Study finds bullies have more children than non-bullies | Hacker News Reader

Study finds bullies have more children than non-bullies

phys.org

71 pointsPaulHoule91 comments

I don't think there's a good discussion to be had about this article. The referenced paper is based on two data sources. One is a longitudinal study (great!) of "hundreds" of children in one region (not bad!) and only checks parenthood at the rather young age of 23-24 (uhhh). The other study is based on Mechanical Turk questions. In both the article and the fullest version of the paper I can find online [1], no further details are provided -- not the size of the effects, not the statistical power, nothing.

[1] https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Febs0000374

Yeah it feels like too much "research" is just click bait at this point (or just a lazy dissertation).

Perhaps it would be more useful to say (specifically for that first more valid study) that bullies have kids earlier.

Yeah, checking at such a young age is a serious distortion of the data. The average age at first pregnancy is somewhere around 30. That means they are counting exclusively pregnancies that are untypically early. A more accurate summary of the results would be:

Bullies have more accidental children before reaching the age where the average couple will start to deliberately get pregnant.

No, a more accurate summary of the results would be: "we generated a tiny bit of data from which no conclusions can be drawn, but it's some extra data that other studies may be able to use in the future maybe".

Presumably individual aggression versus fertility is an inverted U shaped curve in which fertility rises with aggression to an inflection point and then declines. That point is probably higher than we would like for the achievement of other social goals.

It may be that at the level of civilizations the aggression versus fertility curve is different than for individuals: Memes may propagate more efficiently with more or less aggression than genes do. But social media is showing that brutality is more positively correlated with virality than we'd hope for.

If cultural values about aggression reduce fertility to below replacement they become culturally suicidal. For both aggression and pacifism the dose is the poison. Calibrating the dose is an eternal political and biological battle.

What exactly is fertility here? I don’t think all the non-bullies are shooting blanks. What if the bullies are just worse on average at family planning? How are you differentiating civilizations, especially in the modern age when national borders don’t constrain enormous trade of goods and culture?

It's not about shooting blanks, but getting the chance to reproduce in the first place. There's a lot of research showing that women are attracted to confidence and dominant traits (read: "bad guys"), and that this preference is basically universal.

Could you share some of this research. I haven’t seen it, but I’d be happy to learn.

As one example, here is a relatively well-cited study from 1994: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/014616729420200...

Note that interpretations of "dominance" tend to vary, it seems, between papers and over time.

Women can be and are bullies too. The article took into account both sexes:

>>The research shows that higher levels of bullying in both men and women were associated with having children in young adulthood (by ages 23 or 24) in addition to having more children overall.

Their reason appears to be that they are able to date more and engage in more sexual activity as they assert their (I assume, higher) social position:

>> The recent findings build on previous BRAVE research that has indicated adolescent bullies date more and engage in more sexual activity than their peers—attracting potential mates by publicly asserting their dominance and establishing their position socially.

My guess is that more aggression leads to less foresight about consequences of action, or as OP mentioned, are just worse on average at family planning

Women can be and are bullies too.

Didn't even consider that. How many women bully men into getting married or having kids? How many cultures bully women to get married young? What societies bully you about not getting laid or being single? The bullying is all over the institution.

It's a small but confusing point that in academic demography, "low/high fertility" just means something like "how many children does a typical woman have" rather than how easy/hard it is to conceive them (which is what it means in everyday language). See the definitions of these rates for example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography#Common_rates_and_...

strictly speaking, fecundity is the number of offspring you could make (and thus low fecundity would imply shooting blanks) whereas fertility is the number you actually make.

Ah I see, that’s my bad.

I'm gonna guess a bit: Non-bullies are less attractive on average than bullies. It's not about their preference or aversion to other behavior. "Confidence" is a proxy for physical attractiveness. A confident unattractive person comes off as creepy.

You’re assuming it’s an issue of attraction, and not what happens after you get the partner (maybe bullies keep their partners more often, or are more prone to having kids). I’ve got an alternative theory that somewhat agrees and somewhat disagrees.

