Bullying in school, at home, and on the savanna

© 2008-2013 Gwen Dewar, Ph.D., all rights reserved

In the old days, people took a laissez-faire arroyo to bullying in school.

Bullying was considered a normal part of growing up. Kids were left to work things out for themselves.

Only the show suggests that bullying isn't a healthy part of childhood.

Yes, bullying is institute all over the world (Nansel et al 2004; Sentenac et al 2013; Wang et al 2013). It even exists among nonhuman primates (meet below).

But bullying isn't just another class of aggressive disharmonize. It's about repeatedly harassing a vulnerable, lower-status victim.

These victims may not be in a position to "work" annihilation "out," and they may suffer long-term consequences. Kids who get bullied are more likely to suffer from clinical anxiety, depression, and feelings of social isolation. They are more than likely to avoid schoolhouse, and the chronic stress makes them physically ill (Nansel et al 2004). As adults, they are three-5 times more probable to endure from anxiety, panic disorder, and agoraphobia (Copeland 2013).

And while nosotros often think of bullies as as aggressive peers on the playground, some bullies are much closer to dwelling house. In a contempo study of more than than 3500 American kids, researchers establish that one third of all children had been victimized by a sibling in the by twelvemonth, and these kids experienced college rates of mental health problems (Tucker et al 2013).

So bullying casts a long shadow, and victims aren't the only ones to suffer poor mental health. Studies advise that some kids who bully others on a daily footing are at a opens in a new windowgreater gamble of developing psychiatric issues, including antisocial personality disorder.

And bullying at school is associated with agonizing moral rationalizations, similar the belief that victims deserve to exist treated "similar animals."

But it doesn't take to happen. I've read quite a bit of the enquiry, and I'm convinced that we tin go a long fashion to protect victims and greatly reduce the prevalence of bullying.

I also doubtable we can prevent kids from becoming bullies in the first place.

To exercise this, all the same, nosotros need to empathise bullies: What they practise, why they do it, and how they differ from other kids. In these pages, I review the scientific bear witness well-nigh bullying. This includes articles about

• opens in a new windowHow to foreclose bullying
• opens in a new windowThe rail records of programs designed to terminate bullying in school
• opens in a new windowAgreement the "pure" bully
• opens in a new windowThe problems of bullies who are frequently the victims of otherbullies
• opens in a new windowThe link between bullying in school and the development of psychiatric disorders
• opens in a new windowThe ways that bullies reason about moral issues

And here (below) I provide an overview of bullying and consider perchance the nearly of import point of all:

Isn't bullying actually about dominance hierarchies?

If bullies are "absurd" or popular, and so nosotros can't expect to stop bullying in school by irresolute the behavior of a few individuals. We'll have to change the way that everyone—-bystanders included—-reacts to bullying.

Definitions: Bullying isn't just another form of aggression

Bullying–in school or anywhere else-—isn't merely about aggression. Aggressive kids might get into a lot of fights. Only they aren't necessarily "out to get" specific victims. Nor practise they focus on people perceived as weaker or more vulnerable.

By contrast, bullying is about repeatedly and deliberately intimidating, harassing, humiliating, or physically harming a victim (Glew et al 2000).

This definition applies to both

• "directly bullying," which involves physical threats and assaults, and
• "relational bullying," which includes name-calling, social snubbing, and the spreading of malicious rumors

Information technology also applies to cyberbullying, in which kids are bullied via threats or humiliating messages on the internet and other information technologies.

This sounds very modern and high tech. Only of course bullying isn't a new problem. It isn't fifty-fifty a specifically human problem.

Bullying on the savanna

If yous want to see bullies at work, picket a troop of cercopithecine monkeys—like savanna baboons.

These monkeys live in dominance hierarchies, and they spend much of their time threatening each other. Harassing each other. Making life miserable.

Social-climbing males are role of the trouble. Merely before a male reaches machismo, he must leave his natal group and find a new one. As new members, these males typically occupy the lowest rungs of the social ladder. Only, over time, an ambitious male tin work his way upward the bureaucracy.

How does he do information technology? It may depend on several factors—-his intrinsic fighting ability, his length of residency in the new group, his power to form coalitions with other males.

Simply the important indicate is this: Baboons frequently "bear witness off" their say-so status by threatening and harassing lower-ranking animals.

And it's non just a guy thing. Female cercopithecines have their own, kin-based hierarchies, and life can be unpleasant for the girls at the bottom. Higher-ranking females have harassed subordinates so much that the victims have stopped ovulating or suffered miscarriages (Wasser and Starling 2005).

This doesn't hateful that bullying is inevitable, programmed into our genes, or that humans accept to act like baboons.

In fact, even baboons don't have to act like baboons.

Consider Robert Sapolsky's Woods Troop, a group of wild savanna baboons he has studied for decades (Sapolsky and Share 2004). In the early on 1980s, this group was characterized by the typical high-stress, aggressive civilisation of savanna baboons.

But and then an ecological disaster killed off almost group members, including the most aggressive males. Only a few males remained, and these were more cooperative and mellow.

Among the survivors, social life changed. High-ranking males rarely harassed their inferiors. Friendly, affiliative behavior increased. The females became more relaxed. Sapolsky's squad even observed adult males grooming each other—-something they'd rarely seen before.

And hither's the really interesting part:

Once the new ways were established, they stuck.

Every bit new males joined the group, these males learned to fit in. The membership of Forest Troop has changed over the concluding xx years, but the new, laid-back "culture" remains.

