Bullying: Can you recognize it today?

Bullying literally appears to be around every corner and on every talk show. Not surprisingly, most of the conversation centers on those being bullied.

Perhaps there are other perspectives worth considering, so let's take the next few weeks to talk about them and how this area has evolved and continues to change.

Let's start with some definitions.

Previously, any discussion about bullying included, essentially, two groups – the bully and the bullied. Now we're hearing about a third category – those who are both a bully and being bullied.

And what is bullying? Simply put, bullying is an act of aggression against another individual. But it's never that simple, is it?

Bullying is usually (but not always) a repeated abuse of power and can be (but is not always) systematic in nature. It can include verbal aggression in the form of threats, insults, and spreading rumors, as well as the good, old fashioned, "punch in the nose" physical aggression.

Of course, today the field has been enriched with technology, spawning text message bullying and cyber bullying as new ways to inflict harm. 

To recognize your enemy, you must know your enemy, so what else do we know? Research (by Rios-Ellis, Bellamy and Shoji) from the beginning of the decade indicated that bullying increases during the middle school years, while research published just last year (by Cook, Williams, Guerra and Kim) revealed that it now appears to be common in all cultures.

Is this another example of American culture being exported? Years ago, Asian populations who traditionally dined on fish and rice had few incidents of colon cancer. The Super Size Me culture made inroads and we've seen a significant increase in colon cancer in these populations. Bullying appears to have followed that same pattern.

While there were multiple leadership failures in our food example (the government, the medical industry and other groups all share blame), the main question on bullying is, where are the parents?

There are a lot of perspectives and a lot of questions.

One thing is certain, bullying is on the rise and it has consumed the attention of many psychologists. From 1980 to 2000, literature indicates that there were 190 peer-reviewed articles published about bullying.  From the year 2000 to today, more than 600 peer-reviewed articles on the same subject have been published.

So, we have a lot talk about and a lot to wrap our minds around.

Next:  The Bully