It's one thing to be submissive when challenged, but researchers now know that the children who become bully victims are submissive even before they're picked on. At Vanderbilt University, where he is a research associate, child psychologist David Schwartz conducted a novel study of children, none of whom knew each other at the outset. He silently monitored and videotaped them in a series of play sessions. "Even in the first two sessions, before bully-victim situations develop, these kids behaved submissively," Schwartz reports.
In nonconfrontational situations they showed themselves to be "pervasively nonassertive." Schwartz catalogues the ways. They didn't make overtures to others, didn't initiate conversation. They made no attempts to verbally persuade their peers—no demands, requests, or even suggestions. They were thoroughly socially incompetent, spending time in passive play, playing parallel to their peers, rather than with them.
Being submissive in non aggressive contexts kicks off a dizzying downward spiral of events. It sets them up as easy targets. "It seems to mark these kids for later victimization," says Schwartz. "And that only made them more submissive." Here's the catch—being victimized leads to feeling bad, feeling anxious, which then increases vulnerability to further victimization. This is the spiral Curtis Taylor couldn't—and shouldn't have been expected to—untangle by himself.
To say that victims are socially incompetent is not to say that they are to blame for the aggressive behavior of bullies. It is simply to recognize that certain patterns of social behavior make some children vulnerable, say investigators. After all, even the most passive child isn't victimized unless there's a bully in the room.
Just as certain as there will always be a bully around, victimization can lead to a host of social-psychological difficulties. No one likes a bully, but no one likes a victim either. The failure—or inability—of victims to stick up for themselves seems to make other kids highly uncomfortable. After all, says Ladd, "part of growing up is learning how to stick up for yourself." Gradually, whipping boys become more and more isolated from their peers. While bullying is painful, it is the social isolation that probably is most damaging to victims. An emerging body of research shows that social isolation, to say nothing of active rejection, is a severe form of stress for humans to endure. And rejection deprives these kids of the very opportunities they need to acquire and practice social competence.
Victims are rejected not only by the bullies but typically by other peers as well. Few children like them; many dislike them. In answering questionnaires they confide they are very lonely. They typically develop a negative view of school and hate going. They suffer headaches, stomachaches, and other somatic complaints. "We ask them how they feel in school," Ladd reports. "It's clear they're pretty unhappy. They want to get away from that environment." Eventually, achievement suffers. Regardless of their grades, a disproportionate number of rejected kids drop out of school. These children internalize the very negative views of themselves others hold of them, Olweus finds.
"There are lots of kids in schools who are being victimized and, as a result, are not living up to their potential, not getting as much out of the school experience as they could," says Ladd. "They get very negative views of themselves and their abilities. That's a waste of human beings, and a threat to the health and wealth of the country."
Olweus, who has followed thousands of Norwegian children into adulthood, finds that by age 23, some "normalization" takes place. By then, those who once were victims are free to choose or create their own social and physical environments. However, they are still susceptible to depression and to negative feelings about themselves.
Victimization, everyone agrees, is bad for kids. But it sometimes has effects that are not entirely negative. It can prod children into finding a way to salvage a sense of self-respect. There are those whom victimization by bullies drives deeper into the world of books and to excel in schoolwork—both activities with long-term payoffs—although it's scarcely a predictable outcome and a terribly aversive route to excellence.
In Olweus's studies, victims have close relationships with their parents and tend to come from overprotective families. As a result, they get no practice in handling conflict, one of the basic facts of social life, and no confidence in their ability to negotiate the world on their own. Overprotection prevents them from learning the skills necessary to avoid exploitation by others.
Dance Macabre
Increasingly, researchers are coming to see bullying and victimization less as the products of individual characteristics and more as an outgrowth of unique interactive chemistry. Over time, bullies and their victims become a twosome—a dyad, in the lingo of social science. Like husbands and wives, mothers and infants, and other lovers, they come to have an ongoing relationship, they interact frequently, and there is a special dynamic operating.
What makes normal dyadic relationships so enthralling for both parties—and for infants is the medium in which growth takes place—is the intricate pattern of mutual responsiveness, of action and response, the synchrony of give and take that gets established. It sets up its own gravitational field; it draws the two together and validates each as a special person. If that's not quite how it goes with bullies and their victims, still these children develop a history with each other, and the behavior of each reinforces the other. Call it the bully-victim dance.
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