Bullies are, if anything, people who conform to the unspoken desires of the group over the spoken ones. Groups have things that they say that they want, and a normal person conforms to those vocalized things. The bully, in an attempt to get the group’s approval, detects a deeper, unspoken set of wants and conforms to those instead. I think that someone naturally talented at that is more likely to be rewarded in our economic system. Isn’t the most successful businessman the guy who can detect those things people don’t know that they want and meet that demand? So maybe bullies end up richer, so more able to support kids and attract partners as a consequence.

You might be on to something in that bully-like "aggressive" qualities help people get ahead in certain endeavors (not least of which is dating). But if you're not an attractive person, I think most people will not tolerate you being a bully (you will be bullied back or otherwise dealt with, unless you're a formidible-looking individual or something). People who are bullied are usually attacked for their looks or unappealing personality features.

If nothing else, bullies usually need to be more physically capable than their victims. That is a generally attractive characteristic. It might not apply to girls as much, but I think we can at least say that ugly girls are usually turn shy rather than turning bully.

I think it’s something a lot more interesting than aggression. Aggression happens to be one trait that runs counter to surface level social norms while simultaneously enabling conformity with the deeper ones. Consider a popular bully that picks on a racial minority. On the surface, many kids may have been told to be nice to those of other races, to never exercise violence, etc. At a deeper level, though, they may have internalized their culture’s disdain for that minority. The bully comes along to benefit from the group’s deeper desire to hurt and exclude the minority because he/she, for whatever reason, possesses characteristics that allow him/her to violate the surface level norms with less concern. Aggression is just the trait that allows one to violate the norm against violence.

I don't think all people who are racist have such a deep desire to hurt anyone else. It's a complex phenomenon, like religion or other cultural factions. Some people who are called racists are really reacting to specific perceived negative traits or cultural tropes. Sometimes (dare I say USUALLY), reacting to traits that are correlated with race (such as style of speaking, taste in music, etc.) is a definite way to end up called racist, even if you're not. I think the left (or a major segment of it) has consistently called for blurring the lines between matters of taste and legitimate criticism, and actual spite. Shirking urban gibberish and seeking out a relationship partner of your own race and cultural background isn't usually rooted in spite.

>Consider a popular bully that picks on a racial minority.

I've never seen a bully that picks on minorities as a whole. They pick on peculiar individuals with unpopular traits. The kind of people who normal people might find fault with, but not TOO much fault or else they would reject the bully as mean. There's all kinds of people though.

If you think only racial minorities can be victims of racism, you're very wrong. I would argue that minorities are often meaner to majority-aligned victims than the other way around. The penalties are somehow more lenient against such perpetrators too.

I think bullies are often unhappy people themselves, or else they have a social dysfunction that makes them apathetic toward how their behavior affects others. But what do I know.

>Aggression is just the trait that allows one to violate the norm against violence.

So, I would argue that thinking mean thoughts on occasion does not make a person a bully. You have to have the impetus to do something, whether that is making mean jokes or punching someone else in the nose. I would be surprised if non-bullies didn't think awful thoughts, perhaps far worse than what bullies think. The victim is just a passerby to a bully, and the bully often has many friends. The victim has less friends in general and spends a lot more time thinking about the bully than the other way around. You can see this if you ever run into one of your old bullies. They might not even remember what they did to you or how it affected you.

Okay look I feel like you really took the wrong stuff away from my comment. Race was just an easy example to draw on, it wasn’t my point.

> I think the left (or a major segment of it) has consistently called for blurring the lines between matters of taste and legitimate criticism, and actual spite. Shirking urban gibberish and seeking out a relationship partner of your own race and cultural background isn't usually rooted in spite.

Like man look I wasn’t really trying to get into a discussion about racism or call you racist or something. I could just as easily have talked about bullying of disabled people or something. Anyone who the cultural subterfuge identifies as an outgroup. That being said, “urban gibberish?” Maybe the race thing tripped a nerve or something.

> I've never seen a bully that picks on minorities as a whole. They pick on peculiar individuals with unpopular traits.

The way I was intending to use the word minority was to refer to those deemed “peculiar” by the group; i.e., I agree with you.

The way that the bully chooses their target is often by finding the individual isolated from the group. We should then ask why that person was excluded, to which my general answer is that they had traits disliked/alienated in that cultural subterfuge I mentioned.

