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Victims of school bullying are at a higher risk of developing violent behavior
- z3ncyberpunk 6y agoDuh? This isn't anything new. "Do unto others, what has been done to you"
- WarOnPrivacy 6y agoI feel this adds to the generational abuse picture - where bullies can pick up on the signals from a child who has been mistreated. The result is that both bullies and earlier abusers work together, to shape a persistent state of helplessness within the child.
- motohagiography 6y agoThere is something to be said for when people identify as victims, they don't hold themselves to the standards of the society they perceive as having produced their bullies. The reasonable ones act out against it, as you get with kids in schools who reject representations of authority from a society they are raised to identify as outside of, and they still get punished for disrupting it. The unreasonable ones use it as self-permission to be cruel, abusive, or even less-human to others. The idea that you can be elevated and even purified by your own anger is probably the most seductive idea of all. I'd posit there is almost no direct brutality committed by anyone who doesn't first think of themselves as a victim, and the person they commit it on is a symbol of their perceived bully.
- WarOnPrivacy 6y agoIs your supposition that abuse fosters anti-authoritarianism? If so, I think what doesn't clearly fit is this: Lasting suspicion of authority tends to be born from logic. However, abuse breaks judgment. It could be that the process of overcoming victimhood makes one more skeptical of authority.
- motohagiography 6y agoThe supposition is that people become authoritarians because they perceive themselves as victims, as a consequence of the origin of every act of discretionary cruelty being from the shame of the perpetrator. Believing that someone "deserves," for you to be evil is just a straight psychological hustle to persuade you to be evil. It's almost the essential, universal deception. A bit philosophical for a comment, but toward understanding the dynamics behind the article with an example moral consequence of what it asserts, it seemed worth adding.
- cory1four 6y agoI was a victim of school bullying and it haunts me in my adulthood. I cannot shake of the feeling of helplessness and seething anger. I have become a person who lashes out at my workplace and home when things become unbearable. Is there a way to deal with this?
- fredley 6y agoAre you getting therapy?
- gabereiser 6y agono joke, but have you been to therapy? What you need is to come to grips with the fact that you were bullied, the why, the what, what made you a target, that you realize it wasn't something of your fault but the bullies own insecurities. The anger and lashing out is really a deep hurt you need to address.
- nonbirithm 6y agoThe pandemic has caused every therapist in my immediate area to be overloaded. Someone I know said she was lucky to be able to get a single appointment with a waiting time of a month. Six of them did not return my emails outright, and when I finally managed to schedule something, I had to wait a quarter of a year just to be able to have the intake appointment. Everyone keeps saying that therapy becomes the most valuable once you've established a relationship with the therapist, so I am not seeing how this will help. But I'm not sure what anyone can do. Nobody could have prevented this, there are only so many therapists in my area, and there are only so many people they can consult with at a time. At the point that therapy becomes far less effective because too many people want it, what is left to do? Say "tough luck, but you have to be patient?" In the three months I've ended up waiting in between I feel like I've been spiraling or trapped in a shell with nobody that will listen to my problems. The friends I usually rely on have long since gotten tired of listening to me, because it isn't their job to do so, and I feel as if our relationships will not be the same going forward because I could not get help elsewhere fast enough. I may have other problems managing my executive function, or false convictions that I do, and either way my attention is constantly taken away by trivial things. I couldn't even focus on the MOOC homework I was taking even though I felt terrible for putting it off. But in order to even try and see if stimulants will help, I have to get an appointment - and I still have another month to wait for it. Our pleas for help are being swallowed up, and there seems to be no real recourse.
- adamnemecek 6y agoYet another reason why homeschooling is a good idea.
- zepto 6y agoThis. School causes bullying.
- adamnemecek 6y agoAnd teacher are sometimes legit bullies.
- dvtrn 6y agoShort version of a long tale: this is sad but true in some cases. I had to go with my sister as backup after her kid came home in tears because a teacher called the child "ugly" and said "I don't want to look at your face". Whether or not they said it we'll never know, only going off of what her kid told us and said teacher denying it, but the teacher was fired months later after an investigation launched from other poor behavior on their part-reported to the school by several other parents, so there's weight to the kid's claims.
- giardini 6y agoWhat do you mean by "legit bullies"? That is, do you mean -"teachers sometimes bully students." or - "teachers are allowed to bully students." or - something else.
- adamnemecek 6y agoThe first.
