The Science Of Childhood Bullying & Adult Mental Health - Dr Tracy Vaillancourt

1. 0:00 – 4:38

   How Much Research is Being Done Into Bullying?

   1. CWChris Williamson0:00

      How did you get interested in studying bullying?

   2. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt0:03

      I get asked that question all the time. People wanna think that it was because either I was a bully or I was bullied, but the truth of the matter was, I was just really interested in popularity, and popularity led me to bullying. Because the kids at my high school were the ones who bullied the most. Um, I went ahead and looked at that for my dissertation and found that they were four times more likely to bully others than those who didn't have power, who were not popular, and then it just kind of snowballed from there.

   3. CWChris Williamson0:35

      Okay. So how much work is being done in the world of evidence-based bullying intervention, stuff like that?

   4. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt0:44

      So the past 25 years we've studied this in earnest. It's been primarily correlational. I mean, it's gonna be hard to do experiments on bullying when you think about it. Um, it's, I mean, it's just not gonna work really. (laughs) But we've looked at it primarily from a correlational point of view. The first thing was just to sort of document the prevalence and the like, and then after that then people looked at, um, individual factors that were associated with it. Dan Olweus kind of led the charge. He's a Swede who, uh, was living in Norway at the time, um, conducted the largest study, uh, at the time, longest- largest longitudinal study, but also intervention study. Um, and then found a 50% reduction, but easy to do in Norway when you have everybody involved. It's a small country. Um, so anyhow, so he looked at, um, what happens to kids who bully as they move forward, so identified boys in grade nine, found that, uh, a large percentage of them were criminally- were involved in, um, the criminal justice system by the time they were age 24. So that was kind of like the first, I think, well conducted study in this area that was bon- beyond just descriptives, although there are, it is still descriptive to some extent. And then, um, some people then focused, um, on the so- sort of like the broader context that it happens in, so like not just at the individual level but what do school-related factors look like? Kids are nested within schools or nested within their families. How do those interrelate? And then my focus was always on the neurobiology of bullying. I was really interested in documenting how it hurt people, not just at that level where it could be easily dismissed where people just say, "Ah, you know, you just need to be more resilient. Suck it up." Um, "Yeah, she's sad but she'll get over it." I wanted to show that no, it, it affects them in a way that's profound and places them at risk for the rest of their lives. So that was kind of like my area of research and since then, um, others have followed. Um, there's not enough of us. I think that we need to be looking at the neurobiology a little bit more carefully. It's a profound psychosocial stressor. And so that's kind of like the evolution of bullying research, and then there's another side group that looks at it from an evolutionary perspective, and I know you had Tony Volk on before and I do that a little bit too with Tony and the like. Um, so, yeah, it's, I think it's, we're getting there.

   5. CWChris Williamson3:14

      What's next? What would you want to look at next or what do you think the, uh, broader bullying research community needs to be focused on?

   6. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt3:23

      Why interventions don't work. So when we look at the big meta-analyses, there was one that was just redone, um, so you'd think like when you redo the meta-analysis on, uh, bullying intervention efficacy that we would have improvements, um, over the course of a decade, and we don't. So we're still only seeing about, at best, a 20% reduction in bullying and, um, and that I think needs, uh, obviously it needs to improve because kids are so profoundly affected and so are teens and so are adults. So what is it that, um, why does this persist? Why can't we move that to be in a, like, move it so that, um, we have better rates, by better I mean lower rates of bullying, and, and we're just not there. Like there was one, I think there was one promising area, um, they're looking at, again power, I think that's really what you need to focus on because bullying is sys- is a systematic abuse of power. But, um, the kids who were most and teens who were most impervious to bullying intervention programs were the ones who were the most popular in the school, 'cause they don't want to give up their power holding position.

   7. CWChris Williamson4:37

      Oh, that's interesting.

2. 4:38 – 7:57

   The Motivations for Bullying

   1. CWChris Williamson4:38

      Okay. So (clears throat) explain to me the, the motivations for why people bully. Like, what, w- w- what's the reason for doing it?

