Gaining popularity in school can lead to bullying, according to recent research. The study has found that kids who are popular but not at the top of the popularity ladder are frequently subjected to bullying.

Robert Faris, the study’s lead author and associate professor at the University of California, Davis, explains, “The traditional pattern of bullying is pretty well established: the kids who are being picked on are vulnerable in some way. They’ve violated the unwritten rules of high school life.” He continues, “It turns out that as kids are increasing their status they’re also becoming more attractive as targets for their rivals.”

Faris notes that a child’s risk of being bullied increases by 25 percent as he or she continues to climb the popularity ladder. The new paper, which was published in the journal American Sociological Association, includes references to these students by Faris and his colleagues as the “unnoticed victims of school-based aggression: popular students near the hub of school social life, hidden in plain sight.”

The researchers relied on data from over 4,200 students in grades eight, nine, and ten throughout the 2004 to 2005 school year.

Not only did researchers find that the students who were becoming more popular were bullied more, but that they were more sensitive to the effects of bullying. Such students reported higher rates of depression, anger, and anxiety, along with lower rates of feeling central to their own social groups.

Study results show that the children’s risk of being bullied increased when they were trying to climb up the social ladder in order to fit in better with their peers. Faris explains, “As social status increases, the involvement in aggression – both as perpetrator and now as victims – also tends to go up until they get to the very top, when things start to reverse.”

The study concluded that girls are more likely to be subject to this type of bullying. The highest incidences of bullying occurred among girls, but boys were more likely to target girls who were climbing social rungs rather than boys who were doing the same.