When you read some of the many news about peer violence in our schools or hear stories from a nearby school, it is very likely that you will imagine the perpetrator of violence as a child who suffered violence, comes from a broken family or was left on the street. How does modern research describe child abusers?
Professor Dorothy Espelage from the University of North Carolina, the author of numerous studies, books and manuals on this topic, became famous because she talks about this topic for the world's largest media. She explains how today we know that the image of a child of a bully is very complex. "For a very long time in the research literature, we thought that there was only one type of bully: an extremely aggressive child who has problems with self-confidence and comes from a violent environment or is neglected," Espelage believes.
Violence among school children is certainly a very old phenomenon ", states Dan Olveus, the author of the most quoted book on this topic," Bullying at School ". "The fact that some children are frequently and systematically abused by other children has been described in literature, and many adults have had personal experiences from their school days. Although many are familiar, the problem of the perpetrator-victim was not systematically studied until the 1970s, "explains Olveus, adding that the first research was initiated in the Scandinavian countries.
Although domestic violence and aggression between siblings are still risk factors for children to become bullies, modern research has shown that these are not the only reasons.
"Scientists today take the view that peer violence is a form of aggression between individuals or groups with different levels of power," writes BBC author Kelly Oakes in the article "Why do children become bullies at school?" If a child who is popular at school abuses a child who is not, this difference in power makes it difficult for the victim to defend himself.
According to the influential study of Susan Goldsmith and Pauline Howie, "An examination of the definitive components of bullying", in addition to this inequality of power, student violence consists of two other components: evil intent and its repetition.
Even when all these criteria are met, some children do not become bullies, as in some bullies only some of the criteria are observed. Recent research therefore focuses on the possibility of predicting violence - Nadine Connell, Robert Morris and Alex Pikero in their research "Predicting Bullying" discovered how negative events from early childhood can affect the occurrence of violence in adolescence.
"A bully can be cold, a master of manipulation, who organizes gangs using subtle, indirect methods," says British psychologist John Sutton, who researched the relationship between bullying and social cognition with his associates.
Researchers in the literature call such children Machiavellian bullies. They do not fit the stereotype of the "notorious kid", but are a favorite both in society and among teachers. They have excellent social skills, they are charismatic and loved, and they use violence when it affects them - they primarily lower their victims on the social ladder.
Good one