akachan ningen
Member
I've been saying this for years. All this "bully re-education" doesn't work. They just ignore it. The only thing you can do is teach your kids to stand up for themselves.
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Study: bullies have highest self esteem, social status, lowest rates of depression
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Mr. Saturn
Member
Some of what you're saying is pretty inaccurate, I think. Personality doesn't matter? Of course it matters, its just that looks are important too, maybe even more important for making a good first impression. Personality is still going to matter for how you interact with people in general, and maybe, and this is speculation mind you, it matters for the long term?
Being a good person doesn't mean you have to be a doormat, you know sort of a I'll respect you if you respect me otherwise you can fuck off. Obviously you can be too nice to the point where people will use you, but to be fair people who consider themselves to be "decent" whether they actually are or not can still stand up for themselves.
I'll admit that what this study says appears somewhat accurate, however being a bully who is successful in life is something that not everyone can do. What I'm saying is, and I could be full of shit here, is that for a lot of people if they were to try bullying it would end in disaster for them, I think you need a certain personality to pull it off.
Edit: For those asking what can be done about bullies, they gave a solution in the OP. I think they said something about creating more competitive supervised school outlets for the bullies to channel their energy into. Basically giving them a less harmful channel for their dominating tendencies. I have no idea if that would be effective or not.
- in Canada.
It's like the sociology disaster all over again. Oberving people in country X does not mean it's vailed in country Y. Like, are bullies the ones with the highest status in a South Korean high school too? In a Chinese? And there, rural or urban?
A single study claiming to have a conclusive worldwide and therefore relevant answer is bullshit anyways. Or it's the media.
MagnaderAlpha
Member
Genetic purge? Start wiping out entire bully families or sterilize 'em. Muahaha...
I'm just waiting for someone to inject race relations into this mix.
Marauder Shields
Member
I can definitely buy this. Unfortunately bullies stay winning.
It was always a myth that bullies were the saddest kids.
Bullies always had friends, they always had women, and they always had peer praise. The only good thing is, by virtue of going to a school in a poor area, is that the vast majority of these guys are getting owned by cops, and just life in general now. The only good thing about Facebook is being able to post my money and vacations as they look dustier and dustier still going to high school football games, and chasing after the same chicks from high school.
It probably has to suck going to school in a rich area and have your bullies turn into successful people like Romney or Trump though.
Bullies always had friends, they always had women, and they always had peer praise. The only good thing is, by virtue of going to a school in a poor area, is that the vast majority of these guys are getting owned by cops, and just life in general now. The only good thing about Facebook is being able to post my money and vacations as they look dustier and dustier still going to high school football games, and chasing after the same chicks from high school.
It probably has to suck going to school in a rich area and have your bullies turn into successful people like Romney or Trump though.
Shpeshal Nick
aka Collingwood
Hmmm. Naturally while still in high school a bully would have confidence and an inflated sense of self.
But one of my best mates is a psychologist who has told me that in most cases the opposite is true.
But one of my best mates is a psychologist who has told me that in most cases the opposite is true.
he's of the ilk that floated that "poor bully" story in the first place. I say we all go back in time and
Freeza Under The Shower
Member
I'm not surprised by the result, but I am completely flabbergasted by starting any research into it based on the shoddy, jump-to-conclusions, "it's in the genes" type theories. Why would you need to do that?
That literally has no relevance whatsoever to what you're studying. "yeah, but it was the reason we started looking at it". Great, but it's irrelevant at the end.
That literally has no relevance whatsoever to what you're studying. "yeah, but it was the reason we started looking at it". Great, but it's irrelevant at the end.
TAJ
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
Weird. I've never seen fighting back fail.
But by fighting back I mean taking the offensive. I'm not sure if you mean that or just not being a punching bag.
Mr. Saturn
Member
If it helps you feel better, the study mentioned in the op talks about how bullying is a tool that can be used to climb the ranks so to speak, its no the only way to be successful though, at least according to the person who did this study. Its not like this study is saying that bullying is the tool to achieve success. It is merely a tool. I don't know if that helps or not. I would argue good social skills are another tool than can very useful in achieving success.
