Running Head: Literature Review Bullying 1

University of Texas at El Paso

John Jaime
Literature Review










Bullying 2
Abstract
Bullying occurs everyday; knowing what to do when a situation confronts itself is
important in solving the problem. Bullying usually presents itself in social situations where one
person feels superior compared to another person. Bullying can take many forms and can affect
people differently even when most people dont claim to ever have bullied someone.
Psychological effects can result from bullying and most bullies environments are the
explanation for their mistreatment to others. There are long and short-term effects of bullying
and knowing how to stop it from happening is a great tool in avoiding the negative results that
accompanies being a victim of bullying.
Introduction
Most of the time, bullying is done at schools, where more social activity occurs and
without the correct knowledge about how to prevent, stop, and act upon this problem, bullying
may persist. Bullies often do not know why they act in such a manner; however, there are certain
known causes to bullying. Most bullies are created from habits learned and the childs
environment at home. Long and short-term effects can result from peer mistreatment and
stopping the problem is possible. Bullying is a problem in most schools and leads to many
negative results including lower grades. People often witness such events and are aware of the
problem while doing nothing about it.
Research Questions
Does bullying have an effect on childrens ability to learn in school?
Are bullies aware of their behavior?
How can bullying be prevented?
What are the causes of bullying?
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Primary Research
When asked about bullying at her school, Juana Martinez, teacher at Fabens High School
said, I see the effects of bullying everyday, boys pick on boys and girls pick on girls students
can confidentially report a bullying situation to a teacher, counselor, or administrator (J
Martinez, personal communication, 2014). When asked about how the school has tried to aid the
bullying problem, she said, One way administration has tried to address the bullying problem at
school is to prohibit cell phones inside the building, thus eliminating any form of cyber-bullying
on social networking websites (J Martinez, personal communication, 2014). When talking more
about the bullying situation at her school, she said, most of the time you just see it and report it
to administration and punishments are dealt with by the assistant principal (J Martinez, personal
communication, 2014). After interviewing Mrs. Martinez, I noticed that most teachers are aware
of the problem and do as much as they can to help the situation. She also added that from what
she has observed more boys are bullied than girls (J Martinez, personal communication, 2014).
Secondary Research
In the article titled Stop Bullying Now, bullying is defined in detail. Bullying and other
forms of peer mistreatment can include many different behaviors such as: physical aggression,
including sexual aggression, threats, talking or breaking property, name calling of many kinds,
sometimes focused on personal or family characteristics including disability, race, religion,
gender, sexual orientation, family income, intelligence body shape, or appearance, exclusion and
ostracism in many forms, all of which may have the effect of stopping someone from having
friends or social connections, or digital and online behaviors that parallel most of the above list
(Stop Bullying Now, 2014). When peer mistreatment is actually assault, criminal threatening, or
harassment, it is crucial to follow legal policy (Stop Bullying Now, 2014). Differentiating
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between bullying and non-bullying peer mistreatment is also important, although definitions of
bullying tell us that: bullying behavior is done by a person or a group who have more social
status or physical power than their targets, bullying behavior is repeated by the same aggressor
toward the same target, bullying youth intend harm, bullying behavior does harm or is
unwelcome (Stop Bullying Now, 2014).
When most people think of bullying, they see it as happening between a bully and a
victim (Stop Bullying Now, 2014). In my experience training educators and other
professionals in 31 states, Canada, Africa and India, I have consistently found that people think
of bullies as mean, conscienceless youth who have suffered significant mistreatment themselves
(Stop Bullying Now, 2014). In talking with youth and families, I find almost no one who
considers themselves or their children to be bullies (Stop Bullying Now, 2014). Yet almost every
human being sometimes acts in mean or excluding ways toward other people (Stop Bullying
Now, 2014). As I see it, the concept of the bully focuses the problem of peer mistreatment on
identifying and dealing with a small subgroup of mean people (Stop Bullying Now, 2014). Yet
many of the youth who agree to stand up against bullies in assemblies or discussions could
have a more positive effect on their schools climate if they focused on changing their own
occasional hurtful or excluding behavior and supported peers who are excluded (Stop Bullying
Now, 2014).
Early studies in this field showed that most youth who were mistreated consistently over
a long period of time tended to be more socially withdrawn and helpless than youth who were
not mistreated; some of these passive youth were also found to be highly emotionally reactive,
that is, they cried easily (Stop Bullying Now, 2014). A small subgroup of youth who were
mistreated and excluded consistently showed irritating and aggressive patterns of behavior (Stop
Bullying 5
Bullying Now, 2014). From these studies, many have concluded that passive, reactive, and
irritating youth attract mean peer actions. This conclusion can easily lead us to blame these
victims for what is done to them or to attempt to solve the problem of peer mistreatment by
changing the behavior of youth who are mistreated (Stop Bullying Now, 2014). Almost all of the
studies done to determine the characteristics of victims were done after mistreatment had been
going on for some time (Stop Bullying Now, 2014). Thus, it is impossible to determine whether
the passivity, helplessness, emotional reactivity, or irritating behavior seen in these studies was a
cause or an outcome of persistent peer mistreatment (Stop Bullying Now, 2014).
I find it more likely that these behaviors are an outcome of mistreatment (Stop Bullying
Now, 2014). Even if quiet, introverted, and anxious youth, and youth with unusual social
behavior that some may find irritating are more likely to be mistreated by peers, the decision to
mistreat them is made solely by their peers, who are fully responsible for their choices and as
with a homeowner who is robbed, even if the locks were not the most effective ones available,
the person who broke into the house is fully responsible for the immoral decision to break and
enter; the homeowner should not be blamed for this event (Stop Bullying Now, 2014). There are
three basic principles: Some actions of peer mistreatment are likely to cause harm and thus
should be stopped whenever possible, whether there is a power differential or not, with or
without overt and provable intent to harm, or whether harm can be proved (Stop Bullying Now,
2014). The young person who mistreats someone should not be labeled a bully, on the other
hand, youth mistreating others should be held fully accountable for their potentially hurtful
actions and the person who is mistreated should not be blamed for causing the mistreatment
(Stop Bullying Now, 2014). If people who are mistreated have also done something potentially
harmful they should be held accountable for those actions (Stop Bullying Now, 2014). Lastly,
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when peer mistreatment rises to the level of assault, harassment, or other criminally defined
