic competitionteams, science and language clubs, ten-nis, and cross-country and swimmingteams, that were not offered at themiddle school. These activities providedalternative domains to achieving school-wide popularity in which students couldfeel adequate and successful. Specifi-cally, many students who participatedin these activities said that they had''more confidence" in themselves andfelt less "self-conscious" about how thepopular people viewed them. As oneyoung man who was unpopular in mid-dle school noted:

Example 10I like high school a lot better than I likedmiddle school. I was very uncomfortablewith myself in middle school-I wasn'tcomfortable around people unless I justknew them very well. I wasn't outgoing-I'm not a trendy, but, I'm not a punk; I'msort of a "normal"guy.... Ialwayswantedto be, you know, popularand have peoplecall me and stuff like that. I didn't want tobe the trendy person that had to listen tothe music and . . . wear this on the sameday as that,but I wantedto-you know, goto the parties-be with the in-crowd,maybe not dress just like them, but, youknow-have the four-wayphone conversa-tions [and] that kind of shit. Tenth gradewas different. [It]was kind of cool; I likedit. I probably grew four inches and.... Iguess I just got confident and . . . therewere still the groups, but, the lines were


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FromNerds to Normals 31not quite as rigid-I guess things evenedout. I had a greattime my sophomoreyear.. .. I am sorta a hacker on the computer;my dad ... had an experimentalcomputer[and] I got put on the yearbook staff towork on the computer and I met all theseseniors. I was in a room with four seniorwomen, which is a sophomore's dream!They were nice and they gave me sort of amatureoutlook on the world.

This young man wanted to be popular,but now describes himself as "sort of a'normal' guy," who grew four inches,gained self-confidence, felt the grouphierarchy "evened out," and developedfriendships in high school when he gotinvolved with the yearbook staff. I fre-quently observed him and his friendsstriding surely down the school hall-ways. I also saw them browsing at a localrecord store that was frequented bymembers of other high school crowds. Iran into them at two heavy-metal rockconcerts in a nearby city that I attendedwith some of the headbangers. More-over, I was invited to "hang out" withthem at several of their parties andfound them to be interested in popularmusic and having fun, much like mem-bers of other crowds (e.g., the trendiesand the headbangers). When I saw him, Iwas always struck by his beaming smile,glowing eyes, proud stance, and overallexuberant demeanor. The importance ofbecoming confident was expressed byanother teenager, who stated: "You'vegotta have confidence in what you'redoin' and sayin' all the time-'cause ifyou don't have confidence in it, peopleare just goin' to go, "Huh, huh huh![laugh at you]."Along with becoming members ofstable peer groups, some of these youngmen talked about losing weight andgrowing substantially taller, which en-hanced their overall well-being."l Al-

though most of them and their friendsalso began dating girls toward the end oftheir sophomore year, one of them starteddating at the end of middle school. Hecommented:Example 11When I think aboutmiddle school, I thinkthatI was justa "dork"-that's all. Just astyear [his freshmen year of high school],people startedtalking to me.... My firstgirlfriend, the very last week of eighthgrade, there's something wrong with that'causeeverybodyhas been going with eachother forever, but that is when I got myfirst girlfriend and I just wasted a lot oftime. Now in high school I've got agirlfriendand I've got some friends.His comment that "everybody hasbeen going out with each other forever"refers to the trendies' earlier initiationinto dating patterns that served as theideal for many of the nerds. Now in highschool, this former lonely dork has asteady girlfriend and many more friendsthan he had in middle school.12 Hisstatements about becoming more socialare highly consistent with my observa-tions of him in natural settings, where Ifrequently saw him happily talking andwalking with different students in theschool hallways. However, even thoughhe exhibits relatively high levels ofsociability and satisfaction, he still relieson the trendy crowd's norms to definesuch things as the importance of dating.In sum, involvement in a friendshipgroup, school activity, beginning dating,and physically maturing combine toproduce greater feelings of self-confi-

dence among some adolescents.Nerds Going Mainstream

Although this constellation of social,psychological, and physical changes thatoccur during the transition to and earlyyears of high school provide a fertile" Although an examination of whetherunpopular teenagers in middle school were

"late" or "early-maturers"was beyond thescope of this study, the data suggest that atleast some of the unpopular nerds wererelatively late maturers,which is consistentwith research that found that boys whomature early are more popular with their

peers than are those who mature later (Sim-mons and Blyth 1987).12 Overall, it appearsthat for this teenagerand othersI interviewed, finding friendsandbuilding self-confidence mutually reinforceone anotherand provide the social quota offriends and self-assurance that encouragethem to date.


