To pair or not to pair isolated students with more popular peers? Trade-offs in deskmate plans for socio-emotional growth. Guest post by Palaash Bhargava

This is the 16th in our series of posts by job market candidates.

Across classrooms worldwide, socially isolated students face significant academic and socio-emotional challenges. This concerns not only parents and teachers but also policymakers, as it can dampen long-term labor market prospects. To address this, many teachers pair isolated students with popular peers as deskmates or study partners, hoping to spark positive social interactions. However, the results have been mixed. While some students show improvement, others become more isolated and disengaged. These contrasting outcomes raise a crucial question: Which peer pairings are truly effective? Answering this is challenging for two key reasons.

First, proximity to a popular peer can have conflicting effects: it may foster friendships and social integration, or it could trigger feelings of inadequacy and harmful social comparisons, undermining self-esteem and socio-emotional growth. Second, changes in deskmate arrangements don’t just affect the paired students—they reshape the entire classroom dynamic. A new seating plan can influence the network of interactions, creating ripple effects that impact all students. This interplay of direct and indirect effects complicates the evaluation of peer interventions and often hinders their scalability (Carrell et al. [2013]).

The experiment

To tackle social isolation by harnessing both individual and classroom level changes, I designed and ran a two-stage randomized deskmate matching intervention. My study involved 12,842 students spread across grades 3 to 9, in 381 classrooms across 13 cities in India. I categorized students within the classroom into three levels of popularity: low (bottom tercile), medium (middle tercile), and high (top tercile). This classification was based on their popularity scores, determined by the number of times they were nominated by classmates as friends, recess or lunch companions, or as part of their general help network.

For the experiment, as illustrated in Figure 1, I first randomized deskmate pairings at the individual level to observe how isolated (low popularity) students responded when paired with either other isolated peers or popular ones. Second, I varied the proportion of isolated-popular pairings across classrooms to assess broader shifts in social dynamics. Classrooms were assigned to different treatments: one where most low-popularity students were paired with each other, and another where they were primarily paired with high-popularity peers. I evaluate the effect of these classroom-level treatments against the remaining classrooms considered as the control group, where low-popularity students have an equal chance of being matched with low, medium, or high-popularity deskmates. This setup allowed me to measure both direct and indirect effects, while uncovering a fundamental trade-off in seating strategy.

Figure 1: Intervention design

What happened within the classroom?

As I show in Figure 2, within the classroom, isolated students paired with other isolated students showed greater improvement across multiple metrics compared to those paired with popular peers. Low-popularity students in these pairings saw higher levels of social integration, nominated more classmates as friends and engaged more with teachers. They also showed increases in optimism, competitiveness, and willingness to work hard. These effects were substantial; pairing isolated students with each other closed the baseline social skills gap between low- and medium-popularity students by 10-60%, depending on the specific skill.

These improvements appeared to stem from the absence of negative social comparisons. Isolated students paired with each other didn’t experience the same feelings of inadequacy that often arise in comparisons with popular deskmates. This led to an increase in their perception of self-worth, thereby making them work harder and socialize more to realize gains from the classroom environment.

Figure 2: Estimated effects on low-popularity students.

What happened across classrooms?

However, at the classroom level, a different pattern emerged. In classrooms with a higher proportion of isolated-popular pairs, there was a notable increase in overall social integration. Isolated students in these settings received more friendship nominations, narrowing the social gap with medium-popularity students by about 50% (Figure 2). This change suggested that popular students, by interacting with isolated peers, raised the social value of connecting with less popular students, creating a ripple effect throughout the classroom.

Yet, this increased social cohesion didn’t translate into improvements in socio-emotional skills for isolated students. The underlying reason seemed to be that the negative feelings of inadequacy from low-high popularity pairings persisted, counteracting the benefits of broader social connections.

Implications for Classroom Management

These findings highlight an important decision for educators. Pairing isolated students with each other can improve their socio-emotional skills and well-being, but at the cost of foregone classroom-wide social benefits. Conversely, mixing isolated students with popular peers fosters classroom cohesion but might exacerbate negative feelings for some isolated students.

For teachers, an optimal strategy might involve several trade-offs. They could opt to improve the outcomes of all low-popularity students equally by pairing them with each other as deskmates; however, this approach would forgo the positive classroom externalities generated from more low-high popularity pairings. Alternatively, they could match most low-popularity students with high-popularity deskmates, while pairing the remaining low-popularity students with each other. This strategy would harness classroom-wide benefits while significantly improving the outcomes of a few low-popularity students (those matched with each other) at the expense of those paired with high-popularity students. Figure 3 illustrates these trade-offs using a simple example in terms of mental health gains. Which deskmate plan is optimal depends on the school’s objective function, the key outcomes they aim to improve, and which students’ outcomes they prioritize.

The Broader Relevance of Scalable Peer Interventions

From a policy perspective, these findings also offer insight into why peer interventions often fail to scale in real-world settings. Many peer-effect studies, focused solely on within-classroom variation, miss the broader equilibrium effects that emerge when interventions are scaled.

Seating arrangements are not merely logistical details; they shape the social fabric of the classroom and influence students' academic and socio-emotional growth. As educators and policymakers strive to create supportive learning environments, understanding these dynamics will be crucial for developing effective, equitable classroom practices. Altering deskmates for isolated students in carefully calibrated ways can improve their outcomes at no additional costs. However, for scalable interventions to be designed, one must account for broader social interactions, environmental changes, and incentive shifts.

Figure 3: Gains to different isolated students from different types of deskmate plans reported in mental health gains using estimates from Bond et al. [2007]

Palaash Bhargava is a PhD student at Columbia University in the Department of Economics.