#902 - Dr Tracy Vaillancourt - The Science Of Childhood Bullying & Adult Mental Health

Tracy Vaillancourt delves into the complex traits and social dynamics that empower bullies and facilitate their behavior.

Bullies Often Have Traits That Enable Their Dominance

Bullies are often characterized by detrimental personality traits that aid their social status and mistreatment of others.

Bullies Possess Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and Psychopathy, Aiding Social Status and Mistreatment

Vaillancourt’s research on the dark triad finds that bullies tend to be high on narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. She states that these individuals are callous, unemotional, and justify their terrible behavior to themselves and others. There is a group high on psychopathic features and everyday sadism that does not care about the consequences of their actions, thus gaining power through their atypical, off the rails behavior. This power may enhance narcissistic traits, making them more entitled and leading to challenging relationships.

Bullies Use Social Skills and Emotional Intelligence to Manipulate Others

Bullies exploit their social skills and emotional intelligence to justify and manipulate situations. They are socially skilled, well-adjusted, and adept at managing interpersonal relationships to justify their actions. Their higher emotional intelligence aids in the management and manipulation of relationships, which requires significant cognitive skill.

Bullies' Antisocial Behavior Is Enabled by Prestige From Physical Attractiveness or Athletic Ability

Attributes such as physical attractiveness and athletic ability provide bullies with prestige and power, potentially leading to escalations in antisocial behavior and bullying. Wielding power can be harmful for society's trajectory, Vaillancourt hints, especially when power comes from perceived prestige.

Bullying Stems From Power and Social Dominance Desire

Bullying is intricately linked to a bully's drive for power and dominance within social hierarchies.

Bullies Use Aggression to Maintain Power

Aggression is a tool for bullies to maintain their dominance once they have achieved power. Vaillancourt explains that bullies, who blend pro-social and anti-social behavior, employ their competencies through aggression without facing ostracism. Bullies employ aggression strategically, not merely as a reactive tool, to maintain power, and they may use aggression to test and maintain power even in the face of resistance.

Advantages Give Bullies Implicit Power, Leading To Coercive Abuse

The power afforded to bullies, whether through socio-economic advantages or competencies valued by peers, such as good looks or athletic ability, is often abused to maintain a dominant status. Vaillancourt suggests that interventions targeting peer groups might influence the social dynamics of bullying. Bullies have a mix of implicit and explicit power and achieve explicit power through coerciveness, while a ...

Tracy Vaillancourt and Chris Williamson delve into the profound impacts of bullying on victims, which they note can put them at risk for issues that last their entire lives.

Bullying Harms Victims' Long-Term Mental and Physical Health

Bullying has serious implications on victims, affecting their biology and long-term health.

Bullying Victims' Declines in Memory, Academics, and Emotional Regulation Due to Stress Response

Tracy Vaillancourt points to long-term impact bullying has on victims, highlighting that it can change cortisol production due to a disrupted HPA axis response, with the stress from bullying potentially leading to overproduction or underproduction of cortisol. Initially, bullying causes a rise in cortisol levels, but in an adaptive process aimed at maintaining homeostasis, cortisol levels may become abnormally low, affecting victims' responses to future stressors and substantially altering their behavior and interaction with the world.

A 2011 study published in Brain and Cognition illustrated that the increased cortisol levels in victims of bullying affect their memory due to the stress it causes. This could lead to actual memory impairments from the stress of being bullied, not just disengagement from school, which may be partly the cause of the academic performance declines observed in bullied kids.

Vaillancourt stresses the importance of documenting how bullying hurts people at the neurobiological level, signaling its long-term potential to place victims at risk for their entire lives.

Bullying Victims Face Higher Long-Term Mental Health Risks

Vaillancourt contends that the impact of bullying lasts a lifetime. Studies show that individuals who were bullied as children can exhibit higher rates of mental health problems decades later. This enduring nature of the effects of bullying is like a scar that never fully heals. She also raises concerns that individuals with a history of being bullied are at an increased risk of disorders like PTSD in the future due to HPA axis down-regulation, which can exacerbate the risks of mental health issues later in life.

It's unclear whether the long-term impacts of bullying can be remedied or changed. Vaillancourt suggests cognitive behavioral therapy might be a way to overcome these long-term effects.

