Bullying, Part II

By: Lara on March 27, 2008
Under: aggression
Comments: 2

Bully stories abound these days; here’s a heartbreaking one written by Dan Barry for the NYT.

It’s about a high school kid named Billy who is the target of bullying among his high school peers. Not just a target; Barry suggests that he’s the target, at least where physical assault is concerned. He’s assaulted regularly. There was even a Facebook group devoted to hating him for a while, until Billy’s parents alerted school officials and the group’s page was taken down.

Barry, in addition to laundry-listing the many ways in which Billy has been victimized over the last few years, suggests a couple of questions: Why him? And how can the bullies be punished in a way that prevents this from continuing to happen?

Why Billy? Who knows. Really. He was probably the wrong kid at the wrong place at the wrong time. Why is his experience so extreme? (And it is extreme—I’ve never heard of bullying like this, and I ask kids about this stuff for a living.) Something tells me that Billy just doesn’t break. When he gets hit, he probably just shakes it off, gives the little jerk who hit him a level stare, and walks away. The author never mentions retaliation, he never says that Billy cries. Or goes to the principal. Or does anything other than walk away. Billy’s steeliness must infuriate some kids.

Billy seems to have become the school punching bag. If you need to blow off steam, find Billy. If you want to do a little chest-beating to show everyone who’s boss, find Billy. You can hit Billy all you want—nobody’s going to intervene, the punishment is never worse than a few days’ suspension, and girls will still like you. (In fact, girls may like you more. Research by Anthony Pellegrini and his colleagues have shown that teen boys who engage in displays of physical dominance—including bullying and other instances of aggression—are seen as highly desirable dating partners. Our infatuation with The Bad Boy apparently starts pretty early.)

Sigh.

So is there any hope for Billy and kids like him? I think so. And while I agree with Billy’s parents that his bullying peers should be punished, even charged with assault, I don’t think that’s the whole answer. When it comes to adolescents, the peer group is a much more powerful agent of change than angry parents or teachers or even the legal system. It’s up to Billy’s peers to put a stop to the punches.

Research by Wendy Craig and Debra Pepler has shown that when peers intervene in episodes of bullying, about half of the time the bully will stop his (or her) mean behavior within 10 seconds. That’s pretty powerful. But the problem, I think, is that kids don’t realize their own power. They think they have to be “cool” or popular or physically dominant themselves in order to stand up to the bullies on behalf of a peer. And sure, sometimes the bully’s going to look at them like they’re crazy and growl “Get lost” when they do stand up for someone. But if Craig and Pepler’s research tells us anything, it’s that peers are the best chance a guy like Billy has. We need to remind kids of this as often as we can.

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Girls never cornered the market on “mean.”

By: Lara on March 14, 2008
Under: aggression
1 Comment

I’ve spent a lot of time the last few weeks gearing up for a new research study that I’m really excited about. It’s a study of what we call “relational aggression” or “social aggression,” and it refers to those hurtful behaviors like rumor-mongering and social exclusion that are usually thought of as the hallmark of the 13-year-old girl.

There’s something of a controversy in the field as to whether relational aggression really is “girl aggression,” though—some researchers find reliable gender differences favoring girls, while others don’t (or even find that boys are more socially aggressive). I happen to fall into the latter camp. The research some colleagues and I have done shows inconsistent gender differences in relational aggression, especially once you get into the adolescent years. Beyond about 9th grade, there don’t seem to be any differences at all.

I mention all that as background. So here’s the story I can’t stop thinking about.

I was recently told by a school principal that she is seeing more and more boys engaging in acts of social bullying severe enough to warrant a talk with her or the school counselor. This principal explained that it used to be “a girl thing”—but now the boys seem to be catching up. Boys who used to solve their disagreements by duking it out or exchanging some hostile words are now using social bullying, instead.

As a researcher, I’m not surprised that boys are using relational aggression. There’s a lot of research out there that tells us they do. What’s interesting to me is that this particular school is experiencing such a rapid change in the kinds of trouble boys are causing for each other. Why the sudden shift? Are zero-tolerance protocols in the schools forcing boys to become less physically violent and more covert in their attempts to do harm? Are anti-bullying programs, which so often teach empathy and perspective-taking, actually teaching boys how to hurt each other in more emotionally damaging ways? And if that’s the case, what can we actually do to stop kids from hurting each other? Kids are going to get into arguments. They’re going to have enemies, peers they dislike. It seems impossible—maybe even unwise—to remove all potential means of conflict. If you outlaw fistfights, you get mean rumors and the cold shoulder. How do you outlaw that? And should we? I wonder how emotionally sterile we’re making our children’s classrooms, and about the long-term consequences on the kids themselves.

