ABSTRACT
Social dominance goals occur when students focus their energies toward having power over their peers. This involves using power and social affiliations to get peers to comply with the given student’s wishes. Striving for social dominance over peers has both benefits and costs for students’ social adjustment in school, such as greater perceived popularity and greater possible rejection from peers. Students with social dominance goals may engage in off-task behavior and exhibit lowered effort toward schoolwork. Additional research could help explain the underlying mechanisms of social dominance goals and inform intervention-based research.
