Traditional Bullying Definition Annotated

While notions of repetition, intent to harm, and power imbalances have finally been rejected by researchers, they remain in current, published definitions relied on by schools, organizations, and even the US government. In addition, these definitions fail to include the understanding of bullying as a behavior driven by a need for social status. This results in definitions that use vague language and phrases that sound scientific but are obvious and redundant. Furthermore, the focus is often placed on the behavior and the aggressor, not the harm and the target. A perfect example is the following definition, taken from www.stopbullying.gov, the official bullying prevention website of the US government (accessed 10/11/2023). The superscript reference numbers have been added, with the key below the definition.

 

Bullying is unwanted, aggressive behavior1 among school aged children that involves a real or perceived power imbalance.2 The behavior is repeated,3 or has the potential to be repeated,4 over time. Both kids who are bullied and who bully others may have serious, lasting problems.5

In order to be considered bullying, the behavior must be aggressive6 and include:

  • An Imbalance of Power: Kids who bully use their power—such as physical strength,7 access to embarrassing information, or popularity—to control or harm others.8 Power imbalances can change over time and in different situations, even if they involve the same people.9
  • Repetition: Bullying behaviors happen more than once or have the potential to happen more than once.10

Bullying includes actions such as making threats, spreading rumors, attacking someone physically or verbally, and excluding someone from a group on purpose.11

 

While this definition has discarded the notion that students intend harm, the definition is still problematic because it is inaccurate, abstract, vague, and full of redundancies:

  1. unwanted, aggressive behavior: Much of the aggression among school-age children is unwanted; however, it is not bullying. Only aggression that causes harm is bullying.
  2. real or perceived power imbalance: What this phrase is trying to say is that the aggressor generally has a higher social status than the target. Physical strength is often cited as a “power” that is out of balance, but that is not true; it is the ability of the aggressor to intimidate and instill fear in a target that makes dominance aggression successful. This phrase is extremely counterproductive because it can lead adults who deal with a bullying problem to try to find and address “powers” that are out of balance. An extreme example is a school that made a list of “powers” that could be out of balance and then set a threshold for how many powers needed to be involved in instances of aggression for the aggression to qualify as bullying. The scholarship on this point has evolved, where early scholarship closest to the time of Olweus’s work cites definite powers such as physical strength while later scholarship claims that powers are definitely there but may not be perceptible to adults. This is a good example of the bullying research paradox, where instead of admitting that this notion of a power imbalance is wrong, the definition implies that the notion is a fact but says the powers simply aren’t apparent, i.e., it’s a matter of faith.
  3. behavior is repeated: Repetition is certainly a characteristic of some types of aggression, but not all types, and repetition is not necessary for harm to occur. Repetition is common in dominance and rejective aggression but is hard to distinguish in relational aggression. Repetition may be collective (e.g., isolated instances of rejective aggression directed at a target by an entire class). Repetition has some value in identifying bullying and is most valuable when identified as it pinpoints behavior that can be stopped or changed; however, its inclusion in definitions fails targets who are harmed by aggression for which adults cannot identify or perceive repeated aggression from the same individual.
  4. behavior . . . has the potential to be repeated: Any single instance of just about any behavior has the potential to be repeated, but that doesn’t make it bullying.
  5. both kids who are bullied and who bully others may have serious, lasting problems: Given that almost all students at one time or another have used aggression that caused harm and/or were bullied during their school years, the link between bullying and serious lasting problems is tenuous. Bullying that is a result of a mental health issue, such as a personality disorder, that would affect a person for their entire lives is limited to a very small subset of the students who use aggression or are targets of it. If this part of the definition of bullying were accurate, then almost everyone will have or does have serious lasting problems.
  6. in order to be considered bullying, the behavior must be aggressive: This is a fallacy based on the idea that bullying can be determined from observed behavior. What exactly does it mean to be “aggressive”? A student glancing at another can appear innocuous, but to a target of dominance aggression it can cause overwhelming fear. A student walking past another in silence can be devastating if one of them is a target of relational aggression. A whole host of behaviors involved in bullying would not fit the definition of “aggressive” to a reasonable observer. Based on this phrase alone, a significant percentage of instances of bullying would not meet the definition.
  7. kids who bully use their power—such as physical strength: If this were true, then the solution to bullying involving dominance aggression would be to send targets to the gym to get stronger. But any reasonable person knows that’s just plain silly. Silly statements do not translate into effective policy.
  8. kids who bully use their power . . . to control . . . others: What does that even mean? A student with a higher social status can indirectly influence the behavior of the target to try to gain the approval of the aggressor. An aggressor can, for example, threaten to release embarrassing information online if the target doesn’t do certain things, but that’s blackmail. And a danger that this phrase actually introduces is that it can allow targets to claim that they are not responsible for their actions that were in response to bullying because, by the definition, the aggressor was using his power to control the target. A definition that absolves a student of responsibility for his actions based on the behavior of another student is dangerous.
  9. power imbalances can change over time and in different situations, even if they involve the same people: While a student’s position on the social hierarchy can change over time, and a changing social standing can enable him to be the aggressor at one point and cause him to be the target at another (or even both at the same time), how does this statement help a school administrator define policies and concrete actions for addressing bullying problems?
  10. bullying behaviors happen more than once or have the potential to happen more than once: As noted above, this is just repetition that fluffs the definition.
  11. bullying includes actions such as making threats, spreading rumors, attacking someone physically or verbally, and excluding someone from a group on purpose: Bullying is actually any behavior that is intended by the aggressor to have a positive effect on social status that causes harm to the target. The behaviors that can cause harm are infinite. Providing a limited list risks educators dismissing behaviors that cause harm but are not on the list.