Biting the Underdog [Final]
This topic submitted by Jeremy Smith, Todd Nadenicheck (t@muc.muohio.edu) at 5:19 pm on 5/2/00.
Additions were last made on Saturday, March 2, 2002. Section: Cummins.
Biting the Underdog:
Perspectives on Bullying and Dominance among Children
1. Introduction and Relevance
"...Bullying claimed another victim in the small town of Woodstock: 13-year-old
Josh Belluardo. Last November, on the bus ride home from school, Josh's neighbor,
15-year-old Jonathan Miller, taunted him and threw wads of paper at him. He
followed Josh off the school bus, hit the younger boy in the back of the head,
and kicked him in the stomach. Josh spent the last two days of his young life
in a coma before dying of his injuries" (Vail, 38).
Bullying is a real problem in our society. Often, parents, educators and other
authority figures see it as relatively harmless and even good for "building
character." But it can actually be very dangerous. It's important to understand
why bullying happens so that it can be stopped. Through our project, we plan
to add to the understanding of bullying and dominance as it occurs among children.
When we began looking at bullying, trying to rationalize its existence as a
social phenomenon from an evolutionary psychology perspective, we couldn't immediately
discern its benefits. Through reading and research, we found that similar behavior
patterns exist in wolves and chimpanzees, among other animals. This led us to
believe that there might be some social benefit from this pattern that seemed
wholly destructive. A lesser reason for our interest in the topic was our own
status in grade school: being nerds.
Our hypothesis seeks to answer the following questions:
-Why does bullying exist?
-What, if any, are the personal benefits to bullying?
-What, if any, are the social benefits to bullying?
We hypothesize that bullying exists because there is some benefit (social and/or personal). If there was no benefit, then there would be no purpose for it. Evolutionarily speaking, the trait for bullying could only survive if there was a certain amount of benefit (either to life span or reproduction) that made it useful to the person carrying it.
So what would be the social benefit of bullying? In The Moral Animal, the author writes, "Throw a bunch of hens together, and, after a time of turmoil, including much combat, things will settle down. Disputes (over food, say) will now be brief and decisive, as one hen simply pecks the other, bringing quick deferral. The deferrals form a pattern. There is a simple, linear hierarchy, and every hen knows its place" (Wright, 239). Why would this "pecking order" be useful? It provides a hierarchy that keeps members of a group from continually vying for power and control. It keeps the stronger members from wasting energy and keeps the weaker members from continually being hurt when they lose in a struggle. Whether good or bad, we could say that this creates a certain amount of order in a social group-whether it's animals or children. But this only explains how it benefits a social group and doesn't explain why bullying continues even after hierarchies or "pecking orders" have been established. For this, we must examine the possible personal benefits of bullying.
In the article, "Words That Wound," the author states that, "Theories...vary on why children become bullies, but most agree that bullies gain power and enjoy the control they have over others" (Vail, 39). It seems that bullying is mostly about having power and control over others. This may have effects on the status of an individual bully, and it may also affect the way a bully feels about himself or herself. In the book, Developing a Social Psychology of Monkeys and Apes, the author states that, "Dominance has not been a negligible issue in primate studies. Higher or lower rank are as influential in social interactions as they are in human societies" (123). He also states that, "Control, in monkeys and apes, is used to improve mating and feeding opportunities or to anticipate and avoid the aggressive actions of others" (123). Although mating and feeding are probably not applicable to the social hierarchies of children, these observations from the animal kingdom may apply to the way dominance and bullying work for them. We hypothesize that the personal benefits for a bully include higher self-esteem, better access to resources and, as with the monkeys and apes, avoidance of the aggressive actions of others.
In The Moral Animal, Robert Wright talks about how higher status provides individuals with a higher level of serotonin. Serotonin "seems to relax people, make them more gregarious, more socially assertive, much as a glass of wine does...As a slight and useful oversimplification, you might say that serotonin raises self-esteem" (Wright, 243-4). Through our research, we hope to show that bullying raises self-esteem by raising the power and social status of an individual. If it is made clear that bullying helps to achieve a higher status, then it would follow that an individual would have better access to important resources. Finally, we hope to show through our research, that it bullying helps an individual actually avoid the aggressive actions of others, by being aggressive himself or herself.
2. Materials and Methods
Our experimental design (survey) is attached as an addendum. We attempted to
have our results be as statistically viable as possible, within the limited
population of students either enrolled in the Western College Program or living
in Mary Lyon, McKee, or Peabody. We had 86 surveys filled out, and discarded
only six because they were improperly completed. In the final count, there were
forty-four female respondents and thirty-six male respondents. In this way,
we nearly got an even female/male ratio.
