The boys attack Basini almost every night, yanking him out of bed and pushing him up the stairs to the attic. No teacher will hear his screams there. They force him to undress, then whip his back. Naked and defenseless, the boy cowers while his tormentors force him to cry, “I’m a beast!” During the day other students surround him in the school yard and shove him around until he collapses, bloodied and soiled. Robert Musil’s The Confusions of Young Törless, a fictional study of puberty in a turn-of-the-century Austrian boarding school, was published in 1906. The impulses that seethed behind the walls of the Imperial and Royal Military Academy may sound like embarrassing relics of a bygone era, but they are not. Raw violence by a group against one individual, covered up by fellow students and avoided by teachers, still happens in schools today. And bullying in general–physical and psychological intimidation and humiliation, as well as the regular spreading of rumors–is more pervasive than communities, school officials or parents would like to believe. Unfortunately, it has taken shocking violence to focus more attention on solving the problem. The 1999 shootings at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., were a fatal attempt to strike back by two outcasts who had been bullied by popular jocks at the school. Bullying was one factor that drove Jeffrey Weise into a life of isolation before he went on a retaliatory shooting spree at Red Lake High School in Minnesota in March, killing nine others and then himself. And every year adolescents commit suicide, leaving behind notes like that from a 14-year-old Canadian girl: “If I try to get help, it will get worse…. If I ratted, there would be no stopping them.” Schools must take more aggressive steps to stop the torment, and the most fundamental measure is to better understand what motivates bullies in the first place. Systematic Abuse Psychologists and behavior researchers have only seriously studied mobbing–group bullying–among students since the beginning of the 1980s, led in large part by Norwegian psychologist Dan Olweus of the University of Bergen. In his pioneering study of Swedish and Norwegian students, Olweus concluded that children can be very skilled in systematically using their social clout at the expense of weaker schoolmates. The goal is to enhance their own position. Mobbing thrives in hierarchical settings because they allow dominance and strength to reign as the measure of an individual’s social value. It is therefore not surprising that prisons and military bases, with their emphasis on rules and rank, are often the scenes of mobbing. Schools, in which older or stronger children can lord their age and power over younger or weaker ones, share similar traits. Thrown into a diversity of personalities, certain individuals try to create a social structure that confers on them an advantage. And usually that power is wielded to abuse others. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, in 2003 some 7 percent of U.S. students ages 12 to 18 reported that they had been bullied at school in the past six months. (And certainly far more never said a word.) The likelihood of bullying was highest in the younger grade levels: 14 percent of sixth graders, 7 percent of ninth graders and 2 percent of 12th graders reported that they had been picked on. A 2001 study by the Kaiser Family Foundation and Nickelodeon found that 74 percent of eight- to 11-year-olds reported the existence of bullying at their school; 86 percent of 12- to 15-year-olds also noted bullying. Sufferers must usually face the harassment alone. Other boys and girls generally take the side of the perpetrators, fearing that they could be next in line. Or they pretend events did not happen and keep their mouths shut. Few find the courage to stand up for their fellow students. In the end, mobbing affects the entire school atmosphere, not just the bullies and their targets. Power-Hungry Predators To learn about what motivates the abusers, a research team (of which I was a part) at the University of Munich conducted a long-term study of 288 second and third graders from different elementary schools in southern Germany. We questioned them about their experiences: What kinds of children were apt to fall prey to bullies? How did the rest of the class react? We interviewed the same children six years later, when they were in the eighth and ninth grades. We asked if former victims were still targeted. And we asked how victims dealt with such problems now that they were teenagers. Our first important finding was that bullies can be identified early in elementary school: even at a tender age, they are able to organize a mob against certain individuals. They appear to always be on the lookout for new kids to pick on. And they find it difficult to abandon their roles over time; perpetrators tend to remain perpetrators over many months and even years. Bullies are usually very dominant children who have learned early on that they can become the leader of a group by being aggressive. Their modus operandi is to humiliate a student who is physically or psychologically susceptible to rise to the top of the social order. They try to force others to kowtow to them by acting tough, and other children may oblige simply out of fear. Often the bullies have learned about the power of aggression at home. Researchers at the University of Arizona who studied more than 500 middle school students