John Kowalski
Banned
Could someone tell me why i should take anything evopsych seriously pls. I'm having a hard time doing it myself.
MagnaderAlpha
Member
In all honesty, I've known both really self-confident/successful bullies(the kind from rather good families that are just trying to assert their dominance), and really loser/poor bullies(the ones that are abused by alcoholic parents). Just personal experience, I think bullies inhabit all facets of life, all social rungs of the ladder. Of course there are aggressive and successful bullies, but that doesn't mean ALL bullies are as such. Some bully and get nowhere in life. Some bully and get EVERYTHING they've always wanted from life.
And as someone said, it's probably due to picking up on social cues. I think mental bullying is more accepted than physical bullying. Regardless of walks of life, most people tend to look down upon physical violence(be it bully or used in retaliation against bullies). But the whole mind games and mental bullying tends to be looked at as being a cunning and "intelligent" form of asserting yourself by some people. You are more crafty if you can devise a means to subjugate "lesser" people without raising a finger. And if someone acts out against you, physically, THEY'LL look like the bad one(because they "resorted to violence"), and the bully will take pleasure in knowing that also means that victim could not match them mentally and had to resort to some sort of other means to "get even".
Again, this was a bit of self-experience, actually. I was bullied as a kid, both physically, but mainly the cruel, mental rippin ones, I'd beat fuck out of them and realized I was the one getting in trouble while they were schmoozing the teachers and school staff like chums. Kinda makes you feel more defeated. You're bullied, you do something about it, and then everybody's jumping down your throat.
And as someone said, it's probably due to picking up on social cues. I think mental bullying is more accepted than physical bullying. Regardless of walks of life, most people tend to look down upon physical violence(be it bully or used in retaliation against bullies). But the whole mind games and mental bullying tends to be looked at as being a cunning and "intelligent" form of asserting yourself by some people. You are more crafty if you can devise a means to subjugate "lesser" people without raising a finger. And if someone acts out against you, physically, THEY'LL look like the bad one(because they "resorted to violence"), and the bully will take pleasure in knowing that also means that victim could not match them mentally and had to resort to some sort of other means to "get even".
Again, this was a bit of self-experience, actually. I was bullied as a kid, both physically, but mainly the cruel, mental rippin ones, I'd beat fuck out of them and realized I was the one getting in trouble while they were schmoozing the teachers and school staff like chums. Kinda makes you feel more defeated. You're bullied, you do something about it, and then everybody's jumping down your throat.
PhoenixDark
Banned
Dunno about all that but I do know that betas take losses. That's how things have always worked.
You don't have to be a bully to be self confident though, thankfully.
Storm Chamber
Banned
Tavares4Life
Banned
People just paraded the "bullies are sad and broken on the inside" to feel better about getting bullied.
A Fish Aficionado
I am going to make it through this year if it kills me
And people are parading this study as fact as well.
It's junk.
Fitting your results to your hypothesis is the opposite of what the scientific method is.
John Dunbar
correct about everything
i've always assumed the whole "bullies are actually miserable people" thing is just one of those lies we have all agreed to tell each other.
God Dayumm
Banned
Maybe they are insecure at first and bullying provides them with confidence to overcome it. Hate can be an empowering and pleasant thing IMO, but it's sad when it comes at the expense of innocent people, especially children.
This post is so American that I can't stop clapping.
You can be successful and at the same time humble and respectful, but you clearly lack those traits.
loaf of bread
Member
There are two types of bullies. Those that do it because they don't have high self-esteem and they do it to make themselves feel better. And theres those that do it because they have very high self-esteem and think they're better than people and have fun doing it.
Hari Seldon
Member
My mind is rapidly filling with fuck at this. We really need to fucking ban all social science publications until they get their fucking shit together.
Honestly, psychoanalysis probably yielded more accurate results.
Reptars Revenge
Member
Cmon Canadians, everyone knew this but you are not actually supposed to say it out loud. You broke the vow of silence.
jackissocool
Member
I'm not seeing any evidence that it is genetic, though. How does bullies being happy make it genetic?
Seems consistent with the reality of society.
It was described as a predisposition, like there are a set of behaviors encoded in our genes that manifests itself as bullying in modern civilization.
