Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren vogelbam here. When you consider the great bullies that
Speaker 1: have graced the movie and television screen, most of them
Speaker 1: are males. In two eight, the Boston Globe compiled a
Speaker 1: list of the most intimidating pop culture bullies, and twelve
Speaker 1: of fifteen spots went to bad boys, including Blue Do
Speaker 1: from Popeye, Simon Cowell from American Idol, Nelson from The Simpsons,
Speaker 1: and Biff Tannin from Back to the Future. Just three
Speaker 1: women represented their gender on the list, Nellie Olsen from
Speaker 1: Little House on the Prairie, Regina George from Mean Girls,
Speaker 1: and Conservative commenter and Coulter. Proportionately, this list seems about right.
Speaker 1: In real life, bullies are far more likely to be
Speaker 1: male than female. As a culture, we tend to expect
Speaker 1: boys to throw the punches, verbal and physical. American Idol
Speaker 1: would be a much different experience if Paula was the
Speaker 1: mean one and Simon was the one who gushed over contestants.
Speaker 1: For decades, researchers thought that boys were inherently more aggressive
Speaker 1: than girls, and playground scuffles usually ended with a boy
Speaker 1: in detention. In the nineteen nineties, though finished, researcher Kai
Speaker 1: Borkfist began interviewing adolescent girls about their interactions. What he
Speaker 1: found is that girls are no less aggressive than boys.
Speaker 1: They're just aggressive in different ways. Instead of fighting on
Speaker 1: the playground like the boys, they play subtle mind games
Speaker 1: that maybe even more damaging than a black eye. For
Speaker 1: this reason, the Boston Globes inclusion of Regina George makes
Speaker 1: perfect sense. Mean Girls was adapted from the book Queen
Speaker 1: Bees and Wannabes Helping Your Daughters Survive Clicks, Gossip, Boyfriends,
Speaker 1: and Other Realities of Adolescence by Rosalind Wiseman. Regina George's
Speaker 1: insistence that her friends wear certain outfits on a given
Speaker 1: day of the week was based on a real high
Speaker 1: schooler's rules, and Regina like efforts to manipulate the girls
Speaker 1: in a bully's orbit go on every day in the
Speaker 1: halls of high schools. So how do these differences in
Speaker 1: bullying develop? Up until the age of four? Kids tend
Speaker 1: to show aggression in the same way. They'll grab toys
Speaker 1: out of an their kids hands or push someone who
Speaker 1: makes them mad. But researchers at Brigham Young University have
Speaker 1: shown that girls as young as four have learned how
Speaker 1: to manipulate their peers to exclude kids and become the
Speaker 1: queen of the sandbox. They'll tell lies and secrets to
Speaker 1: get other kids to shun the offender. That means that
Speaker 1: before kindergarten, girls have started practicing relational aggression, a term
Speaker 1: that's been used to describe the type of bullying most
Speaker 1: commonly practiced by adolescent girls. Rather than just bullying weak
Speaker 1: kids they hardly know as male bullies do, female bullies
Speaker 1: go after their closest relationships. The female bully is hard
Speaker 1: to catch an action and difficult to punish. There is,
Speaker 1: after all, no bloody knows to serve as proof. Instead,
Speaker 1: victims carry emotional scars resulting from the bullies habits of
Speaker 1: spreading rumors, leaking secrets, savage put downs, backstabbing, and social exclusions.
Speaker 1: Bullies may demean a person's choice of clothing or exclude
Speaker 1: a friend from the guest list of a popular party
Speaker 1: in order to gain social status within a group of girls.
Speaker 1: At the same time, they send the victim into social exile.
Speaker 1: Boys also tend to bully others in order to gain
Speaker 1: social status, So it seems that bullies share certain motivations,
Speaker 1: need for attention, fear of competition, anger at the way
Speaker 1: they've been treated at home, and in long term, female
Speaker 1: bullies suffer as much as male bullies because eventually those
Speaker 1: closest to them tire of the manipulations. Though there's a
Speaker 1: lack of research as to whether female bullies turn to
Speaker 1: drugs and alcohol and end up in jail at the
Speaker 1: same rates that male bullies do, there are a few
Speaker 1: key differences. Though. Male bullies come in all shapes and sizes,
Speaker 1: from the popular football captain to the social outcast, while
Speaker 1: female bullies tend to be the popular girls. Another factor
Speaker 1: that may help them escape punishment, and while some male
Speaker 1: bullies appear to lash out because they haven't developed empathy
Speaker 1: for others, girls seem to possess ample amounts of empathy,
Speaker 1: so much so, in fact, that they know exactly how
Speaker 1: to harm a perceived threat. Because girls tend to put
Speaker 1: so much emphasis on relationships, female bullies know how to
Speaker 1: get a fellow female to divulgeous secret and then how
Speaker 1: to reveal it in a way that will maximize the
Speaker 1: embarrassment for the victim. During middle and high school, it
Speaker 1: may be important for parents to remind their daughters that
Speaker 1: true friends are not manipulative, negative, or mean. Such a
Speaker 1: warning may seem common sense, but a few things makes
Speaker 1: sense in adolescence. Today's episode was written by Molly Edmonds
Speaker 1: and produced by Tyler Clang. For more on this and
Speaker 1: lots of other social science topics, visit our home planet,
Speaker 1: how Stuff Works dot com