   2. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt4:46

      I think there's a lot of different motivations but I think primarily it's about the corrupting influence of power. So our longitudinal studies show that, okay, so there's a certain percentage of kids, probably about 10% of kids, and when I say kids I mean anybody under 18. Um, so there's a certain percentage of kids who just have sort of like, um, emotional dysregulation, so prefrontal dysfunction, so ADHD, conduct disorder, that sort of thing. The Nelsons, um, Nelson from The Simpsons. So that's a great, um, great representation of who I mean. Um, our past studies and our past intervention efforts have focused on Nelson, or the Nelsons of the world. Um, but they are so different and they don't really represent the true bully out there. Um, so when you look at it, um, what happens is that kids have assets and competencies that the peer group values. They're good-looking, they're good athletes, they're whatever. Whatever the, every school has a different, um, context or a different culture I mean, um, and so those kids then are afforded power, and then that power is then, um, abused. So then they use aggressive means to maintain hegemony...... and-- but also to have achieved it. So like, the beauty gets you there first, and then it corrupts you, and then it just escalates into you being a complete jerk and then ruling the school. And then, uh, in a sense, like, creating the norms of the school, because these kids are so powerful and so salient, um, that everybody pays attention to them and everybody emulates what they're doing. And then next thing you know, you have, um, the, the entire environment has been corrupted, not just the individual.

   3. CWChris Williamson6:36

      And that's 90% of bullies?

   4. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt6:38

      That's 90% of kids who bully others.

   5. CWChris Williamson6:41

      Okay. Why is it not the case that you get a benevolent leader at the top? Why is it that when people get power that they end up going toward cruelty rather than kindness?

   6. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt6:52

      Um, there are some. There are definitely some kind leaders. There... I, I'm-- I make a distinction in my research between implicit and explicit power. So implicit power is the type of power you achieve by having competencies and assets that the peer group values, and you don't abuse your power. And then explicit power is the type of power that you achieve through coercive means, and it elicits fear and compliance and submission. Um, and then kids who bully others tend to be this melange of implicit and explicit power, so they do have some redeeming qu- uh, qualities. They can be pro-social, they tend to be strategic, um, they're interpersonally exploitative. Like, that sort of thing exists, so Machiavellian. Um, but, um, we don't have a good grasp on who those just pure implicit power people are. Um, but they exist. We just don't know enough about them. So the kids who are pro-social and only pro-social but extremely powerful within their school community.

3. 7:57 – 13:08

   Personality Profile of a Typical Bully

   1. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt7:57

   2. CWChris Williamson7:57

      Mm. What's the personality profile of a typical bully? Have you got-- have you done OCEAN or HEXACO or anything else on them?

   3. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt8:06

      We've done it all.

   4. CWChris Williamson8:06

      Have they got a star sign that we need to look out for?

   5. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt8:08

      Yeah. I-- so right now, we're focusing more on the, the dark triad and looking at how that unfolds, and it's what you would expect. They're really high on narcissism, they're high on Machiavellianism, they're high on, uh-- they're psychopathic in some ways, they have psychopathic traits. Um, so they're callous and unemotional in a lot of ways. They're very well, um, adjusted. They're good at, um, at explaining their terrible behavior, at justifying it to themselves and to others. Um, they're socially skilled. Uh, you know, so I-- we used to think, like based on Olweus's old study that kids who bullied others were just destined to be locked up in a sense, or just have a, like a life of misery and cause harm to society. And yet, what our studies have shown, and we've been following kids for over 16 years, from the time they were 10 until now, um, they're 26. Actually, they're tw- turning 27. And that's not the case. These are pretty successful individuals. Um, they're successful because they have this blend of pro-social and antisocial. Um, they have, like I said, a lot of assets and competencies, so they don't get shunned. I, like I've said when it comes to the girl world, um, that being beautiful can-- you can get away with murder if you're attractive. So... And then on the boys' side, there's a lot of things, like if they're a good athlete and you're in a very, um, athletic school, they can get away with murder. I think that if you act the way some of these beautiful girls and athletic boys act, um, without those features, um, the peer group's gonna turn on you pretty quickly. And that's what you see with Nelson, right?

   6. CWChris Williamson10:03

      Mm-hmm.

   7. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt10:03

      So, no tolerance for Nelson 'cause Nelson doesn't have a lot going for him.

   8. CWChris Williamson10:07

      (laughs) Does that mean the bullies are smarter than average, if you were to do an IQ test?