Lessons for humanity?

Granted, humans aren't baboons, and man bullying behavior is probably more complicated than the sort of harassment that college-ranking baboons dish out.

Just notwithstanding I recall Saplosky'southward story is relevant.

The tale of Forest Troop suggests that a civilization of rampant bullying—-even among animals famed for their aggressiveness– isn't inevitable.

Moreover, nosotros might have something else to acquire from baboons: That bullying is a bespeak of dominance or social status.

Psychology, status, and bullying in school

When I was growing up, I heard that bullies were people who lacked self-esteem. According to this view, kids peachy because it makes them feel better about themselves.

I likewise heard that bullies were social incompetents—people with poor social skills who resorted to bullying because they couldn't figure out any meliorate fashion to influence the behavior of other people.

Simply recent inquiry has poked major holes in these theories.

It turns out that some bullies—-the so-called "pure bullies"—-tend to exist confident and socially well-adjusted.

They're non particularly well-liked. Classmates would rather non spend fourth dimension with bullies.

But these kids are respected. Their peers retrieve they are the "coolest" (Juvoven et al 2000; Sijtsema et al 2008).

Practise kids interpret bullying in school as a bespeak of dominance?

It's hard to say, because in that location is very lilliputian research addressing this question directly.

Certainly, researchers have noted that bullying seems to flourish in hierarchical settings (like military academies).

And a study of American centre school students reports that kids tend to get more socially aggressive as they climb upward the social ladder (Felmlee and Farris 2011).

In improver, bullies seem to "play to an audition," preferring to stage their confrontations in places where other kids will see them (Hawkins et al 2001).

And a contempo Finnish written report found that bullies cared more than most existence respected and admired than their victims did (Sitsjema et al 2008).

So peradventure bullies are motivated by the desire to appear more than important and influential.

But whatsoever the motives of bullies, their high status has of import implications for the prevention of bullying in school.

As noted past UCLA psychologist Jaana Juvoven, bullying behavior is encouraged when bullies are perceived to be "cool" (Juvoven et al 2003).

To change the behavior of bullies, we demand to change the attitudes of everyone in school—bullies, victims, and bystanders akin.

---

References: Bullying in school, online, and on the savanna

Dan Olweus

Peradventure the most influential book nearly bullying in school is Dan Olweus' Bullying at School: What we know and what we can do (Wiley-Blackwell 1993). Olweus, who is a leading authority on bullying, pioneered a "whole schoolhouse approach" to eradicate bullying in Norway. His program has been adopted in other countries as well. If you are working to finish bullying in school, this curtailed book is a expert place to kickoff. The Olweus arroyo might require some "tweaking" to be effective in your local civilization, however. For an overview of this and other whole-schoolhouse approaches to bullying in schoolhouse, opens in a new window click here.

In addition, hither are the references cited in this commodity:

Copeland We, Wolke D, Angold A, and Costello EJ. 2013. Developed psychiatric outcomes of bullying and beingness bullied by peers in childhood and adolescence. JAMA Psychiatry 70(4):419-26.

Faris R and Felmlee D. 2011. Status struggles: Network axis and gender segregation in aforementioned- and cross-gender aggression. American Sociological Review 76(1): 48–73

Hawkins DL, Pepler DJ, and Craig WM. 2001. Naturalistic observations of peer interventions in bullying. Social Development 10(4): 512-527.

Jenkins CJ, Finkelhor D, Turner H, and Shattuck A. 2013. Association of sibling aggression with child and adolescent mental health. Pediatrics. Published online June 17 2022 alee of print. peds.2012-3801 doi: 10.1542

Juvonen J, Graham S, Schuster MA. 2003. Bullying among young adolescents: the strong, the weak, and the troubled. Pediatrics. 112(6 Pt one):1231-7.

Nansel TR, Craig W, Overpeck Md, Saluja G, Ruan WJ and Health Behaviour in School-aged Children Bullying Analyses Working Group. 2004. Cross-national consistency in the relationship betwixt bullying behaviors and psychosocial adjustment. Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med 158: 730-736.

Sapolsky RM and Share L. 2004. A pacific culture among wild baboons: Its emergence and transmission. PLoS Biol 2(4): 534-541.

Sentenac M, Gavin A, Gabhainn SN, Molcho G, Due P, Ravens-Sieberer U, Matos MG, et al. 2013. Peer victimization and subjective health amongst students reporting disability or chronic illness in xi Western countries. Eur J Public Health 23(three):421-vi.

Sijtsema JJ, Veenstra R, Lindenberg S, and Salmivalli C. 2008. Empirical test of bullies' condition goals: assessing direct goals, aggression, and prestige. Aggress Behav. 2008 October sixteen. [Epub ahead of print].

Wang H, Zhou X, Lu C, Wu J, Deng X, Hong L, Gao X, and He Y. 2012. Adolescent bullying interest and psychosocial aspects of family and school life: a cantankerous-exclusive study from Guangdong Province in China. PLoS Ane. 2012;7(7):e38619.

Wasser SK and Starling AK. 2005. Proximate and ultimate causes of reproductive suppression among female person yellow baboons at Mikumi National Park, Tanzania. American Periodical of Primatology 16(2): 97-121.

Content of "Bullying in school, at home, and on the savanna" concluding modifed 6/13

jonesquice1986.blogspot.com

Source: https://parentingscience.com/bullying-in-school/

Share this post