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32 Kinneyground for progressive changes in socialrelations and feelings of self-efficacy, thedata also indicate that teenagers experi-ence significant shifts in their personalidentity. These changes in self-attribu-tions revolve around their assertion thatthey are becoming "normal" after aperiod of being frequently stigmatized asnerds. As one high school junior de-scribed himself:

Example 12I like to think of myself as somewhatintelligent, but not necessarily the ilerdytype. I like to think my personality strikesa balance between intelligence and being anormal human being.... I should sorta sayI mainly am able to do that through myinterest in sports.I suppose if Ididn'thaveas strong an interest in sports as I did, Imight seem much more of the nerdy type. Imight strike someone that way. I hope Idon't. I think that by being able to talkabout things that regular people and peo-ple that I know talk about helps me fit inwith the mainstreamof high school ... andnot stand out . . . or even be outcastbecause of my intelligence, which reallywould be terrible.This young man expressed clear con-cern that he may appear to be the "nerdytype" to his peers, and he used hisinterest in sports as an explicit connec-tion to the "regular people" in the"mainstream of high school." It is impor-tant to note that his "interest in sports"refers to his fervent participation in acomputer baseball league with three ofhis friends at school and some youngerneighborhood boys. Even though he was

not actively participating on a schoolathletic team, he thought that his knowl-edge of and passion for baseball con-nected him with the mainstream popu-lation of high school. Moreover, heusually wore an official major leaguebaseball jacket, like many of his peerswho were on school sports teams. Thus,at the same time that he is embracing adominant activity of the trendies (athlet-ics), he is distancing himself from the"deviant" identity of being solely anintellectual. In general, like the youngman in Example 11, this teenager'sself-definition of "normal" revealed thatthe trendies were still a primary refer-ence group in that he constantly referred

to how he was perceived by his peersand the importance of developing main-stream interests (e.g., athletics). Formingfriendships and new interests helps oneavoid standing out because of one'sintelligence and reduces the possibilityof being stigmatized as the nerdy type.Similarly, another bright young man, asenior, who became involved in thestudent government and cross-countrymeets in high school and developedclose friendships through these activi-ties, noted that in middle school,

Example 13I was just a fat, little, intelligent, trivia-mastering geek! Well, trivia has alwaysbeen this great gift for me. I memorizestupid stuff and repeat it for umpteenyears. I was always counted on for gameslike that.Butnow [in high school], it's likeI've got a wider talent base or something. Iappeal to more people or something. Imean that sounds totally ridiculous, butit's the way it kind of is.

This teenager, who was unpopular inmiddle school, was able to develop a4"4wider talent base" through activitiesand friendships in high school andbecame confident and connected to themainstream of high school. Gaining "tal-ent" means becoming involved in main-stream activities (e.g., student govern-ment, athletics) that are valued by thetrendies.

Nerds Going Their Own WayOther nerds followed a different path

to becoming normal. Rather than adoptmainstream characteristics and behav-iors, they essentially rejected the trend-ies' values to develop a more positivesense of self. As a young woman, whowas a junior, explained:I hadn't fit in in middle school and [was]sorta disgusted. In middle school I saw itas one biggroupof people thatmade fun ofme all the time. . . . A girl who wasincredibly mean to me in middle school... went out of her way to make my lifemiserable and . . . made fun of meconstantly. And one time in gym [I waswith] my one friend in middle school,Lisa, and Francey [the mean girl] was inour gym class, and one day she took usaside and tried to make us say "Shit"