   9. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt10:12

      There's evidence that they have better social skills. Their emotional intelligence is higher. I think that there probably is, um, higher intelligence, just like a general intelligence, because to be able to manage and manipulate interpersonal relationships is quite complicated, to really understand the nuances, the politics of the playground. That takes some skill, some cognitive skills.

   10. CWChris Williamson10:37

       So they're privileged in one of many ways, athletically capable, good-looking, presumably probably people from rich homes or homes that have got-

   11. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt10:46

       It's exactly what we found.

   12. CWChris Williamson10:48

       ... who've got that. And then even the more sort of difficult to observe privileges of social skills, of... I'm, I'm gonna imagine they're higher on disagreeability, uh, and assertiveness and stuff like that.

   13. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt11:02

       Um, yes and no. So, they could also be higher on both. Like, so you would think, like, um, like in some ways they're agreeable, in other ways they're not. The lack of agreeableness comes with the, um, entitlement that comes. Again, like, holding-- wielding power is really bad for an individual's, um-- like, I mean, it's good for their personal trajectory, but it's not good for society's trajectory. I mean, you could just see leadership around the world, um, and how corrupt it is. In a, in a lot of ways, this is what I'm, I'm describing. Um, you know, like, a lot of people aren't fans of Donald Trump, but Donald Trump didn't get to where he is by just being purely, um, explicit in his power, right? He does have some assets and competencies. Dancing is not one of them, but-

   14. CWChris Williamson11:50

       He's got the prestige as well as that sort of dominance thing.

   15. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt11:54

       Yeah, you know what I mean? And then there's this other thing that we haven't really looked at and we should. I'm gonna just move over out of the sun again (laughs) .

   16. CWChris Williamson12:00

       It's all right. Keep swing around.

   17. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt12:01

       Um, one of the things that I think we also need to get a handle on is, like-... um, people who are dirty fighters, I think that gives them power too, because, um, you know, w- anxiety is the root of human restraint. So, uh, at the end of the day, unless you're a psychopath, you are gonna pull back a bit, you are gonna be a little bit anxious about how people view you, you are gonna be worried about crossing a line, right? Unless, again, you're wired different because you're a psychopath, and we tend to all have that. But then there's this group that are just really high on psychopathic features, um, everyday sadism, and they don't care. And so they, um, use aggression in a way that you and I would never use, and that then wields them power because it's just so off the rails and so atypical and quite scary. So you actively avoid them or you placate to them if you can't avoid them, and then it gives them this erroneous belief that they're respected when in fact they're feared.

   18. CWChris Williamson13:06

       Mm. That's interesting.

4. 13:08 – 15:33

   Are All Bullies From Broken Homes?

   1. CWChris Williamson13:08

      What's the truth around bullies being from broken homes?

   2. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt13:13

      Um, so I don't know that, and I thought I knew the research literature pretty well. I think that that would be this idea that they come from broken homes would be studying more aggressive behavior, and, you know, keep in mind that when we're talking about bullying, we're talking about the end of that spectrum, right? So all bullying is aggressive behavior, but not all aggressive behavior is bullying. Bullying happens in the context of a power imbalance. So there is an overrepresentation of kids from, um, dysfunctional homes where there's family discord and they're not intact who have a more- higher- they're higher on aggressive trajectories. There is a bit of a genetic load attached to that too that people don't like to talk about, but it does exist. Um, but I don't know of any study off the top of my head where you see, um, kids from broken homes more likely to bully others.

   3. CWChris Williamson14:06

      That's interesting. I- I- I think (clears throat) it's one of the kind of go-tos of the hopeful, uh, slightly dismissive person when it comes to bullying, which is, "Well, you know, this is just a normal response to an abnormal raising situation," and that's kind of the place they- they go to.

   4. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt14:26

      And, and that is true, but they're talking about aggression, and they're conflating it with bullying. And we really need to keep them separate because the evidence on bullying suggests that those who bully others have a different profile, right? So, like, again, they're- they're higher on these dark triad traits. But also, those who are victimized, who are victims of bullying, don't fare well at all, and it's because of that power imbalance, because they can't fight back, 'cause they can't defend themselves, because it happens over and over again. It places them at a- a huge disadvantage that really, um, hurts them today and tomorrow. So, um, I see this happening all the time in education, um, where parents and students, um, and even educators, uh, mistake aggression and bullying. They think they're the same thing. If it happened o- if it happens once, it's typically not bullying. When it happens over and over again, and the reason it can happen over and over again is because there's a- a differential, uh, there's a power differential, right?

