Sociological Analysis of Bullying: Literature Review

Abstract

This paper is to discuss the following topics: 1. Introduce the topic of the victim/bully mindset, its development in early childhood and how it continues over into adulthood. 2. The importance of this research is to explore and develop an understanding of the dynamics of the victim/bully relationship. A better understanding could lead to better bullying intervention or even prevention programs. 3. Some of the research suggests awareness education is to overcoming bullying problem because witnesses may have more intervention capabilities than the bully or the victim. Unfortunately, without intervention such behavior may continue on into adulthood causing serious interference in the lives of the victim, the bully, those around them, the companies they work for and society at large.

Sociological Analysis of Bullying:

Literature Review

On April 20, 1999 two desperate teenage boys took the lives of twelve students, one teacher and injuring 24 others before taking their own lives on their high school campus. This tragedy was attributed to campus security and bullying which led to tighter zero tolerance policy mandating a police presence in some cases. On April 22, 2013 an exemplary, high school student faced adult felony charges for a science project that resulted in a small explosion of smoke in her schools parking lot. The first example lead to a solution that hurts good students. Could finding a better solution prevent like such occurrences?

To begin this research the topic began by questioning how bullying manifests in adulthood. The topic evolved as the research became more extensive. Bullying is a big problem as will be discussed. Bullying corrupts perceptions, and causes great levels of mental anguish, it effects workplace dynamics, and it can even cause a business to fall apart. Thematically defined as persistent provoking, frightening and persuading targets that have difficulties defending themselves; bullying effects everyone.

As an illustration of how detrimental bullying is, a group of researchers studied the demographics of workplace bullying in academic medical centers (Chipps, et al. 2013). They conducted their cross-sectional survey study using a convenience sample of 167 personnel. They found that the workplace culture is effected by such disruptive behavior causing emotional exhaustion possibly contributing to medical errors. It costs the organization money due to turnover and the workplace cultures acceptance of such disruptive behavior just perpetuates even more like behavior.

Another study conducted examined the relevance of being exposed to such workplace harassment and its perceived severity (Escartín, et al. 2009). Three hundred workers from four organizations in Spain were provided questionnaires with the following six categories to rank in severity: In this order from most severe (10) to least (0) with these mean rankings:

1.) Emotional abuse was ranked 8.36.

2.) Professional discredit at 8.09.

3.) Abusive working conditions 8.06.

4.) Manipulating information 8.0.

5.) Isolation received a mean of 7.76.

6.) Devalueing professional role placed at 7.66.

The findings concluded that perceptions of severity varied from person to person with some acts not even being considered as bullying by individuals. However, but the general level of severity suggests that acceptance of a prevention and intervention program should be carefully considered with a high level of importance.

To better understand what causes bullying in the workplace a group of researchers at the University of Bergen in Norway conducted a nomothetic international study using an online ordinal survey of 276 different departments with 4,064 respondents (Skogstad, et al. 2011). This was made possible by human resource departments and organization development programs. It was indeed concluded that lacking leadership, work environment, and job demands contribute to bullying behavior but these observations were not new or unexpected. The part that separated this study from many others was that it compared individual interpretations of an employee's environment with a group perspective.

They concluded that individual critique of workplace environment was overall less critical than a groups opinion. When groups were studied individuals would speak out followed by others in the group resulting in a more negative overall opinion. The researchers found that social climate, role conflict and leadership behavior influence were the strongest factors influencing psychosocial factors related to bullying and bullying itself. Their study also found that individuals who are targets for bullying are often more neurotic, less agreeable, conscientious and extroverted than those who were not targets. This suggests that the problem of bullying and victimization is more of an interpersonal relationship oriented problem instead of just a result of the work environment itself.

Another group of international researchers decided to study the phenomena from the perspective of the accused bullies (Jenkins, et al. 2012). They did this by public announcements requesting accused bullies to participate in a survey or interview to further the qualitative data on the subject. Twenty-four participants from varying sectors of business aged 29-63 with an average age of 49 came forward. They studied 2 types of bullying. The first is predatory bullying, the second is escalating conflicts. The first type targets a person for their characteristics, often using the target as a scapegoat for unpopular workplace decisions or actions. The second type of bullying is when either the target, out of retaliation, or the original bully becomes socially stigmatized as a result.

As the study went on they found that the bully was often highly employable and was more likely to get an advancement to a higher position. They found that there is unequal attention paid to upwards bullying where employees bully their managers who are even less likely to report being bullied then downwards bullying from authoritative positions. The study was concluded finding that the line separating bullies and victims is blurred. Also, that the consequences of being accused resulted in severe mental problems, social stigmatization within 25% facing the possibility of being dismissed and another 25% voluntarily leaving the organization.