- giardini 6y agoOK. No doubt. I am glad you brought this up. I've never been bullied by a peer or near-peer. That is, I was never in a situation that I could not handle. In my entire life I've only seen one case where another child was bullied by older boys and I knew that was bad. BUT when you mentioned teachers, I thought of a middle-and-high school teacher/coach who held a grudge for reasons unknown. In response I skated by in his freshman biology class and, in general, wouldn't give him the time of day. So yes, teachers can indeed act like bullies. But I think most people don't think of bullying per se as being something teachers or other authority figures do but instead something that one's peers or near-age peers do.
- cblconfederate 6y ago> They filled out two questionnaires, one in June 2017 and one in June 2018. I wish psychology would move beyond these lazy methods. Perhaps use school records with documented evidence of bullying by a third party or something. such studies based on subjective evaluations are blended with the behavioral and character traits of each participant
- anonAndOn 6y agoWhat are the chances that a kid who has had his/her lunch money stolen by the school bully is documented in an official school record? I'm sure it depends on the school, but based on personal recollection of schoolyard threats received, I'd say bullying incidents are hugely underreported and possibly not recorded even when reported.
- ekianjo 6y agoIt's still a valid point that self-reporting is not really a very scientific measurement for everything out there.
- ianai 6y agoIt’s an even more valid point that bullying should be taken much more seriously and societal institutions to remediate it out in place - more scientific means of measurement would be just a paper thin start.
- zachrip 6y agoI think in anonymous polling you'd find the results to be much more accurate than school records. Schools have awful track records of enabling bullies with things like "zero-tolerance" and the like.
- ska 6y agoSelf reporting has know problems, and some mitigations. Relying on institutional records with active counter incentives for accuracy and/or completeness is also problematic, probably more so.
- Techasura 6y agoI was a victim but never really went out of boundary although sometimes it triggers so hard to be violent. This behavior also gives you a positive effect of being extremely patient at times because you know you have seen it all.
- _throwaway12345 6y agoI was hazed/ragged when I joined college and it was bad. It has been nearly 15 years since I finished college but it still haunts me. Anxiety strikes at any moment, there are some days I just cannot leave the house and I lash out at people when people question me if I feel trapped. I have missed so many opportunities because of it. It all started with that hazing and it has never gone away. It is something I would not wish on my worst enemy
- ianai 6y agoYep-for me the worst came around in “junior high” ie when I was 10-13. I fight those demons every single moment of every day and I’ll start my fifth decade on earth in a few years. I wish people cared about this to stop it.
- hn_throwaway_99 6y agoDon't know if you've done this but I would highly recommend therapy. I was bullied severely in junior high, and I didn't start seeing a therapist (for other reasons) until I was 35. By that time I thought I was totally "over" my bullying, if anything I felt shame that something that happened so long ago that I thought was behind me could have such a strong hold on my current behavior. Therapy has helped me immensely, and while I realize that talk therapy results are highly dependent on individual therapist and patient, my biggest regret is that I didn't start sooner.
- DenisM 6y agoAlso EMDR.
- jraby3 6y agoHave you used this technique for bullying? Was it effective? Would you mind sharing your experiences? This thread has made me consider getting therapy.
- hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
- NalNezumi 6y agoI'm having trouble finding conclusive details from the article that could rule out that the "violent behavior" shown later in life is just a resistance to authority that have been fostered by distrust. (and miss classified as violence by the surrounding) I know a couple of people that have been bullied but haven't seen much violent behavior from them, but they in general are very uncooperative with any authority (police, social services) and have a pretty low trust in the system
- MisterTea 6y ago> I know a couple of people that have been bullied but haven't seen much violent behavior from them, but they in general are very uncooperative with any authority (police, social services) and have a pretty low trust in the system Most likely because whatever system was supposed to protect them, failed to do so. Schools like government are authoritarian structured institutions, they're just another "system". In a sense, schools condition children to be obedient to authority preparing them for life in a society with a government and rules. If they cant trust that system then are they supposed to trust the system they are being conditioned for? This is the same feeling of mistrust that evolves in minority groups who are bullied/oppressed (same thing really.)
- nitrogen 6y agosame thing really Good luck to you if you ever say that out loud, but I do think that bullying victims are at least somewhat better equipped than the average person to empathize with victims of other types of discrimination.
- duxup 6y agoThat seems pretty logical. IIRC often the process of grooming people who commit torture or engage in violence ... to actually do that to them in the first place. This seems common in both governmental groups and criminal organizations.
- k__ 6y agoI also read that the bullies themselves have a higher chance of success in their lifes than the rest of the population.
- WarOnPrivacy 6y agoWhat kind of impact one makes depends a lot on where one lands.
