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How bullying may shape adolescent brains

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Re: How bullying may shape adolescent brains

#61

Post by zozbot234 »

maceurt wrote: post #57
devoply wrote: post #2

Bullies themselves need counselling on managing their own needs and emotions rather than punishment. We focus so much on the victims, we also need to focus on the perpetrators and see them as victims as well if not of anything else than their own psychology.

I agree with you. If you are a child then you are almost entirely dependent on your home and school environment for cues on social development. If a child is bullying another kid then you can almost guarantee it is a problem with their home or with the school.

Well, guess what's the biggest "problem with (the) school" - the inability to get away from a bad environment. And you can't fix that with counseling alone - you actually have to figure out who the worst offenders are, and punish them consistently. The more you can deprive those folks of the social influence among their peers that's what they crave most, the better for everyone else.

Re: How bullying may shape adolescent brains

#62

Post by bane »

I've never understood why schools seem so reticent to enforce zero-tolerance policies against bullying. In my experience at least, every time bullying seems to be a problem at a school, it's because the environment allows it to occur.

Schools will eagerly put in place various other zero-tolerance policies, like no fighting. So if you dare defend yourself against such a social predator, you are taught a lesson by such a policy that you've done a bad thing.

I was fortunate never to be a victim of bullying, but many of my friends were (we were a bunch of nerds after all). The difference was I had support at home for fighting back because my parents knew the administration wasn't watching out for students well being. The lesson I learned is that fighting back is the single most effective strategy for stopping bullies, and that parents have to ensure that their child is shielded from ineffective school behavioral policies.

My friends didn't have such support and suffered from it, and couldn't ever learn that lesson. Some of them couldn't have fought back even if it was okay for them to do so for various reasons. The ones I still have contact with today have lingering social problems from the childhood bullying and this has fully reinforced on me that bullying is a social plague that needs to be aggressively stamped out.

There is the other side that bullies themselves are suffering in turn. Many come from shattered home lives or abusive parentage. Those children should be identified and put into some kind of counseling program as early and as intensively as possible. They will also grow up to be damaged in some way because of it and in their lives, perhaps only the school has an opportunity to tamper down their violent instincts.

However, the physical and emotional violence that bullies subject others to is absolutely not to be tolerated in any way. And it seems the best way for other children to handle it is to simply do their best to fight back.

Re: How bullying may shape adolescent brains

#63

Post by andoofthewoods »

Nasrudith wrote: post #46
andoofthewoods wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's a huge assumption you're making. Narcissists and Sociopaths make up 1% of the population each. To characterise most young bullies as narcissists/sociopaths when A - Their brains are still developing, and B - They're at an impressionable age where their sociability is highly moulded by their environment (e.g. parents) is disingenuous.

I suspect we have even worse matters than the 1% - they are often contagious as you see their actions and rationalizations adopted by not technically sociopaths and narcissists because they are rewarded for it. And just like other conditioned for behavior done independently of when it would actually help them.

Everyone has sociopaths and narcissistic tendencies to varying degrees. But to say that "most" bullies are sociopaths or narcissists that can't be helped like OP said (before editing their comment) misunderstands people period.

Adolescents don't have the developed perception of consequence as adults, and yet OP is already pinning them with mental disorders that can't be resolved. Pure speculation that is outright wrong.

In the case that you mention with learned anti-social behaviours, counselling can most definitely help with unmapping/correcting those behaviours.

Re: How bullying may shape adolescent brains

#64

Post by schalab »

Seems to me a large part of growing up is keeping up with the herd. Like a pack of zebras in the savannah. If you stray too far behind or show weakness, you get picked off by the roving lions.

Now I can see utility in behavior divergent from the norm being encouraged. But at the same time, peer pressure to keep moving and keeping pace is a great motivator for growth.

So, I would say the issue needs to be studied with greater depth than it sucks for the guy being bullied. What is the greater effect on the entire population? If you ensure no one gets bullied there is a non zero possibility that it results in a negative effect for the entire population in the long run.

Re: How bullying may shape adolescent brains

#65

Post by zozbot234 »

andoofthewoods wrote: post #63
Nasrudith wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect we have even worse matters than the 1% - they are often contagious as you see their actions and rationalizations adopted by not technically sociopaths and narcissists because they are rewarded for it. And just like other conditioned for behavior done independently of when it would actually help them.

