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Treating bullying as everyone's problem reduces incidence in primary schools

(phys.org)
175 points PaulHoule | 2 comments | 16 Nov 24 14:34 UTC | HN request time: 0.418s | source
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BriggyDwiggs42 ◴[16 Nov 24 20:20 UTC] No.42158978[source]▶
I’ve been thinking a little about this subject lately. It seems like bullying is a thing that serves the function of exacting the repressed violent desires of the social body. Who is selected for bullying is determined not primarily by the bully, but by the social group as a whole. To me this helps explain why it’s such a ubiquitous behavior; it’s a mechanism for a social group to act outside of its norms in the enforcement of its norms. To be clear, I think it’s terrible, just interesting to think about this way.
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martin-t ◴[16 Nov 24 23:04 UTC] No.42160292[source]▶
> a mechanism for a social group to act outside of its norms in the enforcement of its norms

There are internal and external norms and even norms within each category have different levels of importance.

External norms are typically of the nature of "no fighting" and are enforced without looking at the circumstances. Their goal is for somebody perceived as an authority to keep the group pacified and minimize visible conflict. They are typically not interested in invisible conflict because by its nature, the external power can't see it.

The goal is not justice, it's peace.

Internal norms are fuzzy because they're usually not codified and might not even be agreed upon by the members of the group because their goal is maintaining a social hierarchy within the group.

The hierarchy's goal is neither peace nor justice, it doesn't even have a goal, it's just a compromise between people with differing goals - some entirely uninterested in the hierarchy, some obsessed with climbing the social ladder.

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1. BriggyDwiggs42 ◴[19 Nov 24 20:16 UTC] No.42187627[source]▶
I don’t really know if there’s a hard cutoff there. What separates a norm imposed by the parent then internalized by the child from a norm the child imposes independently? Regardless. I think focus on norms might be a distraction. I should’ve avoided that terminology. We could instead frame it as a desire for bad outcomes for some minority by the majority that gets taken up by the bully. The reason that the majority doesn’t act on its own to realize these desires is what leads me to suppose there’s norms against, for example, violence or harm of the weak, which is why the violence needs to be displaced to dark places the crowd doesn’t see. It could be, though, that this internal external norm divide is important to the process. I.e. the majority is kept from its violence by externally imposed norms, so bullying is the consequence of friction between external norms (no fighting) and internal norms (hierarchy organization). Bullying then serves as a pressure release valve for these externally repressed desires.
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2. martin-t ◴[21 Nov 24 05:19 UTC] No.42201375[source]▶
I agree norms are a distraction. It's about incentives. Every group/organization has an incentive to look strong to outsiders. It therefore minimizes internal conflict because that makes it weak. It most importantly minimizes visible conflict because it makes it _look_ weak.

However, every group/organization is just a collection of its members who each have different incentives. For some of those, it's gaining status/power. Status/power is mostly a zero-sum game, therefore gaining it requires attacking others (causing conflict). But causing visible conflict is damaging to the group so other members are likely to punish such behavior. As a result, the optimal strategy is to cause conduct conflict invisibly.

Bullying is nothing more than such a parasitic individual trying to achieve status/power or in some cases simply satisfaction.