Understand Bullies — So We Can Effectively Stand Up To Them

“They’re not bullying you because of you, they’re bullying you because of how they are.” Singer/songwriter Jessie J

Origin

Watch an episode of animal documentary, where dominant primates intimate others by smacking them around or even murdering them ▶️ to get more food and sex, and you’d pretty much grasp the evolutionary origin of bullies.

Since bullying for survival and procreation is such a fundamental condition in the animal kingdom, it is imprinted on our DNA through natural selection. As modern-day humans, we might feel the instinctive, animalistic urge to bully or to submit to bullying, even though we no longer need to push people around to survive and pass on our genes. As argued in Groups > Group Conflicts > Tribalism and Stages of Societal Development, bullying, once a successful evolutionary strategy, has become a crude and outdated way in resolving conflicts. While in a hierarchical society, bullying seems to unite the bullies with a common enemy, in contemporary societies, bullying might actually have de-stabilizing effects (see World > Political Anti-bullying > Why Authoritarianism is Horrible & Digital Totalitarianism is Your Worst Nightmare). However, we need to first understand this archaic instinct, including the bullies’ motivations, mindset, behaviors, and more, before we can overcome its negative effects on all of us.

Photo by mwangi gatheca on Unsplash

Reasons

In modern societies, bullies are motivated not only by money, power, sex, but more complex psychological-socio-economical reasons. “Bullies have issues within themselves and they are uncomfortable in their skin. So, they’d rather make someone feel bad to pick themselves up,” writes professor and author Charlena E. Jackson. Indeed, modern people bully for a host of reasons, but many of them have to do with negative experiences in the bullies’ life. Specifically, people bully because they are:

• Having issues at home such as abuse, stress, or being bullied themselves;
• Unhappy of their own lives and lashing out at others to distract themselves;
• Looking for revenge or retaliation to their bullies (see bully/victims under Types below);
• Having “too little love and care and too much ‘freedom’ in childhood” (source);
• Emulating peers or authority figures who bully others;
• Jealous of what other people have and wanting to feel less inferior through bullying;
• Going through mental health issues or substance abuse;
• Bolstering their ego by gaining a feeling of power, purpose and control over their targets (source);
• Conforming to systemic discrimination to boost their own social status and get into a position of elitism/power;
• Rewarded materially, socially or psychologically for their bullying behaviors;
• Rigging the system to get unfair payoffs in money, power, sex, etc. (see more in Groups > System 2: Game Theory);
• Excited to torment others (a dark trait);
• Seeking amusement (a dark trait; e.g., “[I]n a recent poll, 81% of cyberbullies have stated that they cyberbully others because they think it’s ‘funny’”; source)
• Dehumanizing their targets (a dark trait; “… have you ever noticed how we crush a cockroach without further worry and feel no remorse in spite of being in fact terminating a life? … We do so because we don’t identify ourselves with a cockroach… some people tend to do the same towards others… It’s as if the stranger, who doesn’t belong to the same group as we do, was seen as an inferior being… Almost a cockroach!” writes Camilo Gomes Jr in Em memória);
• Maintaining existing social order, e.g., “[c]ertain kind of bosses may bully their high performers. And we explain this through something called the social dominance theory, [which] suggests that there are hierarchies in society, and there are differences among people in those different levels of the hierarchy, and those that are in higher places in the hierarchy want to sustain the status and privilege that they have from their place in society. And so when somebody from a lower rang on the ladder attempts in some ways to move up or shows signs of acquiring resources or gaining status that somebody of a higher place should have, then the people in the higher place feel threatened, and when they feel threatened, then they will turn around and be abusive or victimize those of the lower status.” (source 🎧, 18:41);
• Eager to connect with others but don’t know how to act or fit in — “As children go through their developmental stages, they should be finding ways of working out problems with their peers and getting along with other people, which includes learning how to read social situations, make friends, and understand their social environment. Bullies however, use aggression, violence, and verbal abuse to supplant these skills. They don’t have to learn how to work things out because they solve their problems through harassment and intimidation (source).” See Groups > System 2 > Collaboration on how to improve your social problem-solving skills;
• Gaslighting “to control the moment in the relationship, to stop the conflict, to ease some anxiety and feel ‘in charge’ again” (source);
• Simply able to, or “if I could I would” (e.g., I once was mean to my romantic partner because I knew I had the upper hand — the relationship ended disastrously because of my attitude. Needless to say, I am not proud of it and have regretted my behaviors ever since).

