Disabusing the Concept of Bullying

Disabusing the Concept of Bullying

  

An Essay based on

Bullies, Victims and Bully-Victims:

Psychosocial Profiles and Attribution Style

By Stelios N. Georgiou and Panayiotis Stavrinides

Written by

Marcial I. Enginco

For

Dr. Grace S. Koo

Professor, EDFD 206 Affective Learning
College of Education, University of the Philippines Diliman

SUMMARY

The study conducted by Stelios N. Georgiou and Panayiotis Stavrinides was aimed at establishing a link between a child’s tendency to either bully, be bullied, or both based on his physical appearance, temperament and degree of peer acceptance.  The study covered 377 young Cypriot children with an average of 11.6 years, with the cooperation and parallel self-presentation of their mothers.

The study concluded that bully-victims were more temperamental and more different than the typical student.  Consequently, he was more socially isolated than the bully, the victim, or the passive student.

BODY

Bullying, in recent years, has been used to describe a wide array of situations that involve either an individual or a group exercising or showing power and advantage, perceived or real, over another presumably more vulnerable individual, resulting in physical and/or emotional and psychological injury to the latter.  Even stressing a point or strongly echoing a sentiment that is shared by many others against a person who had committed something unpopular or unacceptable is often labeled as an act of bullying.  Hence, Janet Napoles, Senator Tito Sotto, and Hayden Kho mistake popular opinion against them as an affront to their person, never mind that the outcry was merited by their acts and not their personhood.

Sometimes, I feel that bullying is taken out of context and that discussions surrounding it tend to focus on surface concerns rather than zeroing in on its core issues, which should unearth or at least understand the underlying causes and therefore aid in crafting solutions or intervention programs where they are truly needed.  This is also my conclusion after reading Georgiou and Panayiotis’ journal which details their research on the psychosocial profiles and attribution styles of bullies, victims and bully-victims.

Stating the obvious

Researches are essential to gaining new knowledge and perspective toward an existing subject or problem; at the very least, it should tend to support findings already made in previous studies.  This one, though thoroughly and scientifically conducted did not, in my appreciation, further the cause of understanding bullying and therefore did not contribute to the proper evaluation of its existence and the mitigation of its resulting effects.  The study merely reiterated previously established notions about bullying, such as being different in a negative way in appearance or behavior puts a child at risk for victimization, or that bully-victims are disliked by their peers and are lonely, having few friends or no friends to support them, which without the benefit of a full-blown research may be confirmed and replicated through simple observation.

Digging deeper than skin

While I am not comfortable with the term used, the researchers’ contention that “peer violence is a universal problem” is correct and is, in fact, supported by data.  Numerous studies have shown that behavior consistent with bullying initially manifests when children reach the age of 10 (middle gradeschool) and peaks in intensity and prevalence when they reach mid-teens (junior highschool), but gradually tapers off as the child gains more maturity and perspective.  

What this suggests is that children will inevitably undergo a stage where they will begin to explore who they are and what they can and cannot do in a social setting and in the process may show behavior consistent with the description of bullying.  But while this errant behavior is not to be tolerated, it is however more crucial to look into why the child is exhibiting such aberration than trying to identify a personality profile and using it to preempt bullying behavior from manifesting, or if it can’t be helped finding a way to penalize or sanction him for this perceived truancy.  I subscribe to the line of thinking that being a bully or being a magnet for bullying is an offshoot of relational discrepancies at home, and that bullying behavior merely reflects a lack of security and guidance from the home.

While I am not questioning the research data nor the manner by which these are derived, I am under the impression that how these were analyzed and read was purposedly designed to skew toward a foregone conclusion or to a reinforce a bias previously held by the researchers; resulting in somewhat self-fulfilling interpretations that bullying can be identified through a child’s physical appearance, and behavioral and attribution patterns, and thus possession of this knowledge will help authorities to preempt bullying by identifying who are bound to behave in a certain manner based on flimsy and highly-contestable information.

Security as a learned value

I know a group of three brothers who physically would fit the typical candidates of victims based on this study’s assertion.  They are, thanks to the genes they inherited from their parents, short in stature but heavy in weight.  The eldest wears thick eyeglasses, while the youngest is blind in one eye.  Nevertheless it would be difficult to find a more sunny dispositioned set of brothers than them.  They are neither bullied nor exhibit behavior that would suggest that they are not comfortable with how they look, especially the youngest who does not resent his condition, or see it as a barrier towards achieving his personal and professional goals.  They have, by the way, supportive and caring parents.

Contesting the findings

I will cite and provide a contradicting reading on several lines and contentions made in this article to buttress my contention that the root cause and therefore intervention programs of bullying lies embedded in the quality of a child’s familial relationships and the security that he derives from it. 

