Children's awareness of which peers like them and which peers dislike them

Abstract The present research examined children's awareness of the specific same‐sex peers who like or dislike them. Awareness was evaluated in relation to children's peer sociometric status. All children in grades one through six provided same‐sex peer sociometric nominations and same‐sex peer sociometric ratings to determine their sociometric status. In addition, each child indicated the nominations and ratings they believed they received from same‐sex peers. Children's sociometric status was associated with their awareness of liking and disliking from peers. Rejected status children were the least accurate in their judgments of who like them and popular status children were the least accurate in their judgments of who disliked them. These findings support and extend prior research documenting that rejected status children a) demonstrate a lack of awareness of their social competence, yet b) report more loneliness than children in other status groups.