Bullying and ‘Theory of Mind’: A Critique of the ‘Social Skills Deficit’ View of Anti‐Social Behaviour

Abstract

Bullying in schools has been found to be widespread. The popular stereotype of a bully, supported by theories based on the social skills deficit model, is of a powerful but 'oafish' person with little understanding of others. In this article, we trace the origin of this view, and present an alternative view: that some bullies, at least, will need good social cognition and theory of mind skills in order to manipulate and organise others, inflicting suffering in subtle and damaging ways while avoiding detection themselves. Such skills, although likely to be utilised in all bullying, may be particularly useful for ringleader bullies and in the indirect forms of bullying which are more common between girls. Suggestions for further research in this area are made, and implications for antibullying work briefly discussed.

Peer and cyber aggression in secondary school students: the role of moral disengagement, hostile attribution bias, and outcome expectancies

“…In line with previous research (Toblin, Schwartz, Gorman, & Abou-ezzeddine, 2005), we found that t-bullying also related to children's expectations that they would gain positive results from behaving aggressively, which is associated with proactive aggression in youngsters (Smithmyer, et al, 2000) and reflects a deficit in the latter stages of the social information processing (Crick & Dodge, 1994). Our results support the suggestion of Sutton, Smith, & Swettenham (1999), that bullies do not have deficits in interpreting social cues, but in the latter stages of social information processing, during goal and response selection, where the expectancy of positive outcomes from a harmful act increases the likelihood of an aggressive response. In other words, the bullies in our study behave aggressively because of what they expect to gain.…”

Four decades of research on school bullying: An introduction.

“…These "bully victims" have been characterized as hyperactive, impulsive, and as experiencing more peer rejection, more academic difficulties, and more stressful and harsh home environments (see Schwartz, Proctor, & Chien, 2001), but represent only a small portion (1% to 12%) of students (Dulmus et al, 2006;Nansel et al, 2001;Solberg & Olweus, 2003;Spriggs, Iannotti, Nansel, & Haynie, 2007). Over the past four decades, research has also shown that many bullies are socially intelligent (Björkqvist, Österman, & Kaukiainen, 2000;Sutton, Smith, & Swettenham, 1999a, 1999b and enjoy considerable status in the peer group (Vaillancourt et al, 2003), leading to distinctions between socially marginalized and socially integrated bullies (Farmer et al, 2010). Adults may be less able to recognize bullying perpetrated by students who appear to be socially competent, wellfunctioning individuals.…”

The nature, extent and impact of educator targeted bullying on school teachers in West Malaysia

“…Such research however is based on peer to peer bullying; or educators bullying students. As age increases it is more difficult to carry out bullying, as victims become more capable of defending themselves (Sutton, Smith, & Swettenham, 1999).…”