{"id":76275,"date":"2025-03-24T01:00:48","date_gmt":"2025-03-24T05:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/world.edu\/?p=76275"},"modified":"2025-03-24T01:00:48","modified_gmt":"2025-03-24T05:00:48","slug":"could-bullying-be-an-evolutionary-trait","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/could-bullying-be-an-evolutionary-trait\/","title":{"rendered":"Could bullying be an evolutionary trait?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Bullying is a serious problem that impacts hundreds of millions of young people across the world each year.\u00a0Defined as<\/a>\u00a0the goal-directed, harmful abuse of a power imbalance, bullying can cause serious,\u00a0long-term physical and mental health outcomes for victims<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As a result, countries around the world have mobilized\u00a0anti-bullying efforts<\/a>. Unfortunately, these efforts have had\u00a0relatively little impact on bullying worldwide<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Why? One reason might be that bullying is, at least in part,\u00a0an evolutionary adaptation<\/a>\u00a0that offers adolescent perpetrators benefits, like popularity, resources and even dates and sex.<\/p>\n

But do these benefits extend beyond adolescence? This is what we set out to test at\u00a0Brock University\u2019s Research on Aggression and Victimization Experiences group<\/a>. In particular, we wanted to know if the earlier and more frequent dating and sex that adolescent bullies experienced translated into having more children in later life.<\/p>\n

There is very little data on whether bullying benefits like popularity or sex extend beyond adolescence, but\u00a0early data<\/a>\u00a0suggested that might be the case. We sought to replicate that research using two studies.<\/p>\n

The first was a longitudinal study of adolescents: approximately 600 Canadian boys and girls from age 14 until their mid-20s. The second was a retrospective study of more than 500 North American adults ages 18-35.\u00a0We found that adolescents who bullied others reported having children earlier and having more children in total<\/a>, compared to adolescents who did not engage in bullying.<\/p>\n

While we note that a complete study should entail following adults into their mid-40s (the very end of most child births), we wanted to compile data now rather than waiting another 15-20 years for our longitudinal sample to mature. That means that while we can\u2019t rule out that non-bullies might catch up with later reproduction, the data clearly shows that onset of reproduction is tied closely to total reproduction.<\/p>\n

Is having children early, and more often, a good thing? Given that bullying does appear to be partly due to evolved genetics (with the environment still playing a pivotal role in its expression), reproduction is the ultimate currency of evolution. Passing on genes is, quite literally,\u00a0the biological meaning of life<\/a>. So this is strong evidence for the theory that bullying is, at least in part, an evolutionarily successful strategy in some contexts.<\/p>\n

Socially, bullies are also more likely to be in the romantic relationship that is typically required to have children. We believe this is because bully\u2019s power is related to\u00a0potentially positive attributes<\/a>, like attractiveness, strength and even social skills.<\/p>\n

Our yet-to-be published data also indicates that former bullies end up investing more energy into their children than average parents. Think of the hockey or soccer parents yelling on the sidelines, bullying their child\u2019s coach, referees or other players in order to benefit their own child. Bullying\u2019s links with parenting go beyond purely quantitative considerations and impact both mating success and parental effort.<\/p>\n

Why does this matter?<\/strong><\/h4>\n

It matters because it helps explain why bullying is so ubiquitous and hard to prevent. Bullying appears to offer meaningful benefits to those who use it and that\u2019s critical information if parents, teachers, schools and governments want to come up with strategies for preventing it.<\/p>\n

What might some of those strategies look like? If bullying offers benefits, we want to reduce, replace and redirect those benefits. We can do so by getting\u00a0peers to not reward bullies<\/a>\u00a0with the attention and popularity that they desire. We can replace benefits with costs by pointing out that while bullies gain popularity,\u00a0they lose likeability<\/a>. People might fear the bully\u2019s power, but they generally don\u2019t like them.<\/p>\n

Finally, we can try to teach adolescents to\u00a0replace bullying with more prosocial behaviour<\/a>\u00a0that might have equal or better outcomes with respect to peer support.<\/p>\n

This also matters because our data shows bullying as a potentially intergenerational problem. We know that\u00a0violence can be transmitted from parents to their children<\/a>. It is possible that children of bullies will learn how to be bullies themselves, through directly experiencing bullying from their parents or through indirectly watching their parents bully others.<\/p>\n

This generational transmission might very well be another reason why bullying is so hard to prevent \u2014 because it starts in the home. Given the seriousness of the consequences of bullying for its victims, we must all to take a good, hard look at why so many people continue to bully, or support bullies, so that we can understand how we to best stop this toxic and damaging pattern of behaviour.<\/p>\n

Author Bio:<\/strong>Tony Volk is Professor, Child and Youth Studies at Brock University<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bullying is a serious problem that impacts hundreds of millions of young people across the world each year.\u00a0Defined as\u00a0the goal-directed, harmful abuse of a power imbalance, bullying can cause serious,\u00a0long-term physical and mental health outcomes for victims. As a result, countries around the world have mobilized\u00a0anti-bullying efforts. Unfortunately, these efforts have had\u00a0relatively little impact on […]\n… learn more→<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[85],"tags":[9029],"coauthors":[11733],"class_list":["post-76275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-social-change","tag-bullying"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nCould bullying be an evolutionary trait? - World leading higher education information and services<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/world.edu\/could-bullying-be-an-evolutionary-trait\/\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Could bullying be an evolutionary trait? - World leading higher education information and services\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Bullying is a serious problem that impacts hundreds of millions of young people across the world each year.\u00a0Defined as\u00a0the goal-directed, harmful abuse of a power imbalance, bullying can cause serious,\u00a0long-term physical and mental health outcomes for victims. 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