Bullying Victims Struggle With Social Isolation and Shame

Bullying isolates and ostracizes victims, exacerbating their suffering and leading to greater challenges.

Bullying Ostracizes and Isolates Victims, Worsening Their Suffering

Williamson remarks on how bullying leverages the need to belong and typically includes a social exclusion aspect, resulting in the victim's isolation. Vaillancourt adds that a victimized child ma ...

Emerging research indicates that gender plays a significant role in the way bullying behaviors are exhibited, with girls and boys employing distinctly different tactics and strategies from a young age.

Gender Dynamics In Bullying Tactics

Tracy Vaillancourt elucidates the differences in bullying tactics often used by girls versus boys, highlighting covert aggression in female bullying and more overt forms in male bullying.

Girls Are Likelier to Engage In Covert Aggression Such as Social Exclusion and Rumor Spreading

Vaillancourt explains that girls tend to use their relationships to harm others, often employing indirect aggression, also known as social or relational aggression. Girls are known to spread rumors, exclude others from their peer groups, use looks and laughter to mock, and may pretend friendship to gather information they can later use to exploit someone. Vaillancourt also addresses the allure of physical attractiveness, suggesting that beautiful girls can navigate through social hierarchies with covert aggression while maintaining their status.

Boys Are More Prone to Physical, Verbal Aggression In Bullying

The conversation shifts to how boys often engage in bullying behaviors, with Vaillancourt noting that boys tend to be more overt, pursuing dominance and responding immediately with physical or verbal aggression to assert their position. She refers to studies that suggest boys who are skilled athletes might get away with bad behavior, further implying a potential link between athleticism and overt forms of aggression in bullying.

Gender Differences in Bullying May Emerge Early as Children Employ Different Social and Dominance Strategies

Insights into the early emergence of these gender-differentiated bullying behaviors show that children adapt different social strategies which, seemingly, align with their genders.

Girls Show Relational Aggression Before Advanced Language Development

Studies reveal that girls begin showing relational aggression at very early stages of development, even before they have fully developed linguistic skills. Vaillancourt cites toddlers exhibiting mean behaviors as evidence that girls start relational aggression early on. This aggression is viewed as a skill honing for future interactions, indicating an inherent development in social strategies.

Evolutionary ...

Tracy Vaillancourt addresses the struggles and partial successes of anti-bullying programs, while also exploring the structural changes in school environments that may offer more effective solutions.

Modest Reduction In Bullying by Many Programs

Vaillancourt acknowledges that many anti-bullying programs see only about a 20% reduction in bullying, citing meta-analyses on intervention efficacy. These decreases are typically seen with younger kids, rather than high school students. Interventions using a whole-school approach or involving multiple components prove slightly more effective. She explains that some programs aim to increase moral engagement to deter bullying but suggests these interventions are limited in their efficacy, leading to just modest declines in bullying incidences.

Vaillancourt notes the challenges of assessing interventions, as studies rely on correlational data rather than experimental, making definitive conclusions about effectiveness difficult. She advocates for the early implementation and consistent maintenance of interventions to sustain effects, though she observes that schools often don't invest consistently over time. Additionally, Vaillancourt points out the resistance faced by anti-social emotional learning movements, which oppose socializing in schools and could disrupt the continuity of anti-bullying programs.

Challenging High-Status Bullies and Protecting Vulnerable Victims

High-status bullies, often the most popular kids and teens, show resistance to anti-bullying programs as they don't want to lose their power. This resistance presents a significant barrier to the success of these programs. Simultaneously, a paradox occurs whereby the reduction of bullying can paradoxically worsen outcomes for the remaining victims. Vaillancourt discusses this "healthy context paradox," where fewer victims might feel more fundamentally flawed since they continue to be bullied while others are no longer targeted.

Furthermore, Vaillancourt is concerned that some interventions inadvertently make certain kids more vulnerable rather than protected, stressing the need to work with school counselors on recognizing this increased vulnerability. Past approaches that focused on changing the victims' behavior rather than addressing the bullies' actions suggest limitations in those interventions.

Structured, Supervised School Environments More Effective Than Programs

Vaillancourt opines that structured changes in the school environment may be needed to mitigate social deficits and reduce bullying.

Supervision in Playgrounds and Hallways Reduces Bullying

Increased adult supervision, particularly i ...