Each of the survey questions was asked to address a specific concern or to attempt
to get a better idea of one element of the general question:
-Question 1 was asked to determine the general personality or social standing
of the bully. We asked this particularly to determine whether more bullies were
of the "thug" class, generally disliked and feared, or whether they
were popular kids who were generally mean spirited.
-Question 2 sought to determine whether bullies singled individuals out or
harassed whole groups of people.
-Question 3 was not quantifiable as it sought brief descriptions rather than
choices of previously prepared answers. In this we hoped to get a more personalized
feeling of people's recollections of both bullies as well as those who are most
often picked on. The inclusion of bullies was not made until we took the surveys
around and people misunderstood the question. This surprised us, but we took
the opportunity to get a little extra information. It was particularly interesting
to see how much information some people volunteered.
-Question 4 was designed so that we could determine the most common manners
of interaction between the bully and the individual who was being picked on.
-Question 5 was tied to question 1 to better understand the bully and his position
in the social group. By understanding how others reacted to that individual's
behavior, we measured the combination of the general tenor of people's on-the-spot
opinion of bullying and how much of a behavior they would not normally condone
people are willing to tolerate to be part of a group.
-Question 6 we intended to compare the class size with question 2, whether
the bully picked on an individual or a group.
-Question 7 attempted to partially address the relation that gender had to
bullying and the perception thereof.
-Question 8 was presented first as a matter of course and then also to see
how the various responses differed between men and women.
-Question 9 we posed pretty much for no reason at all.
-Questions 10 and 11 were asked to put the other answers in context. As we
did not really use the surveys individually, this initial use was not pursued.
They were used primarily to show that just about everyone remembers being in
both roles.
We attempted to have unbiased results primarily by encouraging honesty and were slightly selective in the questions we highlighted. As our questions asked people to recall events from elementary school, we cannot with any confidence guarantee that the recollections of our subjects matched the events as they occurred.
We involved the class primarily as subjects but also drew some of our ideas from the various discussions held in class and especially by the critique offered by Andrea Burnett, Dan Pribble, and Jeremy Anthony.
We researched and considered our ideas to submit the proposal for the proposal in the days before 2/3/00. We did more work, especially research for the proposal in the days before February 24th and submitted it at 1:44 am on 2/24/00, got together to examine the critique in the days after the 7th of March. We began to collect our data in mid April, lost the small amount of data that we had collected and conducted our larger, final survey towards the end of April. We tabulated our data and prepared (small) segments of the final in the week before finals. We met and got some more recent journal articles as instructed in the critique on the 29th of April. We worked through the night Monday, May 1, 2000 and completed with plenty of time to sleep, revise, and hand in the paper.3. Results
The following are the results from our survey of 80 people.
This pie chart shows the ratio of males to females surveyed.
This pie chart shows the ratio of class sizes among those surveyed.
This pie chart shows the ratio of different characterizations of the bullies by the people being surveyed.
This pie chart is the ratio comparison of whom the bullies focus on: anyone, a select group or an individual.
This bar graph shows the domination tactics of the bully as compared to the reactions of the people being bullied.
This pie chart shows the ratio of responses from people who observe the bullying.
This stacked bar graph compares the characterization of the bully with those being bullied.
This stacked bar graph compares the characterization of the bully with the responses of those who observed the bullying.
This stacked bar graph compares the class size of those surveyed to who was bullied.
4. Discussion and Conclusions
Our survey results revealed several things about surveyed individual's remembered experiences with bullying. One of these is that bullies tend towards being well-liked, as opposed to feared, as one might otherwise suspect. This goes along with what we found in our research. Vail explains the phenomenon saying, "The bully-as-social-outcast is one of the persistent myths of bullying. In fact, bullies are almost always more popular than their victims" (39). In this it could be seen to help maintain the social order; bullies are reinforcing their dominance over other members of the social group, and the exclusion of others from that social group.
Similarly, one might expect that a bully would select an easily dominated individual. Our survey found, however, that bullies were more likely to focus on a "select group" and that individuals were lowest in susceptibility, below both "select group" and "anyone." This again shows that generally, this is a phenomenon more about maintenance of social hierarchy than individual dominance showing that this is probably more on the social plane than a personal one.
