What’s a Hidden Bully? (continued)

The Social Networks of Popular Bullies: Hidden in Plain Sight

Hidden bullies are a small subsection of the peer group -- but their influence is greater than their numbers. The problem is that hidden bullies are typically ringleaders. Bullies are sometimes hidden in plain sight as the popular and cool kids everyone looks up to (5, 6).

One principal from the Bronx uses teachers and students to change the culture of middle school from bleak to bright by working with students with power and influence. The principal said: “It’s just textbook counterinsurgency. The first thing you have to do is you have to invite the insurgents into the government … I wanted to have influence over the popular kids (10).”

Preventing Bullying by Identifying Social Relationships and Working with Peer Leaders

The reality of hidden bullies becomes even more problematic when schools engage in bullying prevention programs. Whole school approaches to bullying intervention can run into difficulties when faced with antisocial aggressive children who are popular. In our work aimed at implementing programs in Illinois schools, popular bullies have attempted to sabotage the programs by using various complaints that such programs talk down to them, or that they are ineffective. These students have high social skills and not only influence their peers but also schoolteachers and administrators (11).

Hidden bullies use aggression for the social rewards of control and dominance and in many cases, material rewards such as money, food, and goods. Programs that effectively target bullies, by changing the entire culture of a school, are a direct threat to popular bullies’ social and economic strategies within the existing school culture. Concerned adults should identify the leaders of peer cultures as peers view them, working with peer leaders when possible to reorient peer values and redirect social influences.

The renowned psychologist Urie Bronfrenbrenner (12) worried that the peer societies of even young children veer towards antisociality and apathy without prudent adult guidance. Mutual knowledge and communication between the worlds of children and adults is vitally important in schools. A comprehensive, and effective program to reduce bullying involves empathy, assertiveness, moral education, and a caring environment elevating all individuals in the school to a common purpose (3). These programs should include close monitoring by adults of how and where children are getting along-- or not getting along-- in the challenging landscape of peer life.

Knowledge and alteration of social networks is a leverage point for effective intervention in childhood bullying, just as social networks successfully model patterns of contagion for bulimia, AIDS, obesity and other public health epidemics (13). The study of the natural spread of aggression through childhood social relationships is one of the next great frontiers of educational research. This work will produce great practical benefits to children and schools in helping to prevent the endemic spread of bullying.

References

1. Erikson, E. H. (1950/1963). Childhood and society. New York: Norton.
2. Cairns, R. B. (1979). Social development: The origins and plasticity of interchanges. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman.
3. Rodkin, P. C., & Wilson, T. (2007). Aggression and adaptation: Psychological record, educational promise. In P. H. Hawley, T. D. Little, & P. C. Rodkin (Eds.), Aggression and adaptation: The bright side to bad behavior (pp. 235-267). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
4. Rodkin, P. C., Farmer, T. W., Pearl, R., & Van Acker, R. (2000). Heterogeneity of popular boys: Antisocial and prosocial configurations. Developmental Psychology, 36, 14-24.
5. Rodkin, P. C., Farmer, T. W., Pearl, R., & Van Acker, R. (2006a). They’re cool: Social status and peer group supports for aggressive boys and girls. Social Development, 15, 175-204.
6. Rodkin, P. C., Farmer, T. W., Van Acker, R., Pearl, R., Thompson, J. H., & Fedora, P. (2006b). Who do students with mild disabilities nominate as cool in inclusive general education classrooms? Journal of School Psychology, 44, 67-84.
7. Rodkin, P. C., & Berger, C. (2008). Who bullies whom? Social status asymmetries by victim gender. International Journal of Behavioral Development.
8. Olweus, D. (1978). Aggression in the schools: Bullies and whipping boys. New York: Hemisphere (Wiley).
9. Garandeau, C. F., Wilson, T., & Rodkin, P. C. (in press). The popularity of elementary school bullies in gender and racial context. In S. R. Jimerson, S. M. Swearer, & D. L. Espelage (Eds.), The international handbook of school bullying. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
10. Gootman, E. (2008, February 8). In Bronx school, culture shock, then revival. New York Times. Retrieved from www.nytimes.com on February 8, 2008.
11. Berger, C., Karimpour, R., & Rodkin, P. C. (2008). Bullies and victims at school: Perspectives and strategies for primary prevention. In T. W. Miller (Ed.), School violence and primary prevention (pp. 287-314). New York: Springer.
12. Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development: Experiments by nature and design. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
13. Rodkin, P. C., & Hanish, L. D. (Eds.). (2007). Social network analysis and children’s peer relationships. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Rodkin Biography