Study finds bullies have more children than non-bullies
(phys.org)
from godiganbabay@ponder.cat to science@mander.xyz on 26 Feb 2025 15:02
https://ponder.cat/post/1775965
from godiganbabay@ponder.cat to science@mander.xyz on 26 Feb 2025 15:02
https://ponder.cat/post/1775965
I didn’t change the title, but without access to the original article, it seems like a correlation not causation.
threaded - newest
My guesses are that there ate multiple factors at play:
I’d try and look for papers to see if my guesses hold any water, but time eludes me.
We have 5 children, I was unaware that we are such terrible stupid people.
Damn, sorry you had to find out like this fam.
My whole day is ruined
Stop bullying him!
Help me, science!
Is doctor girlfriend okay?
Is that the villainess with whom my son has been carousing about?
Have you not had your morning coffee yet? 😄 The study purports that bullies have more kids, not that people with more kids were/are bullies. It investigated the relation in one single direction, not both.
Daily reminder that correlation isn't all or nothing.
Daily reminder for me not to forget the sarcasm tag
I think being assertive and more socially active meaning you’re more likely to be a bully is a bit of a myth. Although the cliché school or work bully may be assertive and socially active, there are many unpopular and awkward people who bully those around them, and it just goes unnoticed.
Nobody cares when losers bully each other...
Society only cares about good looking and or rich people
You are reversing the implication that I’m guessing 😉
Global Fertility rates tell a different story
No, it doesn’t. At all. Having children is definitely the norm, with the average woman having over 2 children across the world right now.
Rapists are definitely bullies also.
I guess a purely statistical consequence of this would be that the typical child has a greater-than-random chance of having a bully parent, and that chance increases with the number of siblings.
Is this evopsych bullshit?
Yeah, same as bandits.
Yep, evopsych bullshit.
At least they managed to avoid mentioning “modules”.
Wouldn’t surprise me. Unfortunately the study is behind a paywall.
calling this evopsych is like calling freud the father of psychology
this is just them saying something that they like the sound of, humans are fundamentally an extremely social species and there are way more things that go into passing on our genes than just having kids; being celibate and just raising the kids of your siblings is more efficient at spreading your genes.
Each has a strong inverse relationship with socioeconomics.
Note
I am not saying being poor makes a kid a bully. My parent was poor and I only ever bullied bullies (and stopped when they stopped). It’s just a nondescript statistical relationship. As to why it exists, I don’t know. My guess is greater baseline stress, less emotional support, and higher chance of domestic violence.
The study seems to mention that the bullies have children at an earlier age. I’d be willing to guess that the relation between having more children and bullying is purely correlative and that neither factor has any direct impact on the other. Instead, it seems significantly more likely that impulsiveness drives both bullying behavior and unsafe sex, which then leads to more children.
It seems somewhat odd to me that, instead of addressing possible mechanisms of this correlation, the authors talk about how bullying is an evolutionary trait to pass on genes.
Yeah, that’s why I want to get my hands on the study. Maybe the authors did consider that but the article is misrepresenting the study.