Bullying

For other uses, see Bully (disambiguation).

A bully is an individual who tends to torment others, either through verbal harassment and/or physical assaults, or through more subtle methods of coercion.

The behavior engaged in by bullies: bullying

In colloquial speech, bullying is most often used to describe a form of harassment perpetrated by a child who is in any way more powerful upon weaker peers.

Researchers accept generally that bullying contains three essential elements: “(1) the behavior is aggressive and negative; (2) the behavior is carried out repeatedly; and (3) the behavior occurs in a relationship where there is an imbalance of power between the parties involved.”[1]

Bullying is broken into two categories: 1) direct bullying, and 2) indirect bullying, also known as social aggression.[2] Direct bullying is the form most common to male bullies. Social aggression or indirect bullying is most common to female bullies and young children, and is characterized by forcing the victim into social isolation. This isolation is achieved through a wide variety of techniques, including: spreading gossip, refusing to socialize with the victim, bullying other people who wish to socialize with the victim, and criticizing the victim's manner of dress and other socially-significant markers (including the victim's race, religion, disability, etc).

Bullying can occur in situations including in school or college/university, the workplace, by neighbours, and between countries (See Jingoism). Whatever the situation, the power structure is typically evident between the bully and victim. It seems to those outside the relationship that the bully's power depends only upon the perception of the victim, with the victim being too intimidated to put up effective resistance. However the victim usually has just cause to be afraid of the bully due to the threat and actually carrying out of physical/sexual violence, or loss of livelihood. Bullying (in addition to ignorance) is behind most claims of discrimination in the workplace.

Types of bullying

Bullying is when someone repeatedly acts or says things to have power over another person. Bullies mainly use a combination of intimidation and humiliation to torment others. The following is some examples of bullying techniques:

• Calling the victim names and stating the victim is useless at whatever they do
• Spreading gossip and rumours about him/her
• Threats of job loss and disciplinary action for unspecified reasons
• Constant negative criticism for unspecified allegations
• Taking the victim's possessions or taking control of the victim's work
• Demoting the victim without just cause
• Making the victim do what they do not want to do with a threat of violence or disciplinary action if they refuse
• Actually following through with a threat on one occasion to ensure the victim will comply with all future orders
• Cyberbullying through the use of various information technologies
• repeated physical assault on a person, even when the assault is not damaging to life or limb
• blackmail
• getting a victim into trouble with authority
• making derogatory remarks about a person's family, (particularly mother) about one's home, personal appearance, sexual orientation, religion, race or nationality.
• physical attacks

Locations of bullying

Bullying can occur in schools, universities, families, between neighbours, and in workplaces.

Schools In schools, bullying usually occurs in areas with minimal or no adult supervision. Common places include the school bus, cafeteria, hallways between classes, bathrooms, and the school-yard during recess.

An extreme case of school-yard bullying is that of an eighth grader named Curtis Taylor at a middle school in Iowa who had been the victim of continuous bullying for three years, which included name-calling, being bashed into a locker, having chocolate milk poured down his sweatshirt and vandalism of his belongings. This drove him to suicide on March 21, 1993. Some bully experts have termed this extreme reaction "bullycide".

In the 1990s, the United States saw an epidemic of school shootings (of which the most notorious was the Columbine High School massacre). Many of the children behind these shootings claimed that they were the victims of bullies and that they resorted to violence only after the school administration repeatedly failed to intervene. In many of these cases, the victims of the shooters sued both the shooters' families and the schools.

As a result of these trends, schools in many countries strongly discourage bullying, with programs designed to teach students cooperation, as well as training peer moderators in intervention and dispute resolution techniques.

Since media coverage has exposed just how widespread bullying is, juries are more likely now to sympathize with victims. In recent years, many victims have been suing bullies directly for intentional infliction of emotional distress, and including their school as a defendant under the principle of joint and several liability. American victims and their families have other legal recourse, such as suing a school or teacher for failure to adequately supervise, civil rights violations, racial or gender discrimination or harassment, or other civil rights violations. Special education students who are victimized may sue a school or school board under the ADA or Section 504.

Bullying in schools (or other institutions of higher education) may also take the form of reduced grading, non-return of assignments, segregation of competent students by incompetent/non-performing teachers, for example, to protect the reputation of a college. This is so that their programmes and internal code of conduct are never questioned, and that parents (usually the ones paying the fees), are made to believe that their children are unable to cope with the course. Typically, these attitudes serve to create the unwritten policy of 'if you're stupid, you don't deserve feedback. if you're good, you don't need it.' Frequently, such institutions (usually in Asian countries) run a franchise programme with foreign (usually Western) institutions with the clause that foreign partners have no say in local grading or codes of conduct of staff involved on the local end. It serves to create a class of 'educated fools', people with degrees who have not learned to adapt to situations and create solutions by asking the right questions and solving problems.

Workplace In the workplace, bullying is now one of the most contentious issues in the occupational health and safety arena.

However, with respect to workplaces, there are few localities that are governed by legislation which specifically targets workplace bullying. This is because lawmakers fear that those rules could be used as leverage in other industrial or interpersonal matters. Therefore most bullying claims are conducted under discrimination laws. In the United Kingdom bullying in the workplace is against the law under The Health and Saftey at Work Act 1974.