Hmm, I have more to say about this. I think this blog needs a Part Two. More to follow.

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Science propaganda is still propaganda….it just sounds fancier.

By: Lara on March 3, 2008
Under: psychology and the media
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Just days after Larry King’s show featured several celebrity parents insisting that their children’s autism spectrum disorders developed after routine vaccinations, I came across the following post by Jake Tapper, on ABC news’s Political Punch blog:

“At a town hall meeting Friday in Texas, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., declared that “there’s strong evidence” that thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative that was once in many childhood vaccines, is responsible for the increased diagnoses of autism in the U.S. — a position in stark contrast with the view of the medical establishment.”

After the Larry King show aired, I spent hours ranting to my husband and anyone else who would listen about how irresponsible it was to present only one side of the autism-is-caused-by-vaccines “debate.” And now I read that Senator John McCain has come out against vaccines, too.

I won’t spend time here laying out the case against vaccines, or the case against the case against vaccines—that’s already been done thoroughly and eloquently by others, my favorite being Yale neurology professor Steve Novella of The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe. What bugs me about these very strong statements is that they’re being made by respected public figures in wide-reaching media outlets—and they’re being implicitly endorsed by the hugely influential news organizations that air the programs and print the news stories.

And beyond that, there’s no real attempt to accurately describe the state of the science on the matter. It’s not enough to acknowledge “divided scientific opinion,” as McCain does–which, by the way, is a frustratingly glib misrepresentation in itself. The fact of the matter is, the vast majority of the scientific and medical community does not believe that vaccines cause autism spectrum disorders. But this is not being communicated by the media.

I’m a new parent, and I speak as a mother and as a scientist. When it comes to learning about something that affects my daughter, I’m as guilty of overgoogling as the next parent. But it’s one thing to find some scary websites that insist I not vaccinate her. It’s entirely different to hear it on CNN. I’m lucky—I have access to resources that allow me to go beyond what the news media present. Most parents aren’t so lucky. They need to be able to rely on the media for some factchecking. They’re being let down.

Edited to add: Okay, on second look, the ABC News blog does go into some detail about the vaccine debate. I missed that in my furor. I’m still annoyed with John McCain, though, and CNN still stinks.

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When popularity is more important than anything else

By: Lara on
Under: aggression, peer status
1 Comment

I study peer popularity among children and adolescents. Some of my research has shown that being popular isn’t always associated with good things. Meaning, sometimes popular kids are mean to other kids, and sometimes they do things that their parents would probably rather they not do (drink, have sex). Popular youth are more likely than other kids to do stuff like this. I’m not the only one coming to these conclusions; there are lots of us doing similar work.

Despite findings like this, I have always been quick to end discussions of popularity with a comment like “…but of course not all popular kids are mean. Some popular kids are kind, cooperative, friendly, trustworthy kids.” And I mean it—our data show a lot of variability in aggression, alcohol use, etc., among the “in” crowd. It’s simply unfair not to acknowledge that.

But then I read something like this, and I just want to tear my hair out. Go on, have a look. (Thanks for the link, Sophie.)

Scary, isn’t it? And doesn’t it make you angry?

Stories like this are exactly why I study popularity. Popularity comes with social power—the power to influence others in good ways or bad, the power to make peers happy or make them miserable. There are lots of theories as to why some popular kids act the way the girls in the advice column acted (maybe we’ll tackle those in another post).

But here’s my question: Why is it that other kids are so willing to walk into the trap? Experience being a teenager and experience studying teenagers tells me that if a group of popular kids is mean to other kids, people probably know about it. Is the lure of being part of the “in” crowd so enticing that kids will risk the kind of humiliation that this poor girl experienced?

So while I usually come at this issue from the perspective of the popular kids, this story has me thinking hard about the perspective of their peers. We make a lot of assumptions about the way popular kids are perceived–like, they are sometimes disliked, they are envied, they are seen as competition for romantic partners–but we don’t test these assumptions very often.

If we are to truly understand the dynamics of popularity, we must go beyond studying popular kids themselves. We have to understand how they fit into the larger peer group, how their peers feel about them, and what it is about being popular that is so alluring to some kids that they’re willing to be victimized in order to fit in.

And for what it’s worth, I like Amy’s advice in this column. But I doubt the young girl who wrote her will follow it. If she was willing to submit to hazing in order to hang out with those girls in the first place, something tells me she won’t be willing to make a (possibly very public) issue out of her experience with them. Yet another indicator of just how much power these kids have.

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