Abstract
Relations between friend choice and school performance were examined in terms of a self-evaluation maintenance model in 59 elementary school children and 56 junior high school students. Two questionnaires measured students' ratings of their own school performance and of school performance of a friend and a distant classmate on high relevant and low relevant subjects. It was found that students perceived themselves as performing relatively better than a friend on high relevant subjects and as performing worse on low relevant subjects. These tendencies were especially marked among male students, and among elementary school children. Analyses of actual grades showed that students chose as friends those classmates whose actual grades were similar or inferior to their own on high relevant subjects and better than their own on low relevant subjects.