I am a bit alarmed that the researchers do not give children with aggressive behavior and those who experienced being bullied credence when they attribute their behavior to external factors such as parents and teachers.  The researchers add that while such attribution may shield the children’s emotional health, it is however detrimental to any effort to change their destructive behavior.  This presupposes that the adults in the children’s lives are in no way responsible for how they behave with and against one another, and that any errant behavior and its consequent mitigation rests solely on the ability of the child to accept blame.  This is a particularly distressing interpretation as the children in question are in the median age of 11, far from being expected to think like adults. The way I see it, the fact that a child points to adults as the culprit for his demeanor is a clear indication of what he perceives is lacking in his life – direction, guidance, maybe even love.  A child exhibiting aggressive behavior then placing blame on adults is actually crying for help.  Ignoring such plea and instead imposing arbitrary punishment will only help foster the belief in the child that adults can never be trusted to provide guidance and care.

On a parallel note, the researchers stated that children with the ability to appraise negative events by claiming that they simply were at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and will never place themselves in a similar situation in the future are the most likely to adapt positively.  While I am not contesting this assertion, to neglect the role of adults in developing such a positive attitude in the child leaves the impression that children have acquired this on their own, which I highly doubt; they are, after all, a little more than a decade old.

When the researchers found a strong correlation between the student’s self-report of his personal characteristics and the mother’s perception of the same, they readily use it to support the veracity of their findings rather than casting a critical eye on such an interesting finding.  I believe that how children see themselves reflects how their parents viewed and taught them.  If a parent makes it known to the child that he is pretty, or intelligent, or talented then that’s how the young one will report his or her characteristics, in the same manner that he will report that he is unattractive or deficient in some way if he is made to feel and believe that, too.  Again, it is the parents who mold the child’s perceptions, not the other way around.  The case of the three brothers who all consider themselves as beautiful and love-worthy individuals is proof of how influential parents are in developing their children’s perspectives about themselves.  On a side note, I am curious why only mothers were made to take part in the study, and that if both parents were involved in the study, would the data gathered have remained the same or would it have been drastically altered?

CONCLUSION

People, including children, are social beings.  However, acceptable social behavior is learned through the push and pull of relationships beginning at the home for schoolchildren and extending to the schools where they will meet other young ones who are also struggling to learn socialization in the context of being around with peers.  When children reach the age of 10, his tendency is to ascertain his status amongst this group.  Unfortunately, for some who have insecure attachment values at home, this period of exploration may be characterized by aggression, or at the other end of the extreme – timidity and passivity.

We humans are not alone in this behavioral pattern.  A litter of lion cubs would routinely engage in rough play intended to identify their pecking order in the pride.  This determines who follows whom when the pack is devouring a kill.  Pigs do this too, and also for the same reason.  In a study documented by the Discovery Channel, a brood of piglets is shown engaged in simulated fights to assess each individual’s weight in the family.  The strongest one gets to choose the nipple that produces the most milk, followed by the runner-up, and succeeded by the next, until the runt finally gets the nipple that nobody wanted.  To test this principle, the researchers wrote big numbers on the flank of each piglet while they were feeding: 1 for the strongest, 2 for the next, and so on and so forth until the weakest is assigned a number.  They then removed the brood and placed them in a holding pen.  When they were released back to their mother, they promptly assumed their designated spot in the order that they fought for or were allowed by their rank, with nary a complaint or hesitation. 

What these behavior show is that we share a lot in common with how animals develop into maturity than we care to think, or admit.  However, we humans have the unique ability to put this in its proper context – that this stage has a purpose and whatever may be realized at this point is not permanent and may be crystallized into something positive and life-changing.  Parents, caregivers and teachers should be aware of this role.  This is what parenting and child-rearing is all about, to take responsibility in not only showing the young child what is wrong or right, but more importantly being there to provide emotional and psychological security in the home so that his interactions with his peers outside of it won’t be characterized by aggressive or timid behavior.

The tendency to bully is not determined by looks, or temperament as this study wants to suggest but rather in the values that children have learned about themselves and others as imparted by their parents.  When bullying happens, it is not recommended for teachers or parents to immediately punish or sanction the culprit.  But rather it would be best to examine the underlying insecurity that triggered such behavior and tailor interventions using this information.  On the other hand, children who experience bullying should not be readily shielded since this would impress in him the victim attitude which would not help him process the situation in a positive, constructive light.  Responsible teachers and parents should take this as an opportunity to teach the child a thing or two about adversity and overcoming it.  This way, the child is better equipped to handle similar situations in the future and will not take it negatively, but rather as a motivation to be a better and more capable individual.  When human’s response to a situation is based on a firm understanding, then that’s where real growth and development occurs.  That’s how a human being grows and develops as a person.