found that the children most likely to engage in bullying had experienced more forceful physical discipline from their parents, had viewed more TV violence and had fewer adult role models. To a degree, they had learned by example. Likewise, we encountered eight-year-olds who, by their own statements and those of their contemporaries, had been the butt of mobbing for quite a while. They endured harassment and exclusion yet never put up resistance or informed adults about their situation. The consequences can be long-lasting. In earlier studies we had shown that children who are harassed by schoolmates over a lengthy period are often unable to defend themselves against hostility and react to attack with anxiety and helplessness. Such terrible experiences make it all the more likely that they will fall into the traps set by bullies. When we asked the same questions six years later, the students’ answers bore this out. After asking the 13- and 14-year-olds which kids they liked and which they did not, we developed a preference profile that gave us a good sense of an individual’s social ranking in a class. The result was surprising. In contrast to the bullies’ relative lower standing during elementary school, they had actually become very popular with their classmates. Their victims, on the other hand, got few sympathy points. How do certain students get selected, abused and finally rebuffed by many of their peers? Are these children disliked because they are mobbed, or are they mobbed because they are disliked? It seems both dynamics are at play. Even if the victims were able to avoid some of the bullying when they were younger, school often became something of a torture chamber as they got older. Their peers acted as if they were not there or responded with outright rejection and whispered behind their backs. The bullies escalated this game, insulting and making fun of them. Many of the target children came to identify with the underdog role and became the playthings of whoever persecuted them. And the longer the intimidation went on, the more the loyalty of others was lost. This dynamic is aggravated by supposedly disinterested bystanders, an insight explored in depth in the early 1990s by Canadian psychologist Debra Pepler. After questioning students about mobbing, she and her team shadowed them with hidden cameras and microphones. The researchers discovered that almost 60 percent of the supposedly neutral students were on friendly terms with the bullies. Almost half the “uninvolved” observers eventually graduated to jeering the victims and egging on the perpetrators. Numerous other studies have demonstrated that a large majority of students eventually go along with the bullies or become perpetrators themselves. Helping the Victim Further understanding of what makes bullies prevail will help break down their sources of power. In the meantime, though, more should be done to minimize the long-lasting effects on those who are hurt. In 2002 my colleagues and I interviewed 884 men and women from Germany, the U.K. and Spain, more than 25 percent of whom recalled having suffered physical and psychological attacks by other children when they attended school. Their bitterness at being excluded and threatened continued to affect them in their adult lives. Former mobbing victims more frequently had trouble developing trusting relationships and lacked confidence when interacting with other adults. Their expectations of themselves and others were lower than average. The one positive note was that their previous experience was not usually repeated in their work lives, although mobbing in the workplace–the ganging up of subordinates or superiors through rumor, innuendo, intimidation, humiliation, discrediting and isolation–does happen. The long-term consequences of mobbing make clear that early prevention is critical. The tricky task of intervening at the right moment falls to teachers and parents–who may not be prepared to act appropriately. For example, Norwegian students told a government ombudsman that adults do not even recognize their predicaments in the classroom. Our team’s work bore this out: on questioning, teachers admitted to feeling unable to make sense of complex student relationships. Nevertheless, at a minimum teachers can set standards by their own behavior. How they act in their position of power has an effect on the students. For example, they should avoid all derogatory comments and never return homework in descending grade order. Weak students should not be criticized in class. If a teacher makes it clear that he or she is there for all the students and treats each one alike, they will see this as a sign not to exclude others from the group. The subject of mobbing certainly belongs in the curriculum, too–perhaps in combination with antiviolence training or special projects. Another way to improve how students deal with one another socially is to appoint student mediators who can help resolve conflicts in a class of students. Initiatives such as these promote cohesion within the group so that bullies find it more difficult to undermine the school community by singling out and accosting its weaker members. In Musil’s story, the young Basini found no help. The three perpetrators went unpunished. The other students covered for the bullies, and the teachers were caught in a web of lies, charges and countercharges. In the end, Basini was expelled. Real life for a real victim can be much worse.