> If you think only racial minorities can be victims of racism, you're very wrong. I would argue that minorities are often meaner to majority-aligned victims than the other way around.

If you want to have a discussion about race, we can do that instead, but I wasn’t talking about this in any way. The thing that matters for bullying is usually being a statistical minority. A white kid in a largely black school may also get bullied.

>I think bullies are often unhappy people themselves, or else they have a social dysfunction that makes them apathetic toward how their behavior affects others. But what do I know.

I don’t know why you can’t see that you’re literally agreeing with me. That unhappiness or apathy is precisely why many bullies are able to violate norms that would ordinarily prevent them from being cruel or violent.

>I would be surprised if non-bullies didn't think awful thoughts, perhaps far worse than what bullies think.

Yes, that’s the deeper layer of social values manifesting is my point. The bully is the avatar of the group that is often quite cruel, but unwilling to actualize that cruelty. The bully is like a pressure relief valve for all that disdain.

Sorry, I saw too many seemingly coded phrases. The way some people stir up racial strife or greatly exaggerate it really bugs me.

I think we're in agreement generally but I would like to point out that no matter how you cut it, I don't think simply being in a statistical minority alone is sufficient to get bullied. There has to be an actual seemingly negative trait that goes with it. Models are in a minority but they are rarely bullied. I think it's also possible that some cases of bullying are as much about the victim's reaction as they are about the offense. For example, we don't know how often "normal" people have to deal with abuse from others, and they may not be identified as bullying victims because they have somehow handled the problem without being too distressed. The classic example might be how middle school boys used to always call each other gay as a routine insult. Most of them laughed it off. The few that actually were gay or insecure about their appearance (or not having a girlfriend) might have felt bullied.

>Presumable individual aggression versus fertility is an inverted U shaped curve in which fertility rises with aggression to an inflection point and then declines

Are you sure about the decline part?

My experience with bullying as the occasional victim is that bullying is mostly a social phenomenon. The bully itself was rarely the problem, he was just the enforcer of conformity for the group. And as such he was really popular.

So if we have to go with your observation, the bully is the leader of a group. Such a person is rarely alone in life, and it would follow with the article. To live with yourself as a bully, you need a complicit group. If the group becomes aware of you, you kind of need a new group to believe you.

A group can be just two people. The bully exists because there is another that allows the group to exist (allows the abusive dynamic to exist). If the group stops existing, the bully stops existing, unless they find another group that allows it.

The bully by themselves (to be truly alone) would feel uncomfortable because their life is centered around extreme group dynamics.

The problem in my particular case is that the bully's group was basically every other kid but me and a couple of other nerds.

The other kids kind of didn't like our quirkness, or our poverty, or whatever other thing. Maybe they were fed up with the fact that we were the know it alls and the teacher's pet. It doesn't matter, but the fact is that we were the object of social rejection and the bully as the leader of the pack of kids, was also the executor.

I'm sorry you went through that. In fact, I knew you went through that soon as you described it so accurately.

Yeah. It sucked, but understanding the dynamic and changing school eliminated the problem. I was lucky to have the opportunity to changing school though. few parents have this option nowadays.

I on the other hand, found no such correlation. The primary bully did not do it to get approval of the crowds but because he was a psychopath.

I don't think we should consider "bully" to be synonymous with all violence perpetrated by kids.

Yes, some kids are psycho and violent, but to me, the term "bullying" implies some amount of social hierarchy too.

My experience as a father of a son that’s 6 and observer of his friends. I’ve been coaching a group of his buddies since they were 3 and can see a lot of patterns. About 50% is seemingly innate and potentially communication related. A lot of them grow out of it as they learn to communicate better. About 10-20% are non aggressors and never behave this way even when communication was a barrier. They follow instructions and typically have a good moral compass and excel at communication until around 5-6 (others catch up). They share well, play nicely, etc. The others are somewhere inbetween. They likely are somewhat aggressive at times but it’s generally a learned from older siblings behavior or they’re going along with someone else’s behaviors. Then, there are a few little shits who act like they get beat in the home (and probably do, honestly) and these ones are the worst - they see red and will kill/maim your non aggressors without a thought. The non aggressors don’t really understand violence and it confuses them why a “friend” would hit/push/snatch/not share. It’s kid of sad.

