We all have experienced the effects of bullying in our lives one way or another, whether or not they happened to us directly or we heard the horror stories from friends and family. You could even have just experienced it in the media where, in any fictional depiction of school one of the most prominent aspects is the bully. Bullying is a consistent aspect of school for children of all generations, just as consistent are the stark differences between the ways boys and girls bully one another. The differences are so clear in fact, that they easily fall into and make great examples of different types of aggression.
It would make sense to start with the ways boys harass one another as studies suggest that they experience more frequently than the opposite gender. Boys tend to be the victims of physical violence far more often than girls and the actions don’t tend to be premeditated in any way. They are fueled by emotional turmoil and things such as establishing dominance in the moment. Boys tend to form a group and follow a so called "alpha male" the followers will often say or do anything to maintain their acceptance within the group. Generally for boys a fight will bring them status and attention for displaying the male valued traits such as toughness, and athleticism. Their victims are most often the boys who don't display these societal expected traits of a boy.
This type of activity falls under the banners of both emotional and overt aggression. Emotional Aggression "refers to aggression that occurs with only a small amount of forethought or intent and that is determined primarily by impulsive emotions"(Stangor), and "As the name suggests, overt aggression involves outward or open confrontational acts of aggression, such as physical fighting, verbal threats and bullying,"(Coomarsingh). Bullying amongst boys is far easier to spot than among girls due to its physical nature and thus as boys age and are repeatedly reprimanded their bullying style tends to change and mirror that of the girls.
Speaking of the girls and their style of bullying, they tend to lean into far less physical approaches to tormenting one another. Their battle strategy tends to include name calling, gossiping, other forms of verbal assault, and ostracizing. This exclusion is often one of the worst forms of bullying as denying someone social interaction can be very damaging. The girls aren’t just doing this in the heat of the moment though, it tends to be one individual with several followers where the victim of bullying isn't a member of their group. Girls are often in a struggle for power and don't even trust one another in the clique. Lastly girls are the victims of sexual bullying far more than boys, both from other girls and from boys. Though girls are bullied less when it comes to frequency the duration of their bullying is often longer than that of the boys as girls, hold grudges and the boys are more likely to let things go. This matches the general trend of boys being bullied in the moment and girls being bullied over time to achieve some sort of motive.
The actions that these girls are partaking in are considered to be both Instrumental, and Relational Aggression. Where Instrumental Aggression " is aggression that is intentional and planned"(Stangor), it is made against someone as a means of securing some reward or to achieve a goal, such as victory, and when this course of action works in the person's favor the perpetrator is conditioned towards using such actions in the future. Relational Aggression "is nonphysical aggression towards another with the purpose of bringing down their reputation or social status or heightening one's own social status" (Gonzalez). Relational aggressors are often seen as mean, but also as powerful and having leadership qualities, which can be a factor in encouraging the behavior.
Bullying as a whole has seen its rates of occurrence falling each year, however this is a bit of a misnomer. While physically bullying has declined significantly the more psychological forms of bullying have increased in recent years. The hope is that this bullying can be eliminated the same way physical bullying was decreased so dramatically, and that schools can be made a safer place for all students. Bullying has made a lot of lives miserable, hopefully by having a more in depth knowledge of it and the way it works we can apply new prevention techniques and hopefully do a little bit more to end its reign of tyranny.
Stangor, C. (2014, September 26). Principles of Social Psychology – 1st International Edition. Retrieved from https://opentextbc.ca/socialpsychology/chapter/defining-aggression/
Coomarsingh, K. (2011, December 17). What is Aggression? Retrieved April 8, 2019, from http://www.whatispsychology.biz/what-is-aggression
Gonzalez, K. (n.d.). Relational Aggression: Definition, Examples & Intervention. Retrieved April 6, 2019, from https://study.com/academy/lesson/relational-aggression-definition-examples-intervention.html
Adams, R. (2018, June 13). Girls more likely to be bullied than boys, English schools survey finds. Retrieved April 6, 2019, from https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/jun/13/girls-more-likely-to-be-bullied-than-boys-english-schools-survey-finds
I very much enjoyed reading your blog post Ian. At the end you talk about the misnomer of bullying decreasing as physical bullying is decreasing but psychological bullying is increasing. And how this decrease in physical bullying is due to school/systems of the like demonizing physical bullying and making these places safer. What do you think these systems can do in order to help decrease psychological bullying?
ReplyDeleteI think a lot of it is doing a better job of bringing attention to it. I know from my experience in school the posters we saw were always about no violence and a zero tolerance for bullying. This seemed to work for the physical type of bullying but for relational I think we need to get better at spotting it and discouraging it. I discussed in my post that boy bullies tend to make the switch after repeated reprimand, so if the adults in school can just enforce their no tolerance policy for both types of bullying I believe we can see a decline.
DeleteWhat about for bullying that does not occur on school property? Do you think schools have the right to get involved in those occurrences? For both types of bullying.
DeleteJason the question you asked is similar to what I was going to ask. Technology being what it is today and so many teens getting on social media at earlier ages a lot of bullying takes place off school property. Do you think that this online bullying will cause a shift in the gender gap of bullying?