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From Nerds to Normals 33'cause she thoughtit was really funny thatwe were such jerks and nerds that wedidn't say "Shit." . . . We wouldn't do it,and ever after she would point us out inthe hall to her friends and say "Lookthere's the girls that won't say 'Shit!'"In ninth grade I met a girl named Annwho moved fromPoint Cityto Greentown,and we were reallygood friendsforawhileand she was quite differentfrom anybodyelse I knew here. She seemed a lot moregrown-up,her fatherwas a musician, andshe sortof knew a lot moreaboutthe worldthan I did. She traveled a lot, and, in fact,for awhile we were accused of beinglesbians 'cause we dressed funny and wewere really close. I sort of idolized her, Imean, she sort of scared me because sheseemed infinitely superiorto me in everyway. She's just really smart and reallypretty. She's really independent, and Ithink that it was her independence thatinfluenced me more than anything elseand that I admired more than anythingelse, and that'swhen I stopped feeling likeeverybody was making fun of me all thetime and that I had to have people aroundme all the time.You know, friends around me all thetime and Ann really helped me stopworrying so much about how people-what people thought aboutme, what theyaresaying aboutme.... It wasn't so muchthatI had this supportiverelationshipwithher;it was morethatI could be on my ownthe way she was on her own. I feel like I'mbecoming very ordinary,but I also thinkthat is because I am becoming morerealistic about it-about who I am.Her comments indicate that ratherthan adopt behaviors and styles typi-cal of high-status groups, this youngwoman learned to be independent fromher peers' expectations; emulating herbest friend, she stopped "worrying somuch about what other people thoughtabout me, what they are saying aboutme." These comments were directedtoward what popular people thoughtand said aboutherbecause several timesduring the interview she described aclear awareness of her high-statuspeers'attitudes toward her, since they "made

fun of me all the time [and] called me abrain"in middle school "because I wassmart and funny looking." Thus, learn-ing from her best friend that she "couldbe on [her] own" early in high schoolallowed this young woman significantly

to attenuateher sensitivity to the trendygroup'snorms and begin to see herself as"ordinary,"ratherthan permit the pop-ular groups' negative labels of her todominate her self-perception. This pro-cess is also captured in the followingcomments by Susan, a young womanwho was a high school junior:

Example 15If you haveconfidence,you canoverlookpeoplewhoputyoudown'cause herearealwayspeoplewho are goingto put youdown.And [whenyou haveconfidence],youdon'thaveto worryaboutwhatI tendto think arethe moretrivial hings n lifelike appearancer beingtrendy.An unpopular middle school student,Susan became independent from thetrendies' evaluations as she went herown way by working on the high schoolnewspaper and developing strong tieswith several other student journalistswho are interested in current socialissues and reading the classics. Sheviewed confidence as the key to notworrying about the trendies' evalua-

tions. Specifically, her statement that"you don't have to worry about . . . themore trivial things in life like appear-ance or being trendy" suggests that sheis shifting the identities in her saliencehierarchyaroundto align them with hersocial relationships. In other words, thecollective sociability and supportivenessof friendship groups that are not cen-tered on mainstream interests providesthese teenagers with the strength toshuffle their identity-salience hierar-chies to bring them in line with theirnew commitments(see Serpeand Stryker1987). In short, during middle school,they wanted to be popular, but in highschool they devalue the trendies' atti-tudes and activities and go their ownway.Overall, the recurrentpatterns in thedata indicate two distinct processes thatfacilitate a change in these adolescents'identity fromnerdsto normals.One pathcenters on embracing behaviors andappearancesthat are respected by high-status peers, while the otherpath hingeson one's emancipation from popularpeers' expectations and invidious com-parisons. The young men were more


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34 Kinneylikely to choose the first path and to useschool activities as an arena in whichthey could adopt mainstream interestsanddeveloprewardingrelationshipswithpeers to feel good about themselves.Similarly, the young women developedsupportive friendships through partici-pation in school activities, but they weremore likely than were the young men tofollow the second path by enhancingtheir self-perceptions through close rela-tionships thatneither centeredon school-sponsored activities nor connected themto the mainstream of the school. Younissand Smollar (1985) also found thatshared activities were the primarybasisforyoung men's friendships,while youngwomen were more likely to engage inintimate friendships.