My kid is one of the non aggressors and I teach him self defense. I’m slowly revealing my true feelings to him as he’s maturing enough to handle it responsibly but I’d much rather him get expelled for zero tolerance self defensive fighting than be a victim of bullying.

Kids change obviously so we’ll see how they continue to develop and mature out of or into bully behavior, a few of the worsts have already chilled out a lot over the past few years while a few have become worse than they were when I met them. The thing that's weird is when they start distinguishing on things that are completely learned from adults; "poor" vs "rich", cars, vacations, etc are notable but also the stereotypical "cool" vs "nerd" interests and how they organize accordingly into their cliques.

Most importantly the school is in the circle of support of the bully because they won't let the victim leave and won't allow the victim to defend themselves.

I reject the premise that people can be sorted into bullies and non-bullies.

It's amusing/frustrating that such a premise is taken seriously.

I agree, somewhat.

In my high school, there was hierarchy of bullies. Some bullied other bullies. The victim bullies bullied other weaker kids. And some bullies only bullied other bullies, they were considered heros.

I'm curious. If you had some that you would categorize as only bullying people that bullied others, would this fit with a justice perception? How does this account for someone "repenting," as it were, of bullying?

Put differently, I think the objection is that "bully" is not an immutable facet of someone. For many, it often isn't even a choice moreso a by product of the general environment they find themselves in. Obviously malicious actors are defined by their intent to bully. But sometimes people will feel bullied from someone's intent to maintain a preexisting order? How does that get categorized?

> If you had some that you would categorize as only bullying people that bullied others, would this fit with a justice perception? How does this account for someone "repenting," as it were, of bullying?

I think some of it was complex rivalries. Bullies on the top were the cool kids who cared about their image a lot. They mostly bullied bullies who were challenging their status. They were also more sophisticated in their bullying and have other bullies do the dirty work of physical fights.

Then there were hero bullies who targeted other bullies. These hero bullies were usually stronger kids and really looking for fights. They didn't care about their images as much. A lot of time they were already in trouble with school. They would become protectors of the weakest kids. But they were probably the most violent and beat up the bullies of those weakest kids pretty bad. Maybe they had a savior complex. We really considered them heros at the time but now I realize that they went too far and probably pushed their victim bullies to get more violent.

> For many, it often isn't even a choice moreso a by product of the general environment they find themselves in

Yes, it was indeed the environment, at least, for some kids. Almost every kid was victim and a bully at the same time. We were like dogs, there was power hierarchy that was constantly challenged and enforced. Things would be fine most of the time if you didn't challenge anyone, every once in a while someone try to establish their dominance over you by verbally or physically assaulting you.

> some bullies only bullied other bullies, they were considered heros.

Tit-for-Tat is a Nash Optimal survival strategy for the iterated prisoner's dilemma.

It's a spectrum rather than binary categorization.

It's pretty easy to see that certain people are bully-like and certain people are definitely not bully-like.

There is also the effect of the person that engaged in bullying behaviour after having been bullied on the past and finally having the means to enjoy the feeling of being on the other side.

> It's pretty easy to see that certain people are XXXX and certain people are definitely not XXXX.

What a fascinating pattern of thought.

I have known at least 7 people in my short life whose MAJOR defining personality attribute was bullying. Two of them were old enough to have had kids at the time, and both had 5 or more. One has a PhD and that was and still is way outside of the norm. Just anecdotal, but it is a data point.

Do you reject the premise that people can be tagged or filtered by any aspects, whatsoever? Bullying behavior, perhaps, needn't be a "core" or "genetic" attribute of a person in order to meaningfully discern whether or not one's engaged in it at significantly higher rates.

What's the distribution, I wonder. Bimodal?

I reject the premise for a number of reasons but many of them come down to how wildly subjective it is.

What constitutes bullying behavior?

Is there any context that would shift or nullify the label?

How often must someone engage in this behavior to have it be a defining characteristic?

What parameters would allow someone to shed the label?

You could add many more without much effort.

Q: What constitutes bullying behavior?

A: Bullying behavior constitutes repeated aggressive actions intended to harm or intimidate another individual.

Q: Is there any context that would shift or nullify the label?