Deletehttps://enough.org/stats_cyberbullying
The ability to bully online means that boys can't do any physical bullying so it means that both boys, and girls will be involved in relational bullying. As to how the school involves itself in cyber bullying, they have a right to get involved but they can't do anything like ban accounts so if they are notified that it happens they just have to treat it the same way they treat normal bullying and punish accordingly.
DeleteDo you think that social media platforms should step in and ban these accounts more frequently? Or do you even think implementing something like this would decrease cyber bullying ?
DeleteI believe that the bots that most social media sites use to scan posts, get these type of things wrong just as many times as they do right and just end up banning innocent people. So with our current technology level I don't think that that is the right option.
DeleteBullying is definetly a very important topic to discuss, as it affects so many different children in very dramatic ways. I feel like we will always have difficulty truly getting rid of bullying, but even if we can limit it, that would be a good thing. I think it often boils down to getting the "leaders" of different groups to understand the importance of eliminating bullying. This allows for a trickle down effect through everyone in the group.
ReplyDeleteI agree, that seems like a good way to eliminate multiple bullies in one fell swoop.
DeleteIt seems like no matter how many people that are exposed to bullying and taught about how negative the effects can be, that people still get bullied every day. I know in middle school and high school this was a huge problem with boys and girls. I think you hit it spot on with differentiating between how boys are more of a physical where girls are more verbal and emotionally deteriorating. I have seen this happen too many times and it is awful. It is a shame that people have to go to school worried about getting picked on by other kids just to fit in to a group of people.
ReplyDeleteYeah, that's how it was in my school as well.
DeleteIt is extremely sad that it is on going problem that probably will never stop.
DeleteI agree with you Joe. No matter how much you teach kids about bullying and the effects of it, it still seems to always happen. I feel like in school it is easier to see cut backs on bullying because there are the teachers and school administration that helps to enforce the zero tolerance bullying rules. When you step off of campus is when it turns into a whole new ball game. Off campus, there aren't people who are there to help enforce the rules and I believe that if kids are getting bullied off school grounds, then the school can't do anything about it. In my opinion, I feel like bullying comes down to how a kid is raised and how they are taught to treat others. There are obviously other factors that come into play, but for me I believe that this is a big one.
DeleteYou did a really good job of explaining the different kinds of aggression used most by boys vs girls. I remember in elementary school there would be fights on the playground, and it would be the talk of the school. By the time I got to middle school and into high school I didn’t see any physical bullying but more of the instrumental and relational aggression. The girls in my high school were pretty ruthless. The gossip they started would spread like wildfire in the halls of the small high school I went to. It was really sad to eventually hear these rumors (I was usually the last to hear them), and think about how they would affect the person that they were about. I agree that the physical kind of aggression at school has decreased over time. With the anti-bullying programs that many schools have in place these day, it has helped reduce the overt aggression as it is much easier to detect and trace this kind of aggression back to the bully. It can be a lot harder to trace a rumor back to the person that started it. As Hali stated, the online world has offered a whole new opportunity for bullies to pick on others. It makes it even that much more difficult to monitor kid’s behavior and to properly address the bullying.
ReplyDeleteYou hit the nail on the head, relational aggression is much harder to track and there doesn't seem to be much programming in the school system on how to combat it. The online world as well has done nothing to help the situation.
DeleteI think it's interesting how the typical bullying styles for each gender differ--it's as though men were doing it to attempt to look strong, and the girls are doing it to attempt to have a higher status/prestige (well, relative to their "lesser" peers).
ReplyDeleteThis would seem to almost fit stereotypes perfectly--the stereotypical jocks who want to be seen as tough, and the beauty and status-obsessed girls.
That does seem to be the case based on the research I've observed.
DeleteI agree! It at least sounds very primitive and biological to some extent in the way or reasoning that girls and boys act.
DeleteGreat article! I think for our generation it has been really interesting to see all the changes in bullying from physical to online. When we were growing up we were always taught to not get into fights or bully kids on the playground but as the years went on the bullying started to move to the internet. When the internet became more popular so did bullying that happened online. It was interesting to see all the posters in the schools change from physical bullying to then talking about zero tolerance bullying online as well. A few people have mentioned it before, but bullying online is very hard to monitor and usually if it happens off-campus, the school isn't able to do much about it. Even though physical bullying is on the decline, it is really the bullying that happens online that leads to more problems in the world.
ReplyDeleteInteresting article! This pretty much aligns with what I had thought in regard to bullying as well as what I have experienced myself. I personally was bullied for many years by various girls and a handful of guys, but as mentioned for girls it was never physical, just name calling, threats, and ignoring or taking away a group of "friends" from me. It is interesting to see the facts back this up. I am also very glad to see that rates of bullying in some regard are declining as it was something that had a very negative affect on me for years.
ReplyDeleteThis is pretty topical to me. I have a twin sister, so naturally we went to the same high school. I consider myself to have been bullied a pretty average amount, rare fights, frequent harsh words. This kinda thing mainly petered out around 10th grade. For my sister however, it never seemed to end. It was like there was this constant flow of hostility that resulted in some new grudge against somebody every other week. While this never blossomed into full on confrontation, I feel it was definitely worse than what I went through.
ReplyDelete