Popularity, as a manifestation of social status, has been widely researched and determined by group members. Prosocial behaviors are actions with intention of benefiting others or society as whole with little or no personal gain and may include helping, cooperating, and other voluntary works. Altruism is a type of prosocial behavior that could affect individuals' popularity. Altruism has been studied in different disciplines with the general definition of cooperative behavior that has a cost to the actor with a benefit to the receiver. The common theme in all perspectives is that there is an inevitable cost for the actor with a benefit to the receiver. During the current research, surveys and vignettes were used to collect data. Participants were recruited through an online site, and were compensated for their time and participation via payment of money. As a result of the research, it was observed that helpful behaviors were highly related to the items of empathy, likeability, and popularity. Findings suggest that when gratefulness and helpful behaviors are present, individuals are rated higher in several positive qualities. The unique finding of the study is that both gratefulness and altruism are highly effective resources in interpersonal relations. Purpose of the current study is to examine the relationship between altruistic behaviors that are towards friends and popularity by the endorsement of aforementioned hypotheses and theories.

Fictional characters give literary works a sense of reality. The actions of fictional characters play a crucial role in children's personality development. Young readers who lack critical reading skills are more likely to incorporate fictional characters into their lives because they have a hard time telling reality from fiction. Therefore, we should determine how children perceive fictional characters and teach them that they are imaginary figures. In this way, we can help them approach those characters' actions from an external and critical perspective. This study adopted a qualitative research design (case study) to investigate secondary school students' perceptions of fictional characters. The sample consisted of 45 secondary school students (28 female and 17 male). Data were collected through interviews and document review techniques. Data were analyzed using content analysis. Results showed that participants were more likely to be interested in and identify with characters with appealing personality traits. They had four types of approaches to fictional characters: (1) Wanting to change the storyline depending on what the fictional character goes through, (2) being influenced by them, (3) seeing them as role models, or (4) ignoring them. They wanted to change the storyline, especially when the villain got what he wanted or when the hero or the victim was unhappy, suggesting that they mostly took the protagonist's side (the good guy). While most participants attributed an ontological meaning to anthropomorphic characters, the symbolic meaning became of secondary importance. They were more interested in and identified more with characters with good living conditions and no death experiences.

For United States of America (USA) and other developed countries, science achievement gaps begin to emerge in elementary and primary school. Such gaps between USA student groups typically are connected to socio-economic status (SES) and issues such as students still learning the English language. Through an experimental design, this National Science Foundation funded study explores how integrating the arts into science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) curriculum and leading with a more STEAM-first approach (e.g., curriculum which integrates science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics) might provide more equitable science learning opportunities for elementary or primary grade level students. More specifically, the project’s research efforts seek to also examine how integrating the arts into science instruction might help emerging bilingual (EB) students who are simultaneously learning the English language and science. Although results provide somewhat conflicting findings of statistical significance with small to moderate effect sizes, outcomes provide initial evidence that leading with STEAM science instruction before STEM efforts can be beneficial to early readers, and for EB students this benefit is magnified. As the title of this study suggest, sometimes finding nothing is something.