categories, we should proceed in accordance with applicable policy and law (Stop Bullying Now,
2014). Even if this is not the case, we should use all appropriate interventions to stop the
mistreatment and to stop the harm it can do (Stop Bullying Now, 2014).
Long-term emotional damage can result from being bullied as well as short-term effects.
It is not necessary to be physically harmed in order to suffer lasting harm, words and gestures are
quite enough and in fact, the old saying, "Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will
never harm me" is more or less exactly backwards (Dombeck, 2007). For the most part, physical
damage sustained in a fistfight heals readily, especially damage that is sustained during the
resilient childhood years, but what is far more difficult to mend is the primary wound that
bullying victims suffer which is damage to their self-concepts; to their identities (Dombeck,
2007). Bullying is an attempt to instill fear and self-loathing; being the repetitive target of
bullying damages your ability to view yourself as a desirable, capable and effective individual
(Dombeck, 2007).
There are two ugly outcomes that stem from learning to view yourself as a less than
desirable, incapable individual (Dombeck, 2007). The first ugly outcome is that it becomes more
likely that you will become increasingly susceptible to becoming depressed and/or angry and/or
bitter and being bullied teaches you that you are undesirable, that you are not safe in the world,
and (when it is dished out by forces that are physically superior to yourself) that you are
relatively powerless to defend yourself (Dombeck, 2007). When you are forced, again and
again, to contemplate your relative lack of control over the bullying process, you are being set up
for Learned Helplessness (e.g., where you come to believe that you can't do anything to change
your ugly situation even if that isn't true), which in turn sets you up for hopelessness and
Bullying 7
depression (Dombeck, 2007). At the same time, you may be learning that you are helpless and
hopeless, you are also learning how you are seen by bullies, which is to say, you are learning that
you are seen by others as weak, pathetic, and a loser; by virtue of the way that identity tends to
work, you are being set up to believe that these things the bullies are saying about you are true
(Dombeck, 2007).
Identity is a social process, other people contribute to it; particularly when people are
young and have not yet survived a few of life's trials, it is difficult for people to know who they
are and what they are made of (Dombeck, 2007). Bullying teaches people that they are explicitly
not part of groups; that they are outcasts and outsiders (Dombeck, 2007). It is hard to doubt the
reality of being an outcast and an outsider when you have been beaten or otherwise publicly
humiliated; it takes an exceptionally confident (or otherwise well-supported) person to not
internalize bullies' negative messages and begin bullying yourself by holding yourself to the
same standards that bullies are applying to you and finding yourself a failure (Dombeck, 2007).
In other words, it is rather easy for bullying victims to note that they have been beaten up and
then to start thinking of themselves as weak, no-good, worthless, pathetic, and incompetent;
these are the sorts of thoughts that lead to depression, or, if they are combined with revenge
fantasies, to anger and rage feelings (Dombeck, 2007). Where the first ugly outcome of bullying
unfolds rather immediately in the form of a wounded self-concept, the second ugly outcome
unfolds more slowly over time (Dombeck, 2007). Having a wounded self-concept makes it
harder for you to believe in yourself, and when you have difficulty believing in yourself, you will
tend to have a harder time persevering through difficult situations and challenging circumstances
(Dombeck, 2007).
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Deficits in academic performance can easily occur when bullying victims succumb to
depression or otherwise become demoralized; they certainly also occur when victims ditch
school to avoid bullies (Dombeck, 2007). The real issue is that if deficits occur for too long or
become too pronounced, the affected children can lose out on opportunities for advancement and
further study, and ultimately, employment (Dombeck, 2007). I've read retrospective studies
where people report having left school early so as to avoid continued bullying, and this of course
will have altered and limited the job prospects they have available to them as adults; leaving
school may be a dramatic (if occasionally realistic) example of how early bullying can affect
one's life, but there are surely other ways that anger or depression caused by bullying harms and
developmentally delays people's progress (Dombeck, 2007). A similar form of damage comes
when bullied kids internalize negative attitudes concerning aspects of themselves that set them
apart from others, such as their sexual orientation, minority group membership, or religious
affiliation; In such cases, bullying sets up a peer pressure to reject aspects of one's self which are
fundamentally not rejectable, and thus a potentially lifelong tension gets set up inside that person
(Dombeck, 2007).
In the short term, bullying may have some of these effects: anger, depression, context-
induced anxiety, greater incidence of illness, lower grades, and suicidal thoughts and feelings
(Dombeck, 2007). In the long term: reduce occupational opportunities, lingering feelings of
anger and bitterness, desire for revenge, difficulty trusting people, interpersonal difficulties,
including fear and avoidance of new social situations, increased tendency to be a loner,
perception of self as easy to victimize, overly sensitive and thin skinned, self esteem problems,
and increased incidence of continued bullying and victimization (Dombeck, 2007).
Understanding the causes of bullying is the first step in addressing the growing problem of
Bullying 9
bullying in our neighborhoods and schools; by understanding why bullying happens, we can help
keep our kids from becoming victims and ensure that our own children do not become bullies
themselves (Cheever, 2014). Children who lack adult supervision or who are abused at home are
more likely to become bullies and bullies often come from homes that lack warm, affectionate
parental relationships (Cheever, 2014). Kids are also more likely to bully when they have
parents who are too lax with discipline and children who do not experience consequences for
their negative behavior are likely to continue that behavior (Cheever, 2014).
There are certain personality traits that appear to be common among bullies such as
naturally aggressive, impulsive and dominating; this is does not mean that if your child has these
traits he will be a bully, but it does mean that parents need to be aware of any other risk factors
that may be present (Cheever, 2014). When raised in a positive home environment, children with
these traits can learn empathy and compassion, which puts them at a lower risk for bullying;
even if you have a good home environment, you should talk to your child and her teachers if you
suspect your child is bullying kids at school (Cheever, 2014). There are also certain traits that
make a child more likely to become the victim of bullying; kids who are shy, withdrawn and
socially awkward, or those who are different from their peers tend to be easy targets for child
bullying (Cheever, 2014). Many victims of bullying are too embarrassed or ashamed to report
the incident, which only gives the bully more power over the victim; if you suspect that another
child is bullying your child, it is important to teach her/him that no one deserves to be treated
that way (Cheever, 2014). Don't leave her/him to fend for herself/himself or let her/his feelings
of shame stop the conversation. If a child feels they are being bullied, they need the confidence
to report the problem to you or the teacher (Cheever, 2014).

