Why Has Bullying Endured?

In the ’70s Dr. Dan Olweus started studying a particular form of aggression in the school environment. He defined repetitive and intentional aggressive behaviors observed in schools as bullying. Dr. Olweus spend his long carrier studying this phenomenon and researching ways to put an end to it. Despite extensive research, anti-bullying policies, teaching kindness and empathy to students, bullying has endured. Why we still speak about it?

To better understand the reasons bullying remains such a big problem, we must look at it in the larger context of human life.

Humans are egocentric and governed at a deep level by one instinct: self-preservation. When something or someone threatens our integrity, another powerful instinct kicks in: aggression. Self-preservation and aggressive instincts walk hand in hand. Once humans started living in social communities, aggressive instincts had to be put at bay. Being aggressive and living in a social setting do not blend well. In such a harsh and dangerous environment being ostracized from the community equaled death. Social inclusion became one of the base human needs. However, aggression in its different forms endured. It is enough to open a newspaper or your TV to have a glimpse of what people are capable of. Since the beginning of time, people lead wars, enslaved other humans, persecuted people for their religion, exploited others mercilessly, acted cruelly, and resorted to murder. This happens at a macro level.

At a micro level, aggression takes more muted forms like bullying, abuse in its diverse forms, social exclusion, and indifference to the suffering of others.

For many years researchers wanted to believe that bullies are just hurt people that do not have the skills to express themselves. Yes, for a percent of bullies this is true. Some children come from a violent environment or are themselves victims of bullying and had to develop a hard shell to be able to protect themselves. This would almost be the best-case scenario because there is a chance to rehabilitate these children. If what they lack are social skills, emotional regulation abilities, self-awareness, they can be thought these skills.

Yet, this is not always the case. Research shows that bullies have high self-esteem, are less empathic, and less agreeable people, who use bullying to access or hold on to power. They feel confident using aggression, believe aggression is an acceptable way of behaving, and have an overall positive view of aggressive behaviors. I don’t find it coincidentally that bullying peaks in adolescence when an individual’s character traits come together to outline more definitively their personality. Also, social inclusion needs peak in adolescence. The combination between needing to belong and be accepted in a social group and the peak of bullying behaviors is dangerous. We are well aware that being the victim of bullying can take a pretty big toll o the mental health of children.

I recently read an article by Dr. Gabriela Cora answering the question “Do mean girls become mean women?” The answer is yes. Even if the article focuses on women’s behavior, I think the same can be stated for men’s behavior too. However, men are enabled so much more by society to act aggressively. Their bullying behaviors are often passed on as determination or firmness.

Although we would like to think that mean girl will outlive their mean ways that’s unlikely considering how much they enjoyed their power as teenagers. They will likely become the perpetrators of the same malicious behaviors at work. They plot like a victim to get group support, backstab others to attract support from colleagues, and hold on to power by moving to upper management. If you think about it, a Karen is born. A Karen is the embodiment of entitlement. The rules apply to her in a good way not in a bad way, when is beneficial to her. At the same time, they are the consummate victims. They need to speak o the manager, they call the police because they feel victimized in some type or another. Of course, this is a stereotype, not all white women think and act like this, but let’s be honest, you have encountered some.

So, there is no solution for bullying? We all should accept its existence? Well, of course not! The most successful anti-bullying program is the one designed by Dr. Dan Olweus. His program involves training of the teachers and staff to intervene when bullying occurs, individual parent-teacher sessions, lessons to educate children about bullying, and developing social skills and other pro-social behaviors. The program is time-consuming, financially demanding, and requires a lot of commitment. And here lies the key. We cannot adopt a zero-tolerance policy or sparingly talk about empathy, tolerance, and kindness, and expect bullying will go away. It will not. To some extent, bullying is part of human nature. Some people are inclined to be less empathic and more aggressive. But nature is not destiny. Measures can be taken to reduce the incidence of bullying. To achieve this outcome, systematic and appropriate measures must be taken.

Reference articles:

Limber, S. P., Olweus, D., Wang, W., Masiello, M., & Breivik, K. (2018). Evaluation of the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program: A large scale study of U.S. students in grades 3–11. Journal of school psychology, 69, 56–72. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsp.2018.04.004

Menesini, M. & Salmivalli, C. (2017) Bullying in schools: the state of knowledge and effective interventions, Psychology, Health & Medicine, 22:sup1, 240–253, DOI: 10.1080/13548506.2017.1279740

Mulvey, K. L., Hoffman, A. J., Gönültaş, S., Hope, E. C., & Cooper, S. M. (2018). Understanding experiences with bullying and bias-based bullying: What matters and for whom? Psychology of Violence, 8(6), 702–711. https://doi.org/10.1037/vio0000206

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This post was previously published on Medium.

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