Everyone has sociopaths and narcissistic tendencies to varying degrees. But to say that "most" bullies are sociopaths or narcissists that can't be helped like OP said (before editing their comment) misunderstands people period. Adolescents don't have the developed perception of consequence as adults, and yet OP is already pinning them with mental disorders that can't be resolved. Pure speculation that is outright wro…

> "most" bullies are sociopaths or narcissists

Um, I never said that. I talked about tendencies, just like you did. It's not very meaningful to say what bullies "are", but bullying does generally involve at least some degree of instrumental aggression and callous/unempathetic attitudes. Such attitudes might arise out of simple imitation like you said, but only if someone else is actively demonstrating them - and this will generally be someone in the peer group who holds significant social influence on others.

Re: How bullying may shape adolescent brains

#66

Post by intarga »

bane wrote: post #62

I've never understood why schools seem so reticent to enforce zero-tolerance policies against bullying. In my experience at least, every time bullying seems to be a problem at a school, it's because the environment allows it to occur. Schools will eagerly put in place various other zero-tolerance policies, like no fighting. So if you dare defend yourself against such a social predator, you are taught a lesson by such…

I think the problem is difficulty defining bullying. Fighting is easy, if you hit someone then you broke the rules, but bullying has a much more blurry line. At my school there was some attempt to crack down on bullying, but instances of bullying were regularly dismissed or reframed as "just banter".

Re: How bullying may shape adolescent brains

#67

Post by screye »

fortran77 wrote: post #53

I wonder if the people with these brain differences were more susceptible to bullying because of the social cues they express. So it's not bullying shaping brains, it's different types of brains get bullied more. Perhaps they should look at the brains of bullies, too.

Naah, I was bullied heavily in school and have keenly observed those who get bullied. It is the one form the 'out group'.

I was bullied because I was the only kid in the group from a 'rival colony' and had 'helicopter-ish' parents. Every bullied kid since was either: fat, ugly, new kid in town, disabled or something like that.

Re: How bullying may shape adolescent brains

#68

Post by jokoon »

bane wrote: post #62

I've never understood why schools seem so reticent to enforce zero-tolerance policies against bullying. In my experience at least, every time bullying seems to be a problem at a school, it's because the environment allows it to occur. Schools will eagerly put in place various other zero-tolerance policies, like no fighting. So if you dare defend yourself against such a social predator, you are taught a lesson by such…

> I've never understood why schools seem so reticent to enforce zero-tolerance policies against bullying.

It's pretty simple, this has a political answer: people believe that life is hard and that "it's tough out there", hence it's important for school to "toughen up" kids. It's as simple as that. Social darwinism is a creeping ideology that nobody really questions or talk about, but it's there, despite the presence of social programs.

If you ask people "should we protect the weak?", at the end of the day, people will answer "no, it's too difficult to protect the weak, if they can't survive or toughen up, they deserve to die or suffer, they cannot pull other people down".

Everybody knows that sending their kids to school generates a lot of anxiety for parents, because parents cannot protect their kids anymore, since bullying and "justice in the classroom" are difficult to do, but also hard for kids to talk about.

School is an excellent description of its society. Kids never lie, and their behavior naively precedes and envision the real spine of society. It's also where values and beliefs are taught.

Bullying exists because society not only tolerates it, but doesn't want to fight it. The "school of hard knocks" meme proves this perfectly.

Re: How bullying may shape adolescent brains

#69

Post by luckylion »

ukj wrote: post #43
afandian wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment has obviously split opinion here, but I think it mirrors the way that society is split in the justice debate. Approach 1: "People who hurt other people should be hurt back" Approach 2: "We should try to understand why people hurt other people" I used to think these were correlated with political spectrum (approach 1 on the right, appraoch 2 on the left). But these patterns happen across the spectrum. The…

I never quite understood the pragmatic purpose of Approach 1. If punishment has no measurable, positive effect - why do it? Combine with Hanlon’s razor and indeed - victims become bullies when they default to Approach 1 when harm (rather than misunderstanding) is perceived.

Punishment is a deterrent though, at least for somewhat rational and premeditated acts, so it has an effect (though it's hard to quantify exactly). It's not a linear effect (as in threat of twice punishment = twice as effective as a deterrent), but it's certainly not zero.

Additionally, punishment often goes hand in hand with making it harder/impossible to re-offend. If you're in prison, you're not breaking into anybody's house.

Re: How bullying may shape adolescent brains

#70

Post by Tade0 »

HNLurker2 wrote: post #55

The only way to overcome your bully is to face him, leave him or cope (learned the hard way)

It's hit and miss for the most part really.

I remember confronting my bully in primary school - he stopped after that.

But my friend from secondary school who one day finally snapped gained nothing from his confrontation.

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