Everyone who took high school biology knows that males are generally the ones competing with each other violently in the animal kingdom. We're not animals in the way they are, but that doesn't mean this behavior didn't once exist for homo sapiens as well and doesn't still exist today, only expressed in a contextually aware manner.
It was described as a predisposition, like there are a set of behaviors encoded in our genes that manifests itself as bullying in modern civilization.
Everyone who took high school biology knows that males are generally the ones competing with each other violently in the animal kingdom. We're not animals in the way they are, but that doesn't mean this behavior didn't once exist for homo sapiens as well and doesn't still exist today, only expressed in a contextually aware manner.
Gaining self steem and social status by taking them away from other people. Bullies are nothing but emotional looters. "Victims channeling their inner pain into outward violence", my ass. Fuck that "perpetrator as victim" narrative horseshit. They know exactly what they are doing, as they pick their fights and victims carefully.
It is certainly far easier to atribute things to "society" or a nebulous "social convention", like most progressives loves to do.
That being said, trying to reduce something as complex as the human nature to just "society" or "biology" is just two faces of the same academic reductionist coin. They're different forms of anti-intellectualism designed in order to defend certain political ideas or prestablished beliefs. I don't like that.
The best discoveries in science tends to be made when combining fields and applying an holistic view into the subject of the study with many different viewpoints involved and an open mind towards the results of the investigation, not by walling knowdegle and wanting to arrive to a certain pre-stablished conclussion.
It is certainly far easier to atribute things to "society" or a nebulous "social convention", like most progressives loves to do.
That being said, trying to reduce something as complex as the human nature to just "society" or "biology" is just two faces of the same academic reductionist coin. They're different forms of anti-intellectualism designed in order to defend certain political ideas or prestablished beliefs. I don't like that.
The best discoveries in science tends to be made when combining fields and applying an holistic view into the subject of the study with many different viewpoints involved and an open mind towards the results of the investigation, not by walling knowdegle and wanting to arrive to a certain pre-stablished conclussion.
Yes, clearly "This behavior must have a genetic component because I say so" is a holistic perspective and not pseudoscientific fuckery./s
Evolutionary psychology is fucking terrible. It's rife with baseless speculation, biased sampling and analysis, and poor understanding of genetics and evolution in general. Papers like this piece of shit show just how ridiculous the "science" gets. It's disgraceful when other fields of biology that actually require extensively detailed and supported research are lumped in with the equivalent of a high school student writing fanfic.
There is certainly a behavioral aspect to genetics, but evolutionary psychology actually acts like we understand that aspect when we really don't. We have trouble even figuring out how some gene expression translates to basic brain activity in fruit flies, and yet there's a bunch of people who think that we can accurately determine not only how our genetics affect our brain activity, but the evolution of said genetics. We can't even test knockout genes with humans for ethical and time reasons, how the fuck are we supposed to know genetic expression in the human brain well-enough to determine this shit?
I dennounced the "everything is biology" in my post too. In my view, these two postures of "everything is XXXX" are equivalent, and equally stupid. The other extreme opposite, the pretense that absolutely every single human behaviour can be somehow undettached from our biological nature / needs / circumstances is ridiculous as well.
But In the end, it all steams from the same problem. Sociology, like economy, is extremely prone to that type of methodological biases / ideological meddling that you mention. Hell, even branches of science suppousedly "neutral" like biology or geology have had their fair share of political infight and manipulation too.
A Fish Aficionado
I am going to make it through this year if it kills me
Don't get me started on p hacking and positive bias on so many papers and drug studies.
Psychoanalytic concepts, especially some of Jung's and the classic defense mechanisms, are at the very least useful in allegorical explanations of behavior and literary analysis. Meta-analysis has also found psychoanalytic therapy to have moderate to high efficacy for some disorders including anorexia. On the other hand, the large majority of evolutionary psychology theory I've seen is taking a modern societal behavior and trying to work backwards to tie to some aspect of primitive cultural to grant said behavior legitimacy and acceptance as part of the human condition - often times to justify the status quo as inevitable.
It's shit you tell your kid so he can recover. Tell them that "bullies feel awesome!" and they will probably give up on life immediately.
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