Similarly, in another international study in Norway, researchers studied the predictors of workplace bullying (Hauge, et al. 2009). They investigated both the individual and situational variables and used anonymous self-report questionnaires. After considerations were made a total of 2,359 questionnaires could be analyzed. Some considerations were made for healthy competition. Bullying was considered as a persistent negative behavior with the goal of making someone inferior over time. Individual consideration was of status, gender, position and age while situational factors consisted of environmental factors.

Their study being exploratory in nature connected the individual and the situational but the most intriguing was the persistent theme in the victims difficulty defending themselves. In the beginning, it was recognized that males are more likely to bully and that people who had been bullied in the past were more likely to be targeted by bullies. Bullying was also adopted into the culture of the workplace with repeated exposure and thus attracted more like behavior from others. This is what really guided my personal research.

So far the studies researched have maintained one primary theme: The victims have difficulty defending themselves. This key theme suggests that at varying levels throughout the sectors of the workforce there is the socially strong and the socially weak. Thus to further explore the phenomena of workplace bullying, the indoctrination during the developmental years relative to simulating the working environment prior to working had to be explored. This redirects further research to the socialization of early education through high school.

In 2013 a small group of researchers in Canada led by Jessica Franks proposed exploring the possibility that there is a relationship between personal strengths and bullying behavior (Franks, et al. 2013). To do so they used self-reporting questionnaires. Their sample consisted of 263 students from the 7th and 8th grade. 112 of the students were males. In the questionnaires were listed a varied range of strengths. Recognized variants of bullying were physical, verbal, social and electronic. It was expected that those who were dominant in their strength categories would be linked to bullying. This is not exactly what they found though.

Using the Child Social Desirability Scale (CSDS) and the Olweus Bully/Victimization Questionnaire (OBVQ) was found correlations between competent coping skills, sense of well being, commitment to family values, optimism for the future and community engagement amongst others. More specifically the causality relationship between strengths and victimization remained unclear but it was discovered that low rates of victimization were associated with greater interpersonal strengths and fewer strengths related to creativity. Lower victimization rates were also associated with greater ability to function at school.

There may also be reason to believe that great strength in interpersonal skills is associated with higher rates of bullying. Suggesting that potential anti-bullying programs may prove more effective by empowering potential target with life satisfaction, optimism and a sense of competence. At this time another theme has been solidified. It is suggested in several of these studies including this one, that the bully may be unaware or unable to recognize the consequences of his behavior or how negative they are.

Further studies have been conducted by Stephanie Hughes with the University of Toledo, Ohio. She conducted her researcher by reviewing scholarly literature in education, psychology, child and adolescent development and speech language pathology (SLP). She produced her article to introduce speech-language pathologists to the broad array of problems associated with bullying including how to prevent and intervene. She included rumors, shunning, and exclusion in her concept of bullying and how cyber bullying is long lasting because it stays online and available to the public for a constant reminder every time someone new comes in contact with the social media site used.

Equally important she addressed problems like: overly permissive parents, pressure to prove heterosexuality and competition for social dominance. More importantly she related her research back to social difficulties including speech problems like stuttering; conversational skills like waiting to speak, making good eye contact and other such problems that could make someone a provocative victim for a bully. She discussed hot spots for bullying such as the playground where there is less supervision. She uncovered the misconception that bringing the bully and the victim together for apology or handshake just amplifies the problem by reinforcing the victims pain and the bully's belief in their reasons for choosing their victim.

Furthermore, she identified the bystander as a victim as well because witnessing the bullying has been shown to both encourage social acceptance of bullying acts as a magnet for more like behavior and even causes post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It increases the risk of conduct disorders and vises like smoking and drinking alcohol. It causes emotional, social and academic consequences and instills fear into victims. She claims that it is important for schools to take bullying seriously because of these problems and the fact that it creates both an unsafe environment for children and makes the school look as though it is unsafe.

On a side note, schools with higher academics receive more funding. More still, teachers contribute to bullying by not intervening because it allows the bully to develop personal concepts that could get them incarcerated later in life. It is sexist to determine that boys should deal with a problem themselves to further develop their masculinity. Not intervening creates the expectation in the targets mind that they will be bullied in the future thus potentially effecting their entire lives.

At the same time, the problem should be dealt with carefully. Words should be chosen carefully because a victim could be further pained by labels like snitch or tattle-tail, thus promoting a sense of fear to seek help. Stephanie suggested that some victims may even believe a bully is their friend for no other reason than just needing to believe they have a friend. Her conclusion was that bullying should not be considered normal or acceptable.