Many bullying reasons are associated with dark traits. See more in Psychology below as well as Life > Life Perspectives > Light & Dark Triad of Personalities.

Types

There are three types of bullies:

1. Ringleader bully: those who actively oppress others. Ringleader bullies are often socially skilled “because they are able to manipulate at least some of their peers in order to establish their leadership,” explains psychologist Marina Camodeca.
2. Assistant bully: those who help ringleader bullies in the act of bullying but tend not to initiate the bullying themselves.
3. Bully/victim: those who are bullied and in turn bully others out of anger. “… research shows that those who have experienced bullying are twice as likely to go on and bully others… Often it’s used as a defence mechanism and people tend to believe that by bullying others, they will become immune to being bullied themselves. In fact, it just becomes a vicious cycle of negative behaviors,” Ditch the Label cautions.

Interestingly, people at the two ends of the popularity spectrum are more likely to bully others, according to StopBullying:

• Those who are “well-connected to their peers, have social power, are overly concerned about their popularity, and like to dominate or be in charge of others.”
• And others who are “more isolated from their peers and may be depressed or anxious, have low self esteem, be less involved in school, be easily pressured by peers, or not identify with the emotions or feelings of others”.

“It is important to distinguish bullies who are hurt and bullies who are out to get an advantage over someone else. The former you can communicate with, appealing for a collective wish to understand and to heal. The latter you need to show them you are not okay with their aggression — otherwise they would have no incentives to change. ‘If I could I would!’ is the maxim of tyrants,” observed writer Lamine Pearlheart in The Sunrise Scrolls: To Life from the Shadows II📖. Many of us make the mistake of confusing the two, leading to situations such as PC culture excusing authoritarianism to avoid racism but inadvertently abet to bullies. See how to work with a hurt bully in Groups > System 2: Game Theory and System 2: Collaboration > Group Deliberation.

Psychology

Evidence shows that bullying is at least in part a genetic disposition. For instance, bullies tend to have inborn dark traits, or “the general tendency to maximize one’s individual utility — disregarding, accepting, or malevolently provoking disutility for others,” psychologists at the University of Copenhagen defines. These dark traits include egoism, machiavellianism, moral disengagement, narcissism, psychological entitlement, psychopathy, sadism, and spitefulness (source; see more in Life > Life Perspectives > Light & Dark Triad of Personalities).

Aspiring leaders can also turn into bullies. “A 2013 genetic study revealed that the tendency to become a leader is at least partly genetic. In other words, some individuals are equipped with the personality traits to become group leaders, while others are more inclined to be followers. At least some of these ‘natural leaders’ will use aggression and bullying to maintain their status… if a person does not reach their social goal of becoming a ‘leader’, it might lead them to bully more” (source).

However, not everyone with dark traits or leader ambitions become bullies. In The Anatomy of Assholes, cognitive scientist Scott Barry Kaufman notes that “the ‘dark core’ involves a mix of cold-heartedness, dishonesty/manipulation, and exploitation/aggression… just cold-heartedness (or psychopathy) is not enough — there are plenty of people who, on average, have very low levels of compassion but don’t have the drive to constantly exploit and dominate others. According to A.J. Figueredo and W. Jake Jacobs, the core of darkness is best characterized by its ‘antagonistic social strategies’: seeing others as objects to be exploited or rivals to be defeated… This zero-sum mindset — to gain, others have to lose — can be viewed as a rational response to experiencing extreme harshness and unpredictability, where one must secure scarce resources in the present. Also, it must be emphasized that throughout our daily lives, we all ebb and flow in and out of these characteristics depending on the situation, our mood, and who we are interacting with.” For more about zero-sum mindset, see Groups > System 2: Game Theory.

