The Psychology of Bullies

I love researching things and psychology in particular. Mainly because of my autism and wanting to understand people and the way we tick. I have read a lot of articles and other blogs written by psychologists and health journalists to learn about human behavior. Bullying is part of behavioral science and is actually linked to our evolution from ours and apes shared ancestor which existed over eight million years ago. This is why many zoologists call us “Great Apes” because we did not evolve from the apes we see in zoos and nature shows. In fact they are our cousins. 

My journey to accepting myself, which I go into in the next two paragraphs are leading to the topic of the post. So be sure to keep reading.

Life lesson comes from poor choices like everyone else is linked to developmental psychology and self acceptance. This is including my journey to accepting my current size. It has been long and arduous even though I am on a weight loss journey. Mind you, because of medication I’m on for various health conditions, including my mental health, I will never be as petite as I was when I was in my late teens and early 20s.

Not proud to say but I went through a phase of bulimia in my early 20s and never told anyone. I couldn’t anyway because I was non-verbal from the stress from a combination of different factors including being bullied.

I’m not going to focus on my personal experience of being bullied in this post. At least not much. What I will say however is that bullies are not inherently bad and often they don’t realize the impact their behavior has on their intended victim. From what I have learned, bullies are actually very insecure and get a sense of validation and maybe even a sense of belonging to something bigger than themselves, something we all want, however not necessarily by toxic behavior like bullying.

Which brings me back to my blog post topic.

By joining in with their peer group makes some bullies feel less likely to be targeted and I would say many bullies regret their actions, just like I regret mine when I was a teenager. Not that I intended to cause hurt to the girl. I was copying my bullies behavior. They would tell me they were only messing. So, naturally, as an autistic person who was trying desperately to fit in, I did the same behavior and some other toxic stuff that I saw and heard on television and around other people I grew up around. None of my behavior and that of most young people, is ever out of a sense of malice but rather because their brains are still developing.

Also sometimes they are completely unaware of their behavior and maybe copy what they know. Unfortunately I understand this perspective because I have echolalia, a condition a lot of neurodivergent people have. Basically, I echoed  what I heard from various different mediums including my childhood abuser, Con, who would disguise insults as humour.  I didn’t understand the connotations of what I was saying and because of this I became toxic for around a year when I was 16 years old until my friend confronted me. I was very upset that I had contributed to someone’s emotional turmoil and I apologized and stopped talking to her because I was embarrassed about my actions. So I do not hate my bullies because maybe they were the same.

But now back to the title of my post, the psychology of bullies.

It originates from evolution psychology and the primate species which we are part of.

Evolution psychology is rooted in our survival instincts and a leaning to a desire for social status. However it is maladaptive in modern society and many whom contribute to this behavior gradually become disliked, alas it is part of society non the less.

Bullying behavior is related to genetics but it is not known yet why and where this stems from.

It stems from a variety of factors including a lack of pro-social skills. So what are pro-social skills? They are a behavior that includes but are not limited to cooperation, helpfulness, empathy, compassion, kindness and many more positive attributes. This includes small acts of kindness like buying a homeless person a meal or offering a listening ear to a person who feels lonely or isolated. People who have these attributes are the very ones who hold society together by providing support and compassion. A prime example of pro social behavior are those of human rights activists.

So if the above traits I listed are pro social traits, what does it mean when a person lacks them?

Callousness, feeling like they need (or enjoy inflicting) dominance as a way to make up for a feeling of a perceived internal or external lack of control, a need for control when other parts of their lives are spiraling out from beneath them. Then there is also a lack of empathy & compassion and a severe lack of an ability to develop the healthy regulation of their emotions. While some bullies are unaware of the impact of their toxic behavior, the majority have very strong social skills and enjoy the spotlight.

They are highly manipulative and use anti-social interactions to both intimidate and be intimidating to the intended victim and to their peers. To add, they are also power-driven and get an inflated ego rather than a healthy ego from the praise they often get for their abusive behavior.  They lack the ability to process guilt and empathy often lacking in both of these traits but for most bullies, their brains develop over time as their brains develop when they are young adults into their early 30s. 

The answer as to why they lack pro-social skills is because of brain development issues and sometimes disorders like anti-social personality disorder, psychopathy, Machiavellian personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder (covert, overt and malignant narcissism), insecurity and I have to be completely honest here, autistic spectrum disorder because we autists can be quite blunt and this can come across as us being rude and occasionally, hurtful because we struggle with a deficiency in cognitive empathy. We autists do have empathy, but we don’t often process or understand why we are in the wrong. This remains the case unless someone is blunt and honest about how we have made them feel. Then we learn just like everyone else.

Bullies are the same in that they can learn from their erroneous ways because the brain is pliable. This is called neuroplasticity.

What is neuroplasticity?

Neuroplasticity is our brains ability to unlearn what it knows. This leads to personal growth.

The brain can actually alter structure and it’s how it reacts to it’s electrons and neuron pathways.

So all is not lost for bullies. They can change and many who have, have given back to society in vast ways over the centuries right up to today.

I hope you enjoyed this blog post and that you learned something new.

Please comment your thoughts below.