DISCUSSIONThe intensive interviews and observa-tions used in this study provided infor-mation that can increaseourunderstand-ing of the mostly cross-sectional surveyresearch on teenagers' self-esteem. Sur-

veys of largesamples of adolescents thathave focused on populations of juniorhigh school or senior high school stu-dents have indicated that although self-esteem is generally low during juniorhigh (or middle) school (cf Simmonsand Blyth 1987; Simmons, Blyth, et al.1987; Simmons, Rosenberg, and Rosen-berg 1973) more teenagers express posi-tive self-evaluations in high school (seeHarter 1983; O'Malley and Bachman1983; Rosenberg 1979).13 The findingsreported here are consistent with thesecross-sectional studies of adolescents'self-evaluations in junior- and seniorhigh school. However, my study wentbeyond earlier cross-sectional and sur-vey research by providing information

regarding he social structural and inter-personal processes whereby teenagerswho expressed negative self-evaluationsin middle school were able to fit into aspecializedschool activityor close friend-ship network in high school and gradu-ally began to feel better about them-selves throughpositive peerrelationshipsand recognized success in the activities.Specifically, the interview and obser-vational data delineate processes of his-torical and structuralchange that earlierstudies were not able to consider system-atically. Historically all the teenagerswho complained about their middleschool experiences kept going back tothe same theme: the existence of onepowerful and exclusive trendy group.14Normals and members of the other highschool crowds who were unpopular inmiddle school repeatedly returned tothis theme, which connotes a certainstructure in terms of the dominance ofone group. This rigid stratification sys-tem was socially constructed and main-tained through daily interpersonal inter-actions that were characterized by thetrendies' ridicule and avoidance of thenerds.15During this time, the trendies' nega-tive evaluations of the nerds were highlysalient, since many nerds wanted to bemembers of the popular trendy group.This desire to be popular, coupled withthe experience (or the expectation) ofbeing ostracized by the trendies foracting "out of the ordinary," appears tohave combined to accentuate and sus-tain the nerds' shyness (e.g., having"trouble interactingwith other people,"being "self-conscious"). The nerds' pre-dicament was worsened by having few,

13 Studies thatreport relatively high levelsof self-esteem in high school are also consis-tent with several other investigations thatindicated that some teenagerswho arenot inthe traditional "leading crowd" of athletesand cheerleadersmanage to develop positiveself-perceptions(e.g., Brownand Lohr 1987;Coleman 1961). Also, Youniss and Smollar(1985) found that older teenagers devaluedpopularityin favorof close friendships.

14 As was noted earlier, this theme, vividlyexpressed by high school students, is highlyconsistent with the patterns found by Eder(1985), Eder and Kinney (1988), and Parker(1991) using both questionnaire and observa-tional methods at the middle school thesehigh school students attended.5 It is important to note that many trend-ies who were interviewed in high schoolnoted with regret that they had not "madethe effort"or did not "havethe time"to get toknow people in different groups earlier intheir middle school or high school careers.


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FromNerds to Normals 35if any, friends and consequently notbeingmembersof supportivepeergroupsin middle school in which they coulddevelop interpersonal competence. Inaddition, the middle school was charac-terized by fewer specialized school ac-tivities that would facilitate meetingpeers with similar interests. Overall,unpopular nerds' vivid emotional recol-lections of their middle school experi-ences indicate that the negative socialidentities that the trendies imputed tothem at that time had a significant anddistressing impact on their personalidentities.The transition to high school wascharacterizedby an increasing numberof students and groups who formedmore diverse peer cultures that wereorganized into a less hierarchical socialstructure.The normals' emergence as avisible groupof confident happy individ-uals provided a new model for thedevelopmentof a positive identity withinthe changing social system. These teen-agers made sense of things by saying:"I'm not a nerd anymore! Now I'mnormal!" So historically these adoles-cents were developing more positiveself-perceptions as the immediate socialstructureof the peer groups changed. Itis a reciprocal process and illustrates acentraltenet of structuralsymbolic inter-actionist theory:

If the social person s shapedby interac-tion, it is social structurehatshapesthepossibilitiesfor interactionand so, ulti-mately, the person. Conversely, f thesocialpersoncreativelyalterspatternsofinteraction,hosealteredpatterns an ulti-mately change social structure. Stryker1980, p. 66)Increasing peer acceptance and socialconfidence characterizes normals' pat-terns of interpersonal interactions thatdovetail with the more diverse and lesshierarchical social structure of the highschool. The social side of high schoolallows these teenagers, most of whomare competent students, a chance to

become competent social actors as theylearn how to manage their impressionsand overcome stigma (Goffman 1959,1963) within the friendly confines oftheir peer group (Fine 1981). Overall,whethergoing mainstreamorgoing their

own way, within the social reality theyconstructed(Berger nd Luckmann1967),the normals took over the position for-merly attributedto the trendies.A key interpersonal process that pro-vides the foundation for the normals'new definitions of social and psycholog-ical reality is their frequent talk withfriends. What continually struck mewhile listening to these teenagers talkwith friends in natural settings andgroup interviews was the high level ofintimacy and intensity with which theyexpressed themselves. Their conversa-tions clicked along at a rapid pace asthey openly shared stories and feelingsabout their past and ongoing experi-ences. They exuded emotion and reas-sured another through their verbal andnonverbal expressions. They finishedeach others' sentences, which appearedas if they are readingeach others'minds(see Examples 2, 8, and 9). It seems thatat least part of the excitement and plea-sure these teenagers exhibited stemmedfrom the fact that finding friends and fre-quently talking are relatively new expe-

riences for them.Overall, these teenagers' supportivetalk and deep understanding of oneanother may be due, at least in part, totheir common experiences with rejec-tion and ridicule in middle school. Inthese terms, their shared adversity pro-vides them with a particularly well-grounded "reciprocity of perspectives"-a basic "interpretive procedure" ofeveryday life that helps them makesense and meaning of their lives (cf.Cicourel1974). Collectively accomplish-ing social interaction through their talkand shared activities, they continuallyassign positive meaning to themselves.The normals' vivid and emotionaldescriptions of their social experiencesin school in their everyday conversa-tions and small-group interviews re-vealed that they broughtabout the morepositive and orderlynatureof their highschool world (Zimmermanand Wieder1970) through the accounting practices(e.g., developing conversational skillswith allies) that they lacked in middleschool. In middle school the futurenormals were situationally and develop-mentallyconstrainedbecausethey lacked


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36 Kinneyclose friendsand self-confidence in con-trast to the social and vocal trendies.They did not become competentperform-ers of accounting practices until theyhad trusted and sympathetic friends inhigh school. In addition to the signifi-cance of their "accounting" conversa-tions, my observations of them in natu-ral settings indicated that just being ineach other's physical presence was animportant interpersonalprocess of iden-tity formation.Their occasional glancesand winks of the eye while walkingclosely together emboldened and re-minded them that they were "somebod-ies." In sum, the shifting nature ofinterpersonal interactions and the con-comitant changes in their immediatesocial structure and peer culture facili-tated and reflected the nerds' recoveryfromtheir earlier distressing social expe-riences and attendant low self-evalua-tions.16These social changes and individualdevelopmentscanbe interpreted n termsof an emerging body of research onchildhood and adolescent socializationthat has identified youths' attempts togain control over their lives as a majoraspect of peer culture (cf. Corsaro1985;Corsaro and Eder 1990; Corsaro andRizzo 1988). Nerds become normals asthey receive and take advantage of op-portunities throughschool activities andfavorable peer relations to redefine theirsocial and psychological realities. Theiractive construction and maintenance ofthemselves and groups can be viewed assetting the stage for their adult lives.Along these lines Corsaro and Rizzo(1988 p. 890) found that "the children'srecognition and their attempts to adaptpeer culture to societal demands can beseen as the creative appropriation ofcertain elements of the adult society."Throughtheir everyday experiences, thenerds graduallyrealize (with the help ofthe trendies' expectations and evalua-

