Why Children Bully?
And, what to do about it.
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Ask any adult to recount a negative school memory, and most will return right back to the schoolyard. School is where many kids get pushed around, do the pushing, or sheepishly look the other way as others succumb to the aggression, assuming if they didn’t play an active role in the skirmish, they escaped culpability.
Bullying, according to the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, is a “repeated aggressive behavior that can present in the form of threats, physical assault, and intimidation that is intentional and involves a difference in power and/or strength.”
Who is Doing the Bullying?
When conjuring up the bully in our mind’s eye, we often visualize a small tyrant, devoid of social skills. The bullies who show up at school, however, are often socially adept children and teens who excel on the athletic field, elicit admiration from their peer group, and are highly regarded by teachers and coaches (Olweus, 1978).
Though low emotional intelligence is often blamed for bullying behavior, research suggests cold cognition as the culprit, meaning bullies are in control of their actions and aware of the harm done, yet lack empathy for those hurt. In addition, they often possess defensive egotism, charging them to attack those who lob potential threats to their self-esteem (Smith, 2019). This may, in part, be due to a lack of family and community connectedness, resulting in the bully feeling unmoored at home and in his community, leaving him to seek out belonging through maladaptive methods (Connolly, O'Moore, 2003; Duggins, Kuperminic, Henrich, Smalls-Glovers, & Perilla, 2016).
School bullying, however, is not an individualized act but a quartet of participation, in which there is the ringleader, who writes and directs the script; the assistant, who plays backup; the upstander, who defends the target; and the outsider who steers clear of the wreckage (Chan, 2006; Salmivalli, Lagerspetz, Björkqvist, Österman, Kaukiainen, 1996). Hence, most children, in some way, are impacted by bullying, and that impact can have lifelong emotional, physical, and social repercussions.
Why Do Children Bully?
Bullying is situated within the concept of story. Bully narratives are what my friend and colleague Dr. Laura Dzurec (2020) describes as sticky, for they cast the target into an entangled plotline bolstered and spread through mean-spirited gossip.
This story-making can be explained by Ernest Bormann’s (1996) Symbolic Convergence Theory, in which a “fantasy” is created through shared rhetoric about a particular person. Once the bully sets the plotline, in order to belong to the bully’s ingroup, the other children must accept the story as truth and act accordingly. In the bully’s war, this means ganging up on the target in order to keep the fantasy plotline alive and thriving.
Each time one of the bully’s brethren shares the narrative or acts on the fantasy, the storyline strengthens, and the targeted child gets pushed down on the social order, thus taking away her power. Though this mobbing behavior certainly concerns some children, challenging the group consciousness created by the bully’s narrative would risk them being targeted next. Therefore, when witnessing bullying, most children look the other way or join in on the aggression in order to maintain their own belonging.
How children react emotionally when they bully is a strong predictor of their future actions. For example, children who are socially rewarded by bullying another, are more likely to take pride in their transgressions and continue to harm. Children who feel guilt and remorse over their acts of emotional or physical aggression often cease the behavior and make amends to the victim, modeling prosocial actions that reduce the bullying transgressions of others. And, those children who feel deep shame for bullying, yet have nobody to process the strong emotions with, frequently disengage from the situation without speaking out, giving others a green light to carry out the attacks (Jones, Manstead, and Livingstone, 2011).
Unfortunately, child and teen bullies who successfully forge group belonging by belittling others, continue to utilize bullying tactics when they enter the workplace. In other words, when the system works, bullies work the system. Adults who bully as children are ten times more likely to lie, two and a half times more likely to threaten, and demonstrate a greater propensity to engage in sexual harassment and dating violence (Connolly, Pepler, Craig, & Taradash, 2000; De Souza & Ribeiro, 2005; Vaughn, Fu, Bender, DeLisi, Beaver, Perron, & Howard, 2010). Therefore, in order to stop the perpetuation of abuse, it is essential to create stopgaps.
How do We Disrupt the Bullying Cycle?
The bullying cycle poses a strong pull, offering outsiders an insider track to belonging in exchange for buying into the bully’s fantasy reality, which directs decisions on who to hang out with, which sports to play, what activities to join, and what people to target for relational and physical aggression.
Bullying behaviors are social constructs and dependent on the support of bystanders, whether it be through acts of commission (joining in) or omission (looking the other way). Hence, for bullying cultures to be eradicated, it is necessary that bystanders be transformed into upstanders. Such evolution requires education, strategies, and support structures set up through the larger school community (Sainio, Veenstra, Huitsing, & Salmivalli, 2010).
To begin this work, schools need to create new roads to belonging. This infrastructure demands multi-tier systems that include school-wide policies and programs that educate faculty, students, and families on pro-social behaviors that help to cultivate and maintain healthy communities (Ringeisen, Henderson, & Hoagwood, 2003).
For example, the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program, one of the oldest and most researched approaches, utilizes school-level components such as staff training and parent education, classroom components including student workshops and class meetings, and individual components that incorporate wrap-around intervention plans for children who bully and those who are targeted. The Olweus Program has been implemented across the JK-12 spectrum in thousands of schools across the United States and more than a dozen countries. Results show significant and long-term decreases in bullying behaviors and increases in positive school climate measures (Olweus & Limber, 2010).