Studying the manner of domination, and the victim's response to these acts was also useful in understanding the phenomenon. We found that verbal dominance was the most often cited expression of dominance and was often coupled with physical violence. We found that in response, that the victims most often attempted to ignore or avoid the situation. This is echoed in the Vail article, which stated that, "every day 160,000 children stay home from school because they are afraid of being bullied" (27) showing that avoidance is a preferred method of dealing with the situation. There next most common response was verbal with very little incident of physical retaliation to bullying.
We found that people's reactions to observing bullying behavior indicate that they did not take it seriously. When asked to rate reactions from "laughed it off" to "got angry," reactions clearly favored laughing it off, indicating that observers were unwilling to see the situation as an instance of socially destructive behavior. This may indicate that people have the opinion that bullying is a necessary social construct, "societal expectations play a part in adult reaction to childhood bullying. Many teachers and administers buy into a widespread belief that bullying is a normal part of childhood, and that children are better off working out such problems on their own" (Vail 38). This could be seen to relate to the patterns of social reinforcement noted in chimps.
We also found when we compared the characterization of the bully ("feared" to "well-liked") with who is bullied ("anyone," "select group," or "individual) we were surprised to see that it seemed that the more feared a bully was, the less discriminating they would be about who they would victimize. This does not seem to correspond with one of our greater themes, that bullies are generally well liked and popular. Perhaps it does support our greater thesis in that there may be some personal benefit to the bully being feared. This personal benefit may stem from how the bully would minimize aggressive behavior against himself by focusing aggressiveness on others. It may also give the bully feelings of control, which would increase the feelings of self worth, which are not echoed in their actual social standing.
Our comparison of the characterization of the bully to the reactions of others fit with our ideas on the ideas of the possible social benefits to bullying. Through our graphical comparison, we saw that the more feared an individual was the more negative and angry the reaction of the observers. The converse of this was also true; the better liked a bully was, the more positive the reaction.
The majority of the people polled had smaller graduating classes, in the range of 0-150 people. A slight relationship could be perceived between small class size and individual attention on the part of the individual. Beyond that, some of the emphasis on the three categories in the smaller class sizes may be related to the sheer number of individuals reporting small class sizes.
In conclusion, much of what we hypothesized was supported by our collected data. There was support for both the social and personal benefits of bullying, while acknowledging that bullying is very destructive to the victims.
Some of the respondents were cantankerous, offering critiques of our survey, pointing out that in a couple instances, we could have been slightly clearer in the way we asked the questions. We still have questions about second correlation chart, in that it did not seem to fit with our original thoughts on bullying as an activity commonly perpetuated by popular kids. As this seems to be a generally accepted theory, our data may not be entirely representative, as it is based upon recollection and opinion, rather than directly observed situations.
We were left with questions as to the viability of the dominance hypothesis, as much of the research was inclined to link bullying behaviors to developmental factors; parental, environmental, and societal influences were especially highlighted.
5. Literature Consulted
Baldry. Anna C. and David P. Farrington. "Bullies and Delinquents: Personal Characteristics and Parental Styles." Journal of Community Application of Social Psychology. Volume 10. Spring 2000.
Borg, Mark G. "The Extent and Nature of Bullying Among Primary and Secondary Schoolchildren." Educational Research. Summer 1999.
Chadwick-Jones, John. Developing a Social Psychology of Monkeys and Apes. Guildford, UK: Psychology Press, 1998.
Goodall, Jane. Through a Window. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990.
Vail, Kathleen. "Words That Wound." American School Board Journal. September, 1999.
Wright, Robert. The Moral Animal: Evolutionary Psychology and Everyday Life. New York: Vintage Books, 1994.
Appendix A: Our Survey
Please think of a person in grade school who you remember picked on other kids.
1. How would you characterize this person?
[Feared] 1 2 3 4 5 [Well-liked]
2.Who did this person pick on?
A. Anyone
B. A Select Group
C. An Individual
3. How would you characterize this person (or persons)? Was this person in some way physically or mentally handicapped, physically smaller, of a different racial, ethnic, or economic background, intellectual, a "brown-noser," "geek," or "nerd?"
4. How did the bully dominate the weaker individual(s) and how did the second respond?
A. Verbally
B. Physically
C. Other_______
5. How individuals observing this domination react?
[Laughed it off] 1 2 3 4 5 [Got angry]
6. How big was your class?
1-75 76-150 150-225 225-300 300+
7. Was there significant difference between girls and boys responses? How would you account for this difference?
8. What is your sex? M F
9. What is your major? WCP Arc/ID Other
10. Were you ever picked on? Y N
11. Do you recall ever picking on someone else? Y N
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