Robert Musil’s The Confusions of Young Törless, a fictional study of puberty in a turn-of-the-century Austrian boarding school, was published in 1906. The impulses that seethed behind the walls of the Imperial and Royal Military Academy may sound like embarrassing relics of a bygone era, but they are not. Raw violence by a group against one individual, covered up by fellow students and avoided by teachers, still happens in schools today. And bullying in general–physical and psychological intimidation and humiliation, as well as the regular spreading of rumors–is more pervasive than communities, school officials or parents would like to believe.
Unfortunately, it has taken shocking violence to focus more attention on solving the problem. The 1999 shootings at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., were a fatal attempt to strike back by two outcasts who had been bullied by popular jocks at the school. Bullying was one factor that drove Jeffrey Weise into a life of isolation before he went on a retaliatory shooting spree at Red Lake High School in Minnesota in March, killing nine others and then himself. And every year adolescents commit suicide, leaving behind notes like that from a 14-year-old Canadian girl: “If I try to get help, it will get worse…. If I ratted, there would be no stopping them.” Schools must take more aggressive steps to stop the torment, and the most fundamental measure is to better understand what motivates bullies in the first place.
Systematic Abuse Psychologists and behavior researchers have only seriously studied mobbing–group bullying–among students since the beginning of the 1980s, led in large part by Norwegian psychologist Dan Olweus of the University of Bergen. In his pioneering study of Swedish and Norwegian students, Olweus concluded that children can be very skilled in systematically using their social clout at the expense of weaker schoolmates. The goal is to enhance their own position.
Mobbing thrives in hierarchical settings because they allow dominance and strength to reign as the measure of an individual’s social value. It is therefore not surprising that prisons and military bases, with their emphasis on rules and rank, are often the scenes of mobbing. Schools, in which older or stronger children can lord their age and power over younger or weaker ones, share similar traits. Thrown into a diversity of personalities, certain individuals try to create a social structure that confers on them an advantage. And usually that power is wielded to abuse others.
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, in 2003 some 7 percent of U.S. students ages 12 to 18 reported that they had been bullied at school in the past six months. (And certainly far more never said a word.) The likelihood of bullying was highest in the younger grade levels: 14 percent of sixth graders, 7 percent of ninth graders and 2 percent of 12th graders reported that they had been picked on. A 2001 study by the Kaiser Family Foundation and Nickelodeon found that 74 percent of eight- to 11-year-olds reported the existence of bullying at their school; 86 percent of 12- to 15-year-olds also noted bullying.
Sufferers must usually face the harassment alone. Other boys and girls generally take the side of the perpetrators, fearing that they could be next in line. Or they pretend events did not happen and keep their mouths shut. Few find the courage to stand up for their fellow students. In the end, mobbing affects the entire school atmosphere, not just the bullies and their targets.
Power-Hungry Predators To learn about what motivates the abusers, a research team (of which I was a part) at the University of Munich conducted a long-term study of 288 second and third graders from different elementary schools in southern Germany. We questioned them about their experiences: What kinds of children were apt to fall prey to bullies? How did the rest of the class react? We interviewed the same children six years later, when they were in the eighth and ninth grades. We asked if former victims were still targeted. And we asked how victims dealt with such problems now that they were teenagers.
Our first important finding was that bullies can be identified early in elementary school: even at a tender age, they are able to organize a mob against certain individuals. They appear to always be on the lookout for new kids to pick on. And they find it difficult to abandon their roles over time; perpetrators tend to remain perpetrators over many months and even years.
Bullies are usually very dominant children who have learned early on that they can become the leader of a group by being aggressive. Their modus operandi is to humiliate a student who is physically or psychologically susceptible to rise to the top of the social order. They try to force others to kowtow to them by acting tough, and other children may oblige simply out of fear. Often the bullies have learned about the power of aggression at home. Researchers at the University of Arizona who studied more than 500 middle school students found that the children most likely to engage in bullying had experienced more forceful physical discipline from their parents, had viewed more TV violence and had fewer adult role models. To a degree, they had learned by example.