A: Contexts such as mutual consent, playful interactions among friends, or cultural differences may shift or nullify the label of bullying.

Q: How often must someone engage in this behavior to have it be a defining characteristic?

A: Engaging in bullying behavior consistently over time, rather than as an isolated incident, typically defines it as a characteristic of an individual.

Q: What parameters would allow someone to shed the label?

A: To shed the label, a person would need to demonstrate a sustained change in behavior, showing empathy and respect towards others over a significant period.

Interestingly, the research doesn't indicate whether these additional children are wanted or expected. Similar to substance abuse, I would not be surprised if having more children is in fact an unwanted behavior that helps the genome but not the individual within society.

Abstract: https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037/ebs0000374

That's not the paper, that's just the abstract, which doesn't actually talk about sample size. It does point out an important limitation of the research: it looks at number of children specifically at 23 and 24 years old, rather than the full range of ages at which people have children in Canada. Which is the other limitation: it only looked at Canada, and the abstract doesn't say which parts of Canada, so there's so much information missing that it's impossible to tell what this study actually found.

Edited.

The plot from the "Idiocracy" movie gets more real everyday.

I was thinking of that scene/meme from Back to the Future, "Hey, wait, I've seen this one!"

Eugenics watered down just enough to be palatable to the average American?

We live in an inexplicable mixture of idiocracy + matrix + terminator. Only aliens are missing. Yet.

Makes sense. I've seen folks justify being needlessly adversarial because their crotchspawn obviously deserve the best, so anyone who stands in the way of a promotion or publication is a threat and therefor they can reframe bullying as being a breadwinner.

>crotchspawn

New word for me. Good one.

Haha thanks, I'm guessing English is not your first language? Glad I could be of help ;-)

Well, nearly the first language... Haven't see the use of that word in the circles I frequent (in US/Canada).

Standing up for someone else, you can be 10x over the top karen, and you are an alley and a hero.

Do it for yourself and you are an asshole. Other people's causes give you cover to act poorly.

*pre-edit, I realize this gives us a way to demonize those protecting the weak via an Ad hominem against the moral.

Non-bullies don't want their unborn children to experience the same shit that they did. I wasn't bullied, and I think the exact same way and have no kids, btw.

Counterpoint: I was bullied, have two kids and want more.

I was fed a diet of "just ignore them and they'll go away" (ha), the school promising to do something about it but never more than a slap on the wrist for the bullies, "violence never solves anything", I learned to stay within view of the teachers at recess.

As I got older, I realized the issue was the authority figures in my life never allowed or taught me how to fight, physically or otherwise. The practical solutions to the problem made them so uncomfortable that they avoided even discussing them. So they just let me suffer for years knowing that eventually I'd graduate and the problem would "go away".

Let's just say that my kids won't have that same upbringing, and any bully who tries what I experienced will be in for a shock.

I was bullied and have 3 kids. Living well is the best revenge.

I personally wasn't bullied, but if I had to live in the school district I grew up in and felt I had no way out, I would have never had kids. It was that bad.

Luckily that wasn't the case, so I do, and a change of scenery helps a ton. The way they describe school now is nothing like when I was in public school.

Shark neonates attack each other in the womb. Hyena cubs kill each other.

I don't know if the evidence of this paper is good, but it's plausible to me that human children attempt to damage each other for evolutionary benefit. It's not a very optimistic viewpoint, because it means the parents of bullies have a strong motivation to prevent the rooting out of this behavior.

The biggest bullies have 14+ kids.

Because they have more money?

Oh I just got it, that was funny

Took me a minute, too. :D

Does this imply that parents are more likely to be bullies than non-parents?

Good guys ALWAYS finish last

Unfortunately bullying doesn't stop with adulthood.

Bullies only get more power. Victims are ignored and blamed.

How could they have children when everyone in power rather look the other way than help.

Why would they bring a significant other down with them? Why would they have children if that's what await them?

now just to look up how many kids one Elon Musk has

Because pressure works on girls?

The rapes?

Especially the marital rapes.

I can't see the article without buying it (nope) but my first "hm, I wonder..." would be to see if they adjusted for education, income level, and parents' income level.