In Queensland, Australia a group of researchers led by Ola Goryl of Macquire University reinforced the need for change in early childhood education (Goryl, et al. 2013). Their aim was understanding early childhood educators level of understanding and proper utilization of anti bullying policies. To do this they surveyed 182 early childhood educators and found that educators who were not trained in anti-bullying practices felt just as confident in their ability to identify and manage incidences compared to those who had been trained. This suggests an undeserved level of confidence.

Unfortunately many educators didn't know what the policy was. Many assumed that kids aged 3-5 were not capable of bullying and that like misbehavior was normal. They found that many of the bullying strategies tend to be unwritten and don't have clear definitions. Their over all findings suggest that there are available options for dealing with the problems associated with bullying already which are not being utilized.

Nearing the end of my research, I found that there is hope for the nullification of this bullying epidemic. I found that there have been proposed answers to the problem that have been left under explored, possibly due to a lack of knowledge of the problem. Bullying should not be considered normal. It hurts people throughout their entire lives'. It's not fair to the bully of the victim either because it without intervention they could lead them down a criminal path. Adults treat others the way they were taught how to treat others when they were kids.

If a child is led to believe that they will not get in trouble for bullying others they will bully others as adults. Kids are led to believe that they should be afraid to get help because they will be labeled if they do. This may encourage a distrust of authority causing them to take matters that should be left to the police into their own hands. Without qualified leaders people are often afraid of being the next target if they speak out against bullies. All children including bullies and victims need to know their boundaries because they are learning the way they will perceive the world for the rest of their lives.

The zero tolerance policy creates bullies by bullying people. I propose research in the area of bullying. I want to know the percentage of kids labeled as bullies that become bullies later in life. I want to know what percentage of the victims become bullies themselves. I want to know what percentage of people on the FBI's most wanted list were bullies or victims in their youth.

Lastly I want to know why the problem hasn't been dealt with. I propose a research project that compiles information pertaining to the above information. I propose that the finalized information is submitted to the decision makers who oversee school funding. This will be done to suggest that the funds that would otherwise be lost due to low test scores be maintained by the schools in the capacity to be used to inform and educate on issues of bullying.

The underlying theme of this essay is that adult bullies and victims in the workforce were taught how to be such in their youth. This essay implies that children learn from what they see and then duplicate what they see with their own actions. As adults we should lead by example. If the future is to be ruled by today’s youth they should be taught how to rule it. They should be taught how to rule it fairly. It should be remembered that we will remain a part of this world even after we give the authority over to the youth being socialized today.

References

Chipps, E., Stelmaschuk, S., Albert, N. M., Bernhard, L., & Holloman, C. (2013). Workplace Bullying in the OR: Results of a Descriptive Study. AORN Journal, 98(5), 479-493. doi:10.1016/j.aorn.2013.08.015

Escartín, J., Rodríguez-Carballeira, A., Zapf, D., Porrúa, C., & Martín-Peña, J. (2009). Perceived severity of various bullying behaviours at work and the relevance of exposure to bullying. Work & Stress, 23(3), 191-205. doi:10.1080/02678370903289639

Franks, J. (2013). The relationship between strengths in youth and bullying experiences at school. Educational & Child Psychology, 30(4), 44-58.

Goryl, O., Neilsen-Hewett, C., & Sweller, N. (2013). Teacher education, teaching experience and bullying policies: Links with early childhood teachers' perceptions and attitudes to bullying. Australasian Journal Of Early Childhood, 38(2), 32-40.

Hauge, L., Skogstad, A., & Einarsen, S. (2009). Individual and situational predictors of workplace bullying: Why do perpetrators engage in the bullying of others?. Work & Stress, 23(4), 349-358. doi:10.1080/02678370903395568

Hughes, S., Schuele, C., & Kelly, E. (2014). Bullying: What Speech-Language Pathologists Should Know. Language, Speech & Hearing Services In Schools, 45(1), 3-13. doi:10.1044/2013

Jenkins, M. F., Zapf, D., Winefield, H., & Sarris, A. (2012). Bullying Allegations from the Accused Bully's Perspective. British Journal Of Management, 23(4), 489-501. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8551.2011.00778.x

Skogstad, A., Torsheim, T., Einarsen, S., & Hauge, L. (2011). Testing the Work Environment Hypothesis of Bullying on a Group Level of Analysis: Psychosocial Factors as Precursors of Observed Workplace Bullying. Applied Psychology: An International Review, 60(3), 475-495. doi:10.1111/j.1464-0597.2011.00444.x

Sociological Analysis of Bullying: Literature Review
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