On the other hand, some bullies are not born but made. Research conducted by Ditch the Label shows that “…those who bully are far more likely than average to have experienced a stressful or traumatic situation in the past 5 years… It makes sense because we all respond to stress in very different ways. Some of us use positive behaviors, such as meditation, exercise and talking therapy — all designed to relieve the stress… Others use negative behaviors such as bullying, violence and alcohol abuse, which temporarily mask the issues but usually make them worse in the long-term”. This reaffirms the saying: “hurt people hurt people.” It also means that when we stand up to bullies, the vicious cycle of hurt stops there, because hurt bullies cannot cause hurt to more people and create more bullies. More about that in World > Bullying Basics > Why Standing Up to Bullying is One of the Most Important Things in Life.

Bullies might not be aware that they are bullying. They might feel it’s their “god-given” right to exert superiority — that enforcing some sort of pecking order is the “natural” way of life. They might feel others do not deserve to enjoy as much privileges as they do because of certain traits they have. Some of them might feel what they do is not bullying, but a form of tough education or misunderstood order-keeping.

The opening of movie I Care A Lot 🎞️ is quintessential confession of a bully: “Look at you, sitting there. You think you are good people. You’re not good people. Trust me. There is no such thing as good people. I used to be like you, thinking that working hard and playing fair would lead to success and happiness. It doesn’t. Playing fair is a joke, invented by rich people to keep the rest of us poor. And I’ve been poor. It doesn’t agree with me. ’Cause there’s two types of people in this world. The people who take, and those getting took. Predators and prey. Lions and lambs.My name is Marla Grayson, and I’m not a lamb. I am a fucking lioness.” But even for a ruthless bully like her, towards the end of the movie (spoiler alert!), she has to partner with her enemy to survive and still ends up revenge-murdered.

Characteristics

Bullies tend to possess the following interrelated characteristics — beware if you meet people with one or more of these red flags:

• Strong needs for power and dominance;
• Aggressive or easily frustrated;
• Low self esteem or unhappy;
• Attention grabbing;
• Extremely jealous;
• Intense or volatile in emotions;
• Finding it hard to follow rules;
• Viewing violence positively;
• Having trouble standing up to peer pressure;
• Using drug and alcohol to drown their pain;
• Lack of empathy or even taking pleasure in the misfortune of others;
• Tend to think negatively of others;
• “[E]xtremely impulsive and hyperactive, with difficulties in modulating their behavior…” (related to bully/victims; source);
• Lacking social skills — they “generate only few alternative solutions when facing a social problem… and tend not to have nonaggressive solutions in their repertoire” (source);
• Feeling rejected from the very people who should love them unconditionally — “those who bully are more likely to feel like their friendships and family relationships aren’t very secure. In order to keep friendships, they might be pressured by their peers to behave in a certain way. They are more likely to feel like those who are closest to them make them do things that they don’t feel comfortable doing and aren’t very supportive or loving” (source). See more about secure relationships in Groups > Group Conflicts > Attachment Styles.

Sources:

• Why Do People Bully — The Scientific Reasons
• Bullying 🎧, Listening Notes
• The difference between healthy and unhealthy love
• Empathy Gap — Bullying
• Who Is at Risk

Gender Differences

Even though progressive societies have been fighting for gender equality for over a century, there are still gender differences in bullying. “Boys use more physical aggression, while girls tend to be aggressive in a verbal, relational and indirect way (e.g. damaging someone’s reputation, refusing friendship, isolating the victim)… Reasons may lie in social stigmas and expectancies… Boys use overt aggression to gain acceptance and such behavior is both more common and judged more positively than in girls. On the other hand, girls are reared to be polite and nice and outbursts of direct aggression are unusual and judged negatively… Because bullying among girls takes more subtle and often hidden forms, it is more difficult to detect and agreement among informants is more difficult to achieve, compared to more overt types of aggression…” Camodeca summarizes. The fact that men are more physically aggressive than women indicates that the way we teach men is problematic. As former NFL player Joe Ermine once said, “boys who can’t cry shoot bullets”.

Behaviors

After discussing so much about bullies — their origin, reasons, types, psychology, characteristics and gender differences — let’s lastly talk about what do they actually do?

