WaPo | But a new study
called “Survival of the Fittest and the Sexiest” published in the
Journal of Interpersonal Violence has found that adolescent bullies have
higher self-esteem and social status, as well as lower rates of
depression and social anxiety. From an evolutionary standpoint, these
combined measures also make the meanest in the playground pack the ones
with the greatest sex appeal.
This probably comes at no surprise to anyone who’s seen Mean Girls.
And it could be important to the development of new bullying prevention
programs, which have long operated on the assumption that bullies are
troubled kids alienated from a school’s core population.
“The
bullies come out on top,” said Jennifer Wong, the study’s lead
researcher. Her surveys, conducted on 135 Vancouver high school
students, indicate that bullying is biological, as kids who have
dominating tendencies and a desire to rise to the top of social
hierarchies often victimize others in order to get there.
Wong came to these conclusions by administering questionnaires that
allowed participants to be categorized into one of four groups: bullies,
victims, bully/victims (individuals who bully but also report being
victimized themselves) and bystanders. Within these categories, the
bullies reported the best self-evaluations and the bully/victims the
worst.
Since her research indicates that bullies are
characterized by behaviors that are innate rather than learned, Wong
said, schools might want to consider ways of channeling those tendencies
towards more healthy activities instead of attempting to quell bullies’
innate drive to dominate.