Likewise, we encountered eight-year-olds who, by their own statements and those of their contemporaries, had been the butt of mobbing for quite a while. They endured harassment and exclusion yet never put up resistance or informed adults about their situation. The consequences can be long-lasting. In earlier studies we had shown that children who are harassed by schoolmates over a lengthy period are often unable to defend themselves against hostility and react to attack with anxiety and helplessness. Such terrible experiences make it all the more likely that they will fall into the traps set by bullies.
When we asked the same questions six years later, the students’ answers bore this out. After asking the 13- and 14-year-olds which kids they liked and which they did not, we developed a preference profile that gave us a good sense of an individual’s social ranking in a class. The result was surprising. In contrast to the bullies’ relative lower standing during elementary school, they had actually become very popular with their classmates. Their victims, on the other hand, got few sympathy points.
How do certain students get selected, abused and finally rebuffed by many of their peers? Are these children disliked because they are mobbed, or are they mobbed because they are disliked? It seems both dynamics are at play. Even if the victims were able to avoid some of the bullying when they were younger, school often became something of a torture chamber as they got older. Their peers acted as if they were not there or responded with outright rejection and whispered behind their backs. The bullies escalated this game, insulting and making fun of them. Many of the target children came to identify with the underdog role and became the playthings of whoever persecuted them. And the longer the intimidation went on, the more the loyalty of others was lost.
This dynamic is aggravated by supposedly disinterested bystanders, an insight explored in depth in the early 1990s by Canadian psychologist Debra Pepler. After questioning students about mobbing, she and her team shadowed them with hidden cameras and microphones. The researchers discovered that almost 60 percent of the supposedly neutral students were on friendly terms with the bullies. Almost half the “uninvolved” observers eventually graduated to jeering the victims and egging on the perpetrators. Numerous other studies have demonstrated that a large majority of students eventually go along with the bullies or become perpetrators themselves.
Helping the Victim Further understanding of what makes bullies prevail will help break down their sources of power. In the meantime, though, more should be done to minimize the long-lasting effects on those who are hurt. In 2002 my colleagues and I interviewed 884 men and women from Germany, the U.K. and Spain, more than 25 percent of whom recalled having suffered physical and psychological attacks by other children when they attended school. Their bitterness at being excluded and threatened continued to affect them in their adult lives. Former mobbing victims more frequently had trouble developing trusting relationships and lacked confidence when interacting with other adults. Their expectations of themselves and others were lower than average. The one positive note was that their previous experience was not usually repeated in their work lives, although mobbing in the workplace–the ganging up of subordinates or superiors through rumor, innuendo, intimidation, humiliation, discrediting and isolation–does happen.
The long-term consequences of mobbing make clear that early prevention is critical. The tricky task of intervening at the right moment falls to teachers and parents–who may not be prepared to act appropriately. For example, Norwegian students told a government ombudsman that adults do not even recognize their predicaments in the classroom. Our team’s work bore this out: on questioning, teachers admitted to feeling unable to make sense of complex student relationships.
Nevertheless, at a minimum teachers can set standards by their own behavior. How they act in their position of power has an effect on the students. For example, they should avoid all derogatory comments and never return homework in descending grade order. Weak students should not be criticized in class. If a teacher makes it clear that he or she is there for all the students and treats each one alike, they will see this as a sign not to exclude others from the group.
The subject of mobbing certainly belongs in the curriculum, too–perhaps in combination with antiviolence training or special projects. Another way to improve how students deal with one another socially is to appoint student mediators who can help resolve conflicts in a class of students. Initiatives such as these promote cohesion within the group so that bullies find it more difficult to undermine the school community by singling out and accosting its weaker members.
In Musil’s story, the young Basini found no help. The three perpetrators went unpunished. The other students covered for the bullies, and the teachers were caught in a web of lies, charges and countercharges. In the end, Basini was expelled. Real life for a real victim can be much worse.