- cuspycode 6y agoI look forward to the day when this is no longer the case. But we need to get better at punishing bullying behaviour to make this happen.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- PaulHoule 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ender%27s_Game https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ender%27s_Game
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- brokenkebab 6y agoMaybe true, or maybe not. The way this research described it can only be used to suggest a hypothesis. Making hard claims without hard evidence is (self)misleading and is one of major reasons why psychology is in trouble.
- WarOnPrivacy 6y agoAs human beings we have complete, internal access to the sort of subject that the study is targeting - human beings. That gives us a pretty solid opportunity to verify the suppositions for ourselves.
- cjaybo 6y agoThen why perform such studies if we all inherently know the results, just by the nature of being human and being able to introspect?
- WarOnPrivacy 6y agoBecause one human does not contain all nuances. One human being does, however, contain core processes (reactions, motivations) and we can use those to help evaluate the study's findings.
- brokenkebab 6y agoThis road doesn't lead anywhere. Understanding of human behavior is not freely flowing from access to human beings. Which btw is certainly not complete, and not that much internal as humans often cannot clearly see reasons of their actions, and ask for help from other people. Extracting knowledge from access requires serious discipline in finding of causative relations which studies like this tend to ignore. It makes them worse then meaningless because they produce pleasant illusion of understanding from what is essentially guesses.
- WarOnPrivacy 6y agoI've read that thru a few times and I can't see it as other than a glob of generalizations. Perhaps you could plug some of the topics of the study into it (eg: the mistreatment/violence cycle). That could help me see how it relates.
- overgard 6y agoThe thing I think gets lost is people just assume the school system is natural, and in terms of human evolution its the newest thing, it got created for industrial efficiency. Kids used to be raised by all of society and now they're effectively raised by each other. Bullying is a huge problem but its largely because kids raise each other. If you were to strait up ask do I want my neighbors 9 year old to be the most influential person in my kids growth the answer would be obviously no, but thats essentially where were at for efficiency
- watwut 6y ago> Kids used to be raised by all of society and now they're effectively raised by each other. Bullying is a huge problem but its largely because kids raise each other. Contemporary society puts much more effort and individual attention toward raising individual kids then majority of past societies used to. Partly simply because we have those resource, partly because we have less kids and partly because ideas about childraising changed. The "kids raise each other" complain is very modern, precisely because we expect more from childraising.
- overgard 6y agoI just don't think that's true, we put so much less effort. We basically leave child raising to the state. See how many people are baffled by what to do when they actually have to be around their kids for most of the day because of the pandemic. Better to toss them at a wildly underpaid person for 6 hours a day who has to watch like 30 kids at once, where their main influences are other kids. We wonder what to do to fix society when part of it is "just stop with the dumb things"
- watwut 6y agoOrigin of kindergarten is in German 5 years old being alone whole day on the streets while both parents work 12 hours a day in factory. Or while moms worked as nannies for someone else. That was whole day job too, meaning there are two kids not having attention of parents. The 10 years old kids who also used to work in factories were not "raised" by any contemporary meaning of word. Back to small villages and families with many kids, all adults had to work very hard to just create necessities for everyone. Once the kids were past toddler plus a bit stage, adults simply could not tweak them individually people do with kids now. Aristocratic kids were routinely sent to boarding schools. I could continue on and on as I go through time periods, but kids spent a lot of time literally raising themselves. They also died a lot and were beaten a lot. > we put so much less effort [...] See how many people are baffled by what to do when they actually have to be around their kids for most of the day because of the pandemic. This is definitely not true. And yeah, I found out during pandemic that school teacher is significantly better teacher then me. Triple so while I cant send the kid just outside to play alone as was completely normal generations ago (with exception of isolated periods).
- laretluval 6y agoCorrelation or causation?
- gavinray 6y agoI grew up in an abusive home, and was both overweight and nerdy + socially awkward most of my childhood. Thus I got verbally & physically bullied at school badly too. Until I was about 10-11, at which point I decided I had enough and snapped with all the pent-up rage of someone with nothing left to lose. I began starting a fight the moment others would belittle me. Didn't always win, but eventually other kids decided being a dick wasn't worth the physical confrontation and learned to leave me well enough alone. Reflecting on this as an adult, I think that living through violence and abuse typically ends in one of two ways for most people. Either they normalize the behavior, and perpetuate the cycle against their spouses and own children, or having lived through it themselves they can't imagine ever doing something like that to another human, let alone someone they care about. I fall firmly into the second camp, but that doesn't seem to be the rule.
- birdyrooster 6y agoYour second to last paragraph doesn’t seem to be as mutually exclusive to me as you make it. Often it seems the ones perpetuating this behavior also can’t imagine ever causing the same harm that they went through when in fact it can be worse.
