Emotional adjustment and peer relationships: The role of behavioural reputation and classroom social climate

PLOS One | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0332297 September 18, 2025 8 / 13 therefore undermine positive social preference [46]. This effect fits with the unexpected positive pathway between anger and peer acceptance via a less shy reputation. Evidently, all other factors being equal, the social engagement that anger may entail may confer some benefits in terms of opening the door to potential social preference (e.g., being proactive about communicating with others). Unfortunately, in the case of children with high levels of anger, the typical pattern of low cooperative and high disruptive behaviour likely makes it difficult for such benefits to materialise [47]. The observed moderating effect of classroom social climate adds a highly relevant set of considerations. Specifically, in classrooms with a lower concentration of positive peer interactions, the predictive link between a disruptive reputation and subsequently lower social preference was nullified. This result adds important longitudinal support to existing evi- dence that the level of aggression in the classroom moderates the association between students’ aggressive behaviour and social preference, so that as levels of aggression rise in the classroom, the aggressive behaviour of the individual becomes less reliably linked to peer relationship problems [24,31,32]. It could at first glance seem that being in a classroom with more negative peer experiences as reported by pupils could be a protective factor for children with externalising problems, given that it appears to buffer against social rejection, which

is widely known to compromise psychological wellbeing [48,49]. However, the present paper did not measure the quality of the relationships that disruptive children had with classmates. Previous literature showed that the friendships of anti- social children are generally not supportive, are short in duration, and feature bossiness and acrimony [50]. Thus, even if socially positive classrooms allow disruptive children to maintain a good social preference, the quality of those interactions may be highly problematic. In fact, a more significant concern is that in negative classroom ecologies the disruptive behaviour associated with anger evidently can become socially normative and thus tolerable among peers. This could explain the persistence of, Fig 2. Final multi-group (high and low classroom climate) model of associations between emotional adjustment, behavioural reputation, and social preference. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0332297.g002