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Conclusion
Bullying is a part of life that most people must eventually face and knowing what to do in
a bullying situation is extremely vital. Most children that are bullied suffer short term and long-
term effects both psychologically and physically. Most bullies are representations of what they
learn at home and dont have a good environment to grow up in. With more education and intent
to stop bullying, the problem can be greatly reduced. Although bullies often dont know why
they are acting in such a manner, it is vital to educate our children and spread awareness to
bullying.















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References
Bullying Prevention Programs for Schools. (n.d.). Retrieved from
http://www.justsayyes.org/topics/bullying/
Bullying Statistics - Anti-Bullying Stop Social Bullies Harassment. (n.d.). Retrieved from
http://www.bullyingstatistics.org/
Common Causes of Bullying - Life123. (n.d.). Retrieved from
http://www.life123.com/parenting/tweens-teens/bullying/causes-of-bullying.shtml
Cyber Bullying In Schools. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://cyber.laws.com/cyber-bullying-in-
schools
Information about bullying and other forms of peer mistreatment: Overview - Stop Bullying
Now. (n.d.). Retrieved 2014, from http://stopbullyingnow.com/information-about-
bullying-overview/
Juanita Martinez, personal communication, March 29, 2014
School Bullying. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://nobullying.com/school-bullying/
The Long Term Effects of Bullying - Depression Resources, Education About Depression and
Unipolar Depression. (n.d.). Retrieved from
http://www.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=doc&id=13057
What Causes Bullies - Low Self-Esteem in Teenagers - Difficult Teens. (n.d.). Retrieved from
http://www.byparents-forparents.com/causesbullies.html
What causes bullying. (n.d.). Retrieved from
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_causes_bullying?#slide=1