How bullying may shape adolescent brains • Hacker News Board

Re: How bullying may shape adolescent brains

#81

Post by luckylion » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 1:43 PM UTC

bullytw2019 wrote: post #52

luckylion wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be the purely financial angle (provided that it's accurate), it doesn't take into account who deserves the help more (which is a moral judgement and is hard to agree on) and how much more. If somebody attacks somebody else and hurts themselves in the process and they both end up needing a new kidney and only one transplant is available, who gets it? Instead of punishing robbers, why don't we just give them…

> If somebody attacks somebody else and hurts themselves in the process and they both end up needing a new kidney and only one transplant is available, who gets it? bad analogy, because in this case it's more like one person's kidney got destroyed and the other lost a lung. You want different types of specialists to deal with victims vs bullies. Assigning the wrong type will probably just make things worse. > Instead…

> You want different types of specialists to deal with victims vs bullies.

Both cost money (=resources). Money is limited. Who do we focus on?

As for that theory on "no excuses": UBI is more or less reality in large parts of Europe, yet crime still exists.

Re: How bullying may shape adolescent brains

#82

Post by yboris » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 1:47 PM UTC

TrackerFF wrote: post #28

Here's my take: For most people, success in life, is tied up with your self-confidence. If you think you're gonna fail, you probably are - unless you happen to be wildly talented at something, and can stumble your way to success. In fact, many people will not even try, because they lacked the confidence. It could be academia, work, relationships, hobbies, If you've been conditioned to believe that you: suck, have no…

Psychologists have a term "self efficacy" -- as far as I remember from my graduate educational psychology courses, the best predictor of whether someone will succeed in learning something challenging is whether they believe they can do it.

Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-efficacy

Re: How bullying may shape adolescent brains

#83

Post by fortran77 » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 1:48 PM UTC

andrewjrhill wrote: post #72

screye wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Can confirm about it being the odd one out. As one of maybe 5 white kids in my very poor school, I was bullied relentlessly from 6 to 12 years old. I was quite an effeminate kid too with long blonde hair. Soft, quiet and not nearly as athletic as the other kids. They were ruthless both verbally and physically. I'm now 29 years old, 6'4", 90kg and I lift 4x a week and _still_ have gddmn self confidence issues. I am co…

I own a gym, and it's always interesting listening to what the trainers, all nice looking fit guys, worry about, and their own self-confidence issues.

Re: How bullying may shape adolescent brains

#84

Post by zhwang » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 1:49 PM UTC

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 was at a high school that laid down a zero-tolerance policy against bullying.

In practice, zero-tolerance turned into a blanket "we don't want to put up with any disruptions" policy.

Provoking an outburst out of a target meant consequences for the victim that could be as bad or worse than the aggressor's.

Re: How bullying may shape adolescent brains

#85

Post by jlos » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 1:52 PM UTC

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…

>> My friends didn't have such support and suffered from it

Could the real difference maybe be the homelife? The act of supporting you in spite of bullying and school administrators in some sense communicates to you that you are worthwhile and ought to be confident. Maybe the bullying in your friends lives compounded a lack of confidence unintentionally fostered in their homelives?

Re: How bullying may shape adolescent brains

#86

Post by gwd » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 2:18 PM UTC

jokoon wrote: post #68

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…

> 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.

I wouldn't necessarily put it that way; but there is 1) a sense from adults that kids should learn to "sort out their own problems", 2) a sense from kids that you shouldn't "tell" ("snitches get stitches").

But the question is, how would you "sort out" a similar situation as an adult? Well if you were regularly physically threatened by someone as an adult you would call the police, and or you would stop going there. And if someone was an emotional bully at your workplace, they would be fired or you would find another job.

But most of these options aren't really there for kids. Nobody is kicked out of school or demoted for being jerks, and often they're not kicked out of school even for regular physical intimidation. Kids have very little opportunity to change their environment. And often the authorities who are supposed to be protecting them look the other way.

I don't have kids yet, but if my kid experienced physical intimidation, and the principal / teachers in the school had the "kids need to sort it out" attitude, I would be severely tempted to say in response: "From now on, everything that is done by bullies to my child, I will do to you. If my child finds bullies waiting for him as he leaves the school, you will find me waiting by your car. If my child has their head put in a toilet, I will put your head in the toilet. We'll see how you manage to 'sort it out for yourself'." (Obviously that may not actually turn out to be practical -- the point is to highlight what we expect kids to put up with vs what we expect adults to put up with.)

Re: How bullying may shape adolescent brains

#87

Post by neogodless » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 2:22 PM UTC

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #78

TrackerFF wrote: post #28

Here's my take: For most people, success in life, is tied up with your self-confidence. If you think you're gonna fail, you probably are - unless you happen to be wildly talented at something, and can stumble your way to success. In fact, many people will not even try, because they lacked the confidence. It could be academia, work, relationships, hobbies, If you've been conditioned to believe that you: suck, have no…

I don't feel like "confidence" has much to do with it. In order to be successful, one must be willing to fail. As the saying goes, "The master has failed more times than the student has even tried". But if your every minor failure is met with overwhelming negative reinforcement then you learn that failure is bad and avoid it as much as possible. I also kinda disagree with the "self-esteem" as a metric, but only becau…

I believe confidence has everything to do with your willingness to try things that you might fail. You have to be confident that failure will not ruin you, and confident that you'll learn from your failures, and confident that the learning will lead to eventual success.

Self-esteem means believing (and having confidence) in your own abilities. That doesn't mean you people should say "you are great" for trying, but people can say "trying is useful" on the path to accomplishing what you set out to do.

Re: How bullying may shape adolescent brains

#88

Post by foobar_ » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 2:24 PM UTC

One of the mindsets of the bully is assuming that the victim has something that the bully doesn't. This leads to envy, feeling of self-doubt .... which leads the bully to find the weakness of the victim and punish them for it. After punishing the bully feels "good". The goal behind their bullying behaviour is to eliminate the competition.

Apart from this imitation of other bullies and impressing their peers are major factors.

Ex) A jock might envy the smartness of a nerd. A conservative might envy the freedom of a liberal.

Re: How bullying may shape adolescent brains

#89

Post by NotATroll » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 2:33 PM UTC

afandian wrote: post #21

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.

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 think it's emcumbent on approach 2 to try and understand why people act like approach 1.

Recidivism.

As members of the public, it's highly likely that we've both seen others be burned by trying to take approach 2. And have ourselves been burned by trying to take approach 2. After all, many crimes have very high rates of recidivism.

These experiences tend to model how we approach other people in the future.

And to be honest, it's not really a 'wrong" approach that "only makes everything worse". At some point, the question of approach 3 "removing a person from society" is a valid question when it comes to reducing harm.

Re: How bullying may shape adolescent brains

#90

Post by philpem » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 2:37 PM UTC

zozbot234 wrote: post #61

maceurt wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The bigger problem is what it does to the victims.

If you have no possible escape from the situation, you end up falling into learned helplessness -- nothing I do can affect it, so why fight it. Maybe if I pretend to be dead, the predator will get bored with me and find some other prey...