Bullying Between “Frenemies” Is Surprisingly Common

By Emily Reynolds We already know that bullying can be one way of climbing the social ladder for teenagers. Research published in 2019, for instance, found that teenagers who combine aggressive behaviour with prosociality see the most social success. But who, exactly, are teenagers bullying? According to Robert Faris from the University of California, Davis and colleagues, writing in the American Journal of Sociology, it might not be who you’d expect. Rather than bullying those more distant from them, the team finds, teens often pick on their own friends. Data came from a longitudinal study of middle and high school students in grades 6, 7, and 8 (years 7, 8, and 9 in the UK). The team looked specifically at aggression, creating “networks” that reflected who had been aggressive towards whom at the schools. These were based on peer-nominations by the students, who had named up to five schoolmates who had “done something mean” to them in the past three months, as well as five they had been mean to. This didn’t include friendly teasing, focusing instead on acts of genuine aggression. Participants also indicated who their five closest friends were. As with aggression, a matrix was created to understand mutual and unrequited friendships, as well as linking friends of friends and measuring whether friendships were sustained or dissolved over the course of the study.  The team also looked at several adverse outcomes of being bullied — a...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: bullying Developmental Social Source Type: blogs