In closing, childhood bullying is a maladaptive quest for belonging. Children who are unable to find a sense of place at home or in their communities and lack the skills to forge connections through prosocial means may attempt to bolster their sense of security and self-worth by diminishing the belonging of others through relational and physical aggression. To counteract the cycle, stymying the progression of child to adult bully, families and schools have a responsibility to create multi-tier systems that teach, value, and reward prosocial behaviors that propel learning and build inclusive communities.
References
American Academy Of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry (N.D.). Bullying Resource Center. https://www.aacap.org/AACAP/Families_and_Youth/Resource_Centers/Bullying_Resource_Center/Home.aspx#:~:text=Bullying%20is%20 repeated%20 aggressive%20behavior,physical%2C%20 verbal%2C%20 or%20 electronic.
Bormann, E. G. (1996). Symbolic convergence theory and communication in group decision making. In R. Y. Hirokawa & M. S. Poole (Eds.), Communication and group decision making (2nd ed., pp. 81–113). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Center for Disease Control, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (2017). Preventing bullying. Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/bullying-factsheet508.pdf
Chan, J. H. F. (2006). Systemic patterns in bullying and victimization. School Psychology International, 27, 352–369. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/ 0143034306067289
Connolly, I., & O'Moore, M. (2003). Personality and family relations of children who bully. Personality & Individual Differences, 35(3).
Connolly, J., Pepler, D., Craig, W., & Taradash, A. (2000). Dating experiences of bullies in early adolescence. Child Maltreatment, 5, 299–310.
De Souza, E. R., & Ribeiro, J. (2005). Bullying and sexual harassment among Brazilian high school students. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 20(9), 1018–1038.
Duggins, S. D., Kuperminic, G. P., Henrich, C. C., Smalls-Glovers, C., & Perilla, J. L. (2016). Aggression among adolescent victims of school bullying: Protective roles of family and school connectedness. Psychology of Violence, 6(2), 205-212. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0039439.
Dzurec, L. C. (2020). Examining 'sticky' storytelling and moral claims as the essence of workplace bullying. Nursing Outlook, 68(5), 647–656. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.outlook.2020.05.007
Jones, S. E., Manstead, A. S. R., & Livingstone, A. G. (2011). Ganging up or sticking together? Group processes and children’s responses to text-message bullying. British Journal of Psychology, 102, 71–96.
Olweus, D. (1978). Aggression in the schools: Bullies and whipping boys. Hemisphere.
Olweus, D., & Limber, S. P. (2010). Bullying in school: evaluation and dissemination of the Olweus bullying prevention program. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 80(1), 124–134.
Ringeisen, H., Henderson, K., & Hoagwood, K. (2003). Context matters: Schools and the ‘research to practice gap’ in children’s mental health. School Psychology Review, 32(3), 221–234.
Salmivalli, C., Lagerspetz, K., Björkqvist, K., Österman, K., & Kaukiainen, A. (1996). Bullying as a group process: Participant roles and their relations to social status within the group. Aggressive Behaviour, 22(1), 1–15.
Sainio, M., Veenstra, R., Huitsing, G., & Salmivalli, C. (2010). Victims and their defenders: A dyadic approach. International Journal of Behavioural Development, 35 (2), 144–151.
Smith, P. K. (2019). The psychology of school bullying. Routledge.
Vaughn, M. G., Fu, Q., Bender, K., DeLisi, M., Beaver, K. M., Perron, B. E., & Howard, M. O. (2010). Psychiatric correlates of bullying in the United States: findings from a national sample. Psychiatric Quarterly, 81(3), 183–195. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11126-010-9128-0.
To Read
This week I am reading:
This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub
The Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner
Favorite Quote
“Any story could be a comedy or a tragedy, depending on where you ended it. That was the magic. How the same story could be told an infinite number of ways.” ~ This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub
Buy the Book
From the Publisher: Workplace Bullying: Finding Your Way to Big Tent Belonging is a lifeline for people who have been targets of workplace abuse and are desperately trying to make sense of the trauma. It is a resource for partners trying to help their loved ones heal. And, it is a toolkit for managers and industry leaders inspiring to create inclusive cultures by proactively addressing toxic behaviors that stagnate innovation, fracture work communities, and drive out top employees. To simplify a complex topic and make the book readable and engaging for a wide audience, the author uses the elements of story to tell the tale of workplace bullying, zooming in on the characters, settings, and plotlines of cultures that allow and/or encourage workplace abuse.
Purchase Through Rowman and Littlefield
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Participate in the Workplace Bullying Study
To deepen the research on the impact of workplace bullying on belonging, I have launched a new research study. If you would like to participate anonymously, please click this LINK. I have my university’s IRB approval to do this work.
Reach Out With Questions and Ideas
I love hearing from readers, so please don’t hesitate to reach out to say hello or suggest topics for me to write about next ~ dorothysuskind@gmail.com.