Cyberspace Cyberbullying occurs in electronic space. It "involves the use of information and communication technologies such as e-mail, cell phone and pager text messages, instant messaging, defamatory personal Web sites, blogs, and defamatory online personal polling Web sites, to support deliberate, repeated, and hostile behaviour by an individual or group, that is intended to harm others." -Bill Belsey

Familial Bullying in the family is normally ignored by society unless it includes a form of physical/sexual abuse. Once it does, outside parties such as the police and social services can get involved if the victim speaks up, or if the abuse has gone too far — the victim is in hospital or dead.

Neighborhood Between neighbours bullying normally takes the form of intimidation by nuisance behaviour, such as excessive noise to disturb sleep and normal living patterns, and reports to authorities such as the police for minor or made up incidents. The purpose of this form of behaviour is to make the victim so uncomfortable they move from their property. It should be noted that not all nuisance behaviour is bullying, as some individuals are unaware of other people's feelings and the havoc they are causing.

Political Bullying between countries occurs when a more powerful country such as a superpower decides to make a smaller one do its bidding. This is normally done with military force, the threat that aid and grants will not be given to the smaller country or the smaller country will not be allowed to join a trading organisation.

Military Bullying in the military may occur when a superior persists in negative behavior toward his or her inferiors. Some argue that this behavior should be allowed because the military is not subject to normal civilian laws. Since military bullying is shielded from open investigation, subordinates may commit suicide out of lack of legal recourse. Deepcut Barracks in the UK is one example of the government refusing to conduct a full public enquiry to possible military bullying. In some countries, ritual hazing among recruits has been tolerated and even lauded as a "rite of passage" that builds character and toughness; while in others, systematic bullying of lower-ranking, young or physically slight recruits may in fact be encouraged by military policy, either tacitly or overtly (see dedovschina).

Effects of bullying

Persistent bullying may have a number of effects on an individual, and in the environment where bullying takes place.

Effects on the individual include:

• Reactive Depression, a form of clinical depression caused by exogenous events
• Post-traumatic stress disorder
• Anxiety
• Gastric problems
• Unspecified aches and pains
• Loss of self esteem
• Relationship problems
• Drug and alcohol abuse
• Suicide (also known as bullycide)

Effects on a school include:

• High levels of truancy
• High staff turnover
• Disrespect for teachers
• High level of absence for minor ailments
• Weapon-carrying by children for protection
• Legal action
  • Against the school or education authority
  • Against the bully's family

• See Only Wayne - a racist bullying case study in a wiki-format, that illustrates some of the unfortunate effects of bullying on a particular school community.

Effects on the organisation such as a workplace:

• Loss of morale
• High level of sick leave absence for depression, anxiety and backache
• Decreased productivity and profit
• High level of staff turnover
• Loss of customers
• Bad reputation in industry
• Negative media attention
• Legal action
  • Against the organisation for personal injury
  • Against the organisation and individual bully under discrimination laws

Bullies on TV or Movies

• Eric Cartman from South Park
• Doyle Hargreves From Sling Blade
• Nelson Muntz, The Simpsons
• Dwayne Myers, Degrassi Junior High
• Angelica Pickles from Rugrats
• The Gross Sisters, The Proud Family
• Iago, though subtly, in Shakespeare's Othello.
• A Clockwork Orange
• Lord of the Flies
• Judd Sergeant, Survivor: Guatemala
• Sperg from The Grim Adventures Of Billy And Mandy
• Kevin, Sarah, Eddy, and the Kankers Ed, Edd 'n Eddy (apparently every kid in the show is mean except Double D)
• Jarrod Graham, Dawn house school (cyber bully
• Anger Management
• The Karate Kid
• The Office
• Malcolm in the middle
• Biff Tannen from Back to the Future
• Squidward Tentacles from SpongeBob SquarePants
• Kate Sanders from Lizzie McGuire
• Bart Simpson from The Simpsons
• Terrence Kazoo from Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends
• Donnie Turnbull from Robotboy
• Roger Klotz from Doug

Books

• The Fight That Never Ends by Tim Brown
• Bullying at Work: How to Confront and Overcome It by Andrea Adams
• The Bully at Work: What You Can Do...by Gary Namie and Ruth Namie
• Bully in sight: How to predict, resist, challenge and combat workplace bullying by Tim Field
• Bullycide, Death at Playtime by Neil Marr and Tim Field
• A Journey Out of Bullying: From Despair to Hope by Patricia L. Scott
• "Peer Abuse Know More! Bullying From A Psychological Perspective" By Elizabeth Bennett

See also

• Bully (film)
• Bully (game)
• Odd Girl Out
• Teasing
• Mobbing
• Cyberbullying

External links

• Bullying Online A UK charity
• ACAS Information on Bullying and Harassment at Work (go to "Our publications" and search for "Bullying")
• www.bullying.org "Where you are NOT alone!"
• Bullying in schools (Australia - schools)
• http://www.jfo.org.uk Just Fight On! (Bullying in workplaces)