Why people bully?

Why people bully?

To gain strength and resilience in the face of bullying it helps to understand the psychology behind people who bully. In general, people who are bullies want to feel powerful and get control over their victim. The easiest way to do so is by picking at the differences and unique qualities of an individual. It can be your race, culture, religion, sexual gender identity, fashion sense or weight. We start to blame ourselves to avoid the bullying. Bullying affects our behavior and how we see ourselves. Lastly, bullying has a negatively impact on our mental and physical health. Here are the sevens reasons why people bullying. This article refers to a "Ditch the Label" study who found out so by interviewing 7,347 people about bullying:

STRESS AND TRAUMA:

People who have experienced a stressful or traumatic situation in the past five years are more likely to bully. If you never learned how to deal with stress in a positive way e.g. do sports, meditation or talk about your problems, your negative stress behavior can lead in violence by default towards others.

AGRESSIVE BEHAVIOURS:

66% of the people who had admitted to bullying somebody else were male. This has something to do with how boys are raised. When you compare it to girls, they get encourage to talk about their feelings and show emotions, boys get often taught that this is a weakness. This can lead to coping with issues. This is learned behavior that is actively taught by society using dysfunctional gender norms and roles.

LOW SELF-ESTEEM:

People who are insecure and have low self-esteem are scared someone could notice that and blame them. To distract others from their own weakness, they are willing to point on other ones weaknesses. The high expections of society about beauty and fitness and they are taught to compare ourselves to others, prevent us of embracing our own, unique beauty

THEY GOT BULLIED IN THE PAST:

People who have experienced bullying by their own are crazy enough twice as likely to go on bully others. It has probably to do with a defense mechanism: If I'm the one who bullies, no one can bully me which in reality just leads to more negativity.

DIFFICULT HOME LIFE:

These who are experienced feelings or rejection from their parents / guardians or feel like they don't have enough time to spend with them are more likely to bully. Coming from violent households with lots of arguments and hostility leads to a lot of frustration they didn't learn to deal with right.

LOW ACCESS TO EDUCATION:

Without access to education, hate-based conversation directed at others may be the norm. They may not understand what hate speech is and why speaking about people in a derogatory way is not appropriate.

RELATIONSHIPS:

Those who bully are more likely to feel like their friendships and family relationships aren't very secure. In order to keep friendships, they might be pressured by their peers to behave in a certain way.

 

Source: https://www.ditchthelabel.org/why-do-people-bully/