This might just be saying something like "bullies don't excel in school", given what we already know about socioeconomic demographic trends WRT fertility. With the wrong study design they could even get this result if bullies have lower fertility than some SES sub-group they also tend to be a part of. One would suppose they adjusted for that, but sometimes papers make it out with some really weird oversights.

Color me naive, but isn't it simply more pleasant to have sex with a manly bully than with a "nice guy" pushover? Do we need to explain further? I guess, we can study the extent to which pushovers are being pushovers, but it should not be surprising that they are being pushed over to some extent.

> "nice guy" pushover

These two things aren't as related as people think they are. One can be a "nice guy" and still not be a pushover. Being assertive is not the same as being aggressive.

Load bearing "simply" because that doesn't sound simple at all. For one, is the scale really this simple?

   less manly  <-------->  more manly
   pushovers     most men     bullies

That sounds extremely reductive to me. I suspect there's at least one more axis.

Wait... a bully is a person who uses force, threat of force, and/or intimidation to get others to do what they want.

Rape is using force, threat of force, and/or intimidation to get sex - aka rape is bullying for sex.

Why would we discount that fundamental connection for some sort of imagined "pleasantness" - particularly when the entire premise relies on there being a single woman cloned billions of times rather than assuming that women (who are also human) have a wide range of preferences and personality traits (like the men you discuss)?

Guess it is the color of naïve then.

As much as I appreciate that everyone has their different tastes. Being mounted by a heaving silver back, with deep grunting and howls, sweaty and lumbering, isn't everyone's cup of tea.

My first thought also. Every reason to think a pattern of bullying would extend to romantic and sexual partners.

No one needs to "prove" an obvious correlation. Why do people have such a hard time spotting root causes? The root cause here is obviously testosterone levels. There will be a precise correlation if anyone were to bother to check.

I'm guessing you are trolling, but this is a terrible take. Insert meme of Homer Simpson: "Everyone is stupid except for me"[1]

If you're interested on the subject, Robert Sapolsky has studied and written about Testosterone extensively. He has some videos up on Youtube as well as several books.

[1]: https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/ZzMAAOSwscVlpdzW/s-l1200.jpg

Ah, you went and did the ackchyually meme. Way to go.

He had to [intentionally?] misread the word "people" as if I'd said "all people" in order to be able to justify his rude response.

Anyway, even at slightly above average IQ that makes me smarter than 4 billion humans. So yeah...."all of them". And I did use "all" that time. lol.

It's so easy to make fun of people who can't even read.

> The root cause here is obviously testosterone levels.

This is a patently absurd observation and you didn't even bother to offer an anecdote, as if that would make a difference anyways.

I can try to provide one:

https://www.campussafetymagazine.com/insights/how-common-are...

The existence of an exception to a general rule doesn't disprove the rule. Most every "general rule" has notable exceptions that you can find if you look.

But until you demonstrate that girls outnumber boys in terms of violent tendencies, you'll have to accept my rule as true and your exception as...an exception.

Fine, I’ll try again:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homicide_statistics_by_gende...

”… found that men account for an average of 95% of all persons convicted of homicide, and almost 8 out of 10 of the victims”

If you look back at this discussion you'll notice we were in agreement the whole time (you and me anyway). lol. It's men with the Testosterone, and it's the Testosterone that causes aggressive behaviors as well.

Ah. I don't know why men take that so offensively. It's like, okay, men have a testosterone issue, keep an eye on it (we are all a work in progress).

The only people who are offended by these biological facts about Testosterone are the progressive far-left woke types. You know, the ones who invented the term "Toxic Masculinity" which was at one time taken seriously, but is now considered quite comical.

Sure an overabundance of that molecule leads to "issues" (roid rage, etc), but a normal amount of it is why we crossed the oceans to find a new land, fought to defend ourselves in wars, landed on the moon, and every other thing that people with little drive would never have done. So I don't consider "maleness" a flaw, and anyone who does has a mental disorder.

My reply to you is same as the other guy.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43327023

But I'll add another side-anecdote: High-T men are more sexually driven, making them care more about appearance of women. What is that appearance? Wide hips and large other things too. All of which are a signal of more vital and healthy child bearing. So not only do they want more sex, they choose women which are more fertile to begin with. Not exactly rocket science, to make the logical connection there, and predict the outcome.

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