   5. CWChris Williamson15:32

      Yeah. Talk to me about

5. 15:33 – 20:17

   The Components of Bullying

   1. CWChris Williamson15:33

      the... I don't know, if you were to make a- a meal that was bullying, what are the ingredients, the component parts that go into it in order for you to sort of have that? You've mentioned about power, power imbalance, a sort of inability to fight back, social exclusion, stuff like that. What- what are the-

   2. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt15:50

      Yeah.

   3. CWChris Williamson15:50

      ... what- what are the individual components of bullying?

   4. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt15:52

      I think we'd have to build two different meals. We would have to build that Nelson meal, right? And that kid would, again, have a lot of, um... So they would be dysregulated. They probably have a lot of prefrontal dysfunction. They would be, um, they wouldn't be strategic. They would be reactive in their use of aggression. Um, they would run amok of their school by just indiscriminately picking on everybody. They would be rejected, uh, marginalized. Their future would not be that positive. Um, but then if we built the other meal, it would be kids who have- who come in, um, thinking they're it and a bag of chips because they've been told that they're it, um, they have a lot of assets and competencies, which I already mentioned, um, they are probably a little bit lower on anxiety, so they're able to treat people poorly and not worry about it too much, um, and then- then it just snowballs, right? Because then that accrues power, then that power then corrupts them, and then they want to usurp even more power by being a total asshole.

   5. CWChris Williamson17:12

      Mm. How many people are-

   6. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt17:13

      Okay. I- sorry, I need to qualify. They're not total assholes. They're assholes to some people and good to others. Because if you're a complete jerk, you then alienate yourself and your power base, um, also then, um, gets corrupted, and corrupted in a different way, like, meaning, like, you just can't hold onto, um, your- your power holding position.

   7. CWChris Williamson17:39

      Yeah, because you need the sort of sycophants and suck-uppers around you.

   8. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt17:44

      Exactly.

   9. CWChris Williamson17:44

      And if you're too much of an asshole, you become a Nelson.

   10. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt17:46

       Yeah, you need a base to help you out.

   11. CWChris Williamson17:49

       How many people are victims and bullies?

   12. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt17:54

       So, um, bullies represent... So victims are about 30% of the population, um, are victimized, and 10% are bullied ruthlessly every single day. We're talking millions of kids as we speak were bullied today.... around the world, hundreds of millions. Um, so 30% of the population's bullied, 10% are ruthlessly bullied, and then in terms of those who bully others, it's a bit lower, it's probably around 8% bully others. Um, but, you know, most of it is reliant on self-reports, and most kids don't admit to doing this to others. If we use pure nominations, then you're getting closer to, I'd say, 20 to 30 again, it would map on. But it really depends on the methodology.

   13. CWChris Williamson18:43

       Mm. So the benefits to bullies, maintaining power, popularity, uh, it seems like they have, uh, in some ways better outcomes in later life. I assume that that's not because, they don't get better outcomes because they were bullies, they get better outcomes because the things that permitted them to bully are also useful when they become adults like, uh, socially being quite adept, maybe being a little bit more ruthless and assertive than other people are, uh, having this lowered sense of anxiety which allows them to maybe be a little bit more risk-taking in a calculated way, et cetera, et cetera. Um, so those are some of the benefits. Are there any costs to bullies bullying?

   14. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt19:25

       Um, so again, if we just focus on high status, high-powered bullies, I guess the cost would be one that's borne by society and those in their lives more than at the individual level, and that, that kind of hurts to tell you that, because I would want there to be a cost that dissuades them from acting this way, but the truth of the matter is that they're a menace to those in their lives, not necessarily to themselves. And, um, and so I think the cost, one of the costs to themselves would be, uh, maybe in the, in the end, they have more difficult relationships because it maintains their narcissism or it, um, influences their narcissistic traits, so it makes them more pronounced, they become more entitled, and then that is challenging to be around.

6. 20:17 – 23:07

   The Types of People Who Get Bullied

   1. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt20:17

   2. CWChris Williamson20:17

      Okay, so moving on to the victims, what are the types of people who get bullied?