- specialist 6y agoI'm sorry. I snapped a few times too. It's super dangerous. I think about Columbine and everything since all the time. That could have been me. Most of our oversteer since has made things worse. My son's middle and high schools were pressure cookers. Seemingly optimized for drama and trauma.
- quantified 6y agoSo much of the reaction to the Columbine shooting was the event itself and not why it happened. I'm not trying to excuse the tragedy there. Only pointing out that if you push people they may snap, and even if they were in the wrong in snapping the effects of the snap still remains. My high school was and is extremely highly regarded and was a torture chamber for some people. My kids have grown up with the oversteer and their experiences were much better (in other schools) thankfully.
- BurningFrog 6y agoThe awkward but obvious theory is that they get bullied because they're the kind of anti social people likely to become violent adults.
- Nasrudith 6y agoThat sounds like "Maybe minorities just commit more crimes." While blatantly ignoring that the law enforcers themselves have a higher rate of domestic violence. It is like asking "What did all of those people do to drive Jeffrey Dahlmer to kill them?" It is a stupid, lazy, and evil take of a "Just World Fallacy".
- chuckSu 6y agoGuess that explains why I’m so passive. I was fortunate enough to not face much bullying as a kid
- aficiomaquinas 6y agoAs a victim of bullying in my childhood, I can attest to this. When I hear people say that they cannot fathom how a person could walk into a restaurant and kill everybody, I don't tell them, but I do know what kind of anger you need to develop to be able to do such thing. That could have been me, but fortunately, it wasn't. I'm grateful I was able to overcome that.
- justinclift 6y agoTo me, "that anger" seems kind of weird though. I mean, the anger itself is understandable. eg "person XYZ or people ABC kicked my teeth in every day of school". But shouldn't the anger be directed to the people who did the bullying? Rather than just randomly spread out towards people who weren't even present. Like, only one of those approaches goes some way to solving the problem or even "pay back".
- rowanG077 6y agoIt's an attack on the system. In the end it wasn't really the individual kids that are bullies that are the cause. It's the system that allows them to bully. That's why you see so many school shootings. School is essentially bully heaven.
- justinclift 6y ago> it wasn't really the individual kids that are bullies that are the cause. Hmmm, I don't really buy it. From the perspective of a bullied kid, those individual kids are the bullies. What bullied kid really thinks "it's not those kids doing this, it's the system"? Blaming the system is a much higher-level / abstract thought. Maybe from a more mature person's mind set, looking back over things? All that being said, randomly going and shooting people doesn't really seem like an effective "attack on the system". Wouldn't attacking the system involve figuring out the responsible "system" people or components, so they'd be the focus of attack? Random shooting acts... isn't really that. :(
- 6y ago
- holidayacct 6y agoHow was this study performed and who was included in the study? That shouldn't be possible, its completely at odds with how reward and punishment pathways of the brain function. See the Orbital Frontal Cortex, motor cortex, pre-motor cortex and Striatum for more details.
- yters 6y agoI remember reading little house on the praire where the teacher bull whipped the classroom bullies, and they never caused any problems after that.
- staplung 6y ago“I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return.” ― W. H. Auden
- ekanes 6y agoIf you were bullied and still carry it with you, or know someone that's being bullied, I can't highly enough recommend training Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (when COVID19 is resolved, it's a pretty intimate endeavor!). It's not always comfortable or easy, but the boost in evidence-based confidence is remarkable.
- anonytrary 6y agoThis is more general. Victims of abusive parents are also more likely to be abusive parents. It's monkey-see, monkey-do -- you will treat others how you were treated in the past.
- ArcMex 6y agoReminds me of Bully, the video game. I wonder how it would have been received had it been released in 2020.
- maest 6y agoAs far as I can tell, they haven't established _causation_ in either direction, just correlation. Which is important to keep in mind when discussing possible mechanisms.
- m3kw9 6y agoI think if you went the violence bullying instead of verbal like getting laughed at, you may be predisposed even more
- ZoomZoomZoom 6y agoToo many here suggest fighting back which is completely irresponsible. Bullying is mostly done by groups and you can't effectively fight more than 2 opponents even with proper training. Also, bullies always escalate, so for every punch you throw you'll receive it back with a bonus kick. Going guerilla will lead to assymmetrical retaliation. Not even mentioning potential problems with school authorities or the law (if you're effective). There's a persistent image of 'bad neighbourhoods' in the US. Will you suggest fighting back there too? Schools are like that but you can't move away.