tions) that the adult world demandssocial skills, close friends, and self-confidence. This realization and theirappropriationof key featuresof the adultworld (e.g., self-presentationtechniques)allow them to gain more control overothers' evaluations of them and delimitwhich others matter to them and thushelps them adapt to their immediatesocial world.This self-enhancement process is inte-grally related to participation in groups,since it was through their collective(school and friendship) activities thatthe nerds engineered their recovery ofidentity toward becoming normals. Thisinterpretation can be summarized interms of Cottrell's (1969, p. 550) discus-sion of the interpersonalcharacterof thedevelopment of self in which he stressedthat "much of our activity and striving,perhaps most of it, is directed towardestablishing and maintaining social con-texts supportive of desired identities ortoward changing contexts that imposeunwanted identities."17More research is needed to followhigh school students into their adultlives to delineate the impact that adoles-cent social experiences and identityformation have on human developmentover the life course (Elder 1974; Elder,Caspi, and Downey 1986). Fordham andOgbu's (1986) in-depth study of a Blackhigh school showed that high academicachievers use strategies (e.g., "clown-ing," becoming involved in athletics,helping "hoodlums" with their school-work in return for protection) to avoidappearing too concerned with upwardmobility ("acting White").According toFordham and Ogbu (p. 202), "high-achieving students ... would do much

16 Other unpopular teenagersfrommiddleschool who were primarily from working-class homes formed a crowd called theheadbangers,n which they received recogni-tion on the basis of theirdistinctive dress andrebellious behaviorthat focused on a lifestyleassociated with heavy-metalmusic.

"Developmental psychologists have ar-gued that adolescents' growing cognitivecapacities allow them to become aware ofand control their increasingly abstract anddifferentiated thoughts and feelings aboutthemselves (see the review by Harter1990).The data presented here suggestthat interper-sonal processes occurringon the social sideof secondary schools provide a sociologicalfoundation for changes in identity that aretypically assignedto developmental stagesofadolescence.


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From Nerds to Normals 37betterif they did not have to divert timeand effort into strategies designed tocamouflage their academic pursuit."Although the study reported here wasnot designed to examine such a processamong White students, it should benoted that the vast majority of thenormals at this school were high aca-demic achievers and thus that theirsocial effortsdid not seem to affect theiracademic pursuits negatively.18 Futureresearch should follow cohorts of Afri-canAmericanandWhite studentsthroughsecondary schools with different racialcompositions to compare systematicallyhigh achievers who use strategies todownplaytheir academicexcellence withthose who do not to further our under-standing of the interplay between thesocial and academic sides of schooling.In summary, this study illustrates thesignificance of examining the socialexperiences and school activities thatshape and are shaped by the content ofadolescents' self-perceptions over time.Ederand Parker's 1987, p. 210) study ofa middle-school peer culture showedthat it was through male athletic andfemale cheerleading "activities and notthrough academic coursework, thatschools currently have the most impacton adolescents' values and behavior."The findings reportedhere also indicatethat extracurricularactivities and peerculture in high school strongly shapeadolescents' values and behavior. Somenerdsbecamenormalswhen they learnedto value themselves and behave confi-dently through meaningful and reward-ing peer relationships that occurred onthe social side of schooling.

18An ongoing follow-up study of theseteenagers indicates that they all are nowattending universities. Perhaps experiencewith the "burdenof 'actingWhite,'" identi-fied by Fordham and Ogbu (1986), has agreaterimpact on African American teenag-ers' academic achievement than does thegeneralanti-intellectualismin contemporarysociety that both African Americans andWhites experience.

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David A. Kinney, Ph.D., is ResearchAssociate, Centerfor the Study of UrbanInequality,HarrisGraduateSchool of Public Policy Studies, Universityof Chicago.His main fields ofinterest are adolescent peer culture, education, deviance, and socialization. He is currentlyconducting an ethnographicinvestigation of peer culture, identityformation, and academicachievementamongadolescents who attend threehigh schools on the South Side of Chicago.An earlier version of this article was presented at the annual meeting of the American


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40 KinneySociological Association, San Francisco, August 1989. The author thanks CathyEvans fortranscribing ome of the interviewdata. This paper benefited from discussions with WilliamCorsaro,Donna Eder, Janet Enke, Peggy Giordano, David Heise, Michael Herzfeld, andSheldon Stryker.JeffArnett, MichaelLosoff,GeneMyers,LisaPickens,KimSchonert,and AlYoung,Jr., also provided helpful suggestions. This research was supported by NIMHgrantsPHS T32 MH14588-12 (Indiana University) and PHS 5T32 MH14668-12 (NorthwesternUniversityMedical School and the Universityof Chicago).Address all correspondence to Dr.David A. Kinney,Center or the Study of UrbanInequality, Universityof Chicago, 1313 East60th Street, Chicago,IL 60637.

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