• Bullying starts early in life, and when it happens, it’s often unprovoked (source).
• The first thing bullies usually do is to find something they can claim superiority upon, then pick people without that trait to prey on.
• They “focus on something that is unique about [their targets] — “ these can be looks, strength, seniority, sex, sexuality, social standing, etc., and “either preying on or creating new insecurity with an intent to hurt [them] either physically or emotionally” (source).
• “Remember, those who bully others do not need to be stronger or bigger than those they bully. The power imbalance can come from a number of sources — popularity, strength, cognitive ability…” (source).
• Then, bullies will employ different tactics, including physical, verbal, emotional, relational, sexual or cyberbullying, to intimidate and put down their preys (see World > Bullying Basics > Understand Bullying > Methods).
• Note that proactive aggression “may take the form of instrumental aggression (“object- oriented”, aimed at obtaining an object or a privilege) or of bullying (“person-directed”, used to intimidate or dominate a peer…),” aimed at achieving self-serving goals. By comparison, “reactive aggression is a primary type of aggression in reaction to a provocative stimulus and might be viewed as justified by the need to defend oneself and to retaliate against abuse…” (source).
• To justify their bullying behaviors, bullies may downplay or make excuses for their abuse.
• Sometimes though, bullies “may not even know he is doing anything strategic or manipulative. [They lack] self-awareness and may just think [they are] expressing [themselves] directly, or… honesty…” (source).
• No matter why someone starts bullying, be it genetic traits or personal turmoils, they tend not to stop. “Bullying is not an isolated phenomenon, but is a sign of aggressive tendencies, which have been found to be stable with the passing of the time… and which can assume different forms (fighting, stealing, carrying weapons). Bullying and victimization among children have been also found to be stable through time… and to lead to behavioral and psychological problems in adolescence and adult life,” according to Camodeca.
• If a bully has the power to hide their deeds from scrutiny, they tend to (so checks and balances are important; see World > Political Anti-bullying > Values-based Democracy as the Anti-bully).
• If a bully can pose their will over others without consequences, they will (so accountability is important; see World > Political Anti-bullying > Taming Political Bullying: Grow, Learn, Witness, Connect, Act & Wait).
• Whenever possible, the bullies will dial up the severity of their threats and oppression if they are not stopped. The only way to overcome them is to stand up to them (see World > Bullying Basics > Methods to Overcome Bullying).

Conclusion

We began this segment with the evolutionary origin of bullies: dominate primates who torment the weaker to get their way, but how does this story end? Let’s see what happened to a super-bully chimpanzee called Frodo. “In 2002, after five years of ruling, he became sick and weak… Noticing his reduced strength, the other males immediately attacked him…Frodo spent the subsequent months alone, in exile. When he returned to his group he was demoted to a very low rank. He died in 2013, possibly from violent attack. His necropsy showed that his testicles were infected from a canine-shaped wound” (source).

“In my experience the males who get there by bullying often end very badly,” concludes primatologist Frans de Waal. “In captivity they get attacked and we need to take them out. In the wild they get attacked and barely survive, or they get marginalised. The bullies are not very popular” (source). This is true for primates as well as human beings. A 2015 study, for example, discovered that mean assholes do not always get ahead.

Sadly many of us, bullies and bullied included, still believe bullying is a necessity without thinking it through, when in fact in the 21st century, bullying is most often a loss-loss situation for everyone involved, even to the bullies. For more evidence, see World > Bullying Basics > Why Standing Up to Bullying is One of the Most Important Things in Life, and Methods to Overcome Bullying.

There is a good reason why humanity moved away from hierarchical bullying over the millenniums (and we’ve come such a long way!) In World > Political Anti-bullying and D3 — Deliberative Direct Democracy, we will talk about the roles of democratic values, human rights, government, law, civil organizations, and deliberative direct democracy play in overcoming societal bullying. The success of these anti-bullying efforts relies on our realization that the systemic bullying is a losing strategy and on fighting it collaboratively.

Do you have any suggestions, doubts, hypothesis or experience for this topic? Please comment below 👇!