   3. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt20:24

      So w- I mean, there, that was like a really big focus back in the day, like, could we identify kids who get bullied, um, so that we could protect them? And obviously those who are not able to de- defend themselves are gonna have a harder time. Um, you know, think about this like if, and we're talking again about the Nelson, and I know I keep making this distinction, but that's, they're really different animals. It really looks different. So, um, those kids come into grade one, let's just say, and they, they just pick on everybody and, you know, "I pick on Tracy," and she goes and tells the teacher right away, and then, "I pick on Chris and he doesn't tell anybody, and so that gets me coming back." Right? So one of the things that you see is that those that are willing to intervene on their behalf, so meaning like saying, "No, I'm not gonna allow this to happen," or tell somebody immediately, they tend to not get victimized again. Um, now, that's not always the case, but, you know, as a general rule, saying no and sticking up for yourself is a, is a good way to go. Um, but not everybody has the capacity to do that, so I'm not asking people to do it, 'cause I recognize that's an- inherently unfair. Um, kids who are shy and socially withdrawn tend to get picked on a little bit more. Um, kids who are girls who have ADHD who are just a little bit atypical, neurodivergent kids get picked on a little bit more. Kids who don't have the cool stuff that everybody has can be picked on more. So if you're in a middle class school and you're not wealthy, you're not in that economic bracket, you could be more at risk. Um, kids who have poorer social skills, um, can get picked on. But then there's also kids who challenge those who wield power who get can- can get picked on. So if you're, you know, a very attractive girl, let's say, and you move to a new school, uh, god help you. It's just not gonna go well. Um, you know, those girls are gonna eat you alive and make sure that you don't usurp their power. Um, if you're a very athletic boy and you come into a new school, I think you'll be okay, 'cause boys tend to, um, tolerate hierarchies more than girls. So-

   4. CWChris Williamson22:43

      Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   5. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt22:44

      ... it's, you know, it's a little complicated. I know you maybe want just like a list of here are the things of kids that, like put, that places kids at risk, but I just can't give it to you 'cause it's far more complicated than that.

   6. CWChris Williamson22:56

      I think it's more interesting to look at it this way, because, you know, it's not a one-size-fits-all. Uh, the- there's some fundamental, you know, power imbalance, aggression is being used. Um, it- it feels

7. 23:07 – 27:29

   Bullies & The Need to Belong

   1. CWChris Williamson23:07

      to me like bullying is playing on the need to belong, and the social ex-

   2. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt23:14

      100%.

   3. CWChris Williamson23:14

      Okay, so is, is social exclusion and the need to belong, is that sort of one of the, the fundamental components of, of how bullying works?

   4. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt23:22

      I think bullying exploits that fundamental need to belong, for sure, um, and that comes back to, remember we talked about their social skills, like how do they know that and how they know that so early, for sure. Um, and then bullying also exploits, um, well, I mean, it thwarts people's fundamental need to belong, but it's not always exploiting it. So some kids are just better at it, at better picking up what your sensitivities are, and then, um, then just treating you poorly as a consequence, right? Like, they just know which buttons to press. Um, I don't know if we know really what that ingredient is, so if we're still building our meal, like ...

   5. CWChris Williamson24:06

      Yeah, I- I wonder whether, you know, one of the kind of ruthless things, I guess, about, about bullying is that if you as the high-powered...... prestigious, slightly dominant person make it socially cancerous to be associated with the person that you're always picking on ruthlessly, the 10% or whatever, or maybe, uh, maybe more. Um, it means that it becomes increasingly difficult for other kids to step in and give the victim the thing that they really need, which is a support structure, because they don't want to be in the blast radius of the super cool kid that's always being mean.

   6. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt24:43

      100%. And that's exactly what the research shows. So, uh, so if I'm a bully, um, the kids that I bully, and when you're in my group, you're also bullying them. So they can't, they can't win, right? And then they become, um, in a sense, uh, avoided. Not in a sense, they do, really do get avoided because nobody wants to be the next target. And I always think about like, it's like social singling, right? Like, we talk a lot about virtue singling now, and everybody pretending they're good and look at me. But there's another singling that's happening, and it's about like, "Hey, you mess with me, you're gonna be the next target, and this is what it looks like." So the kid's head really is on a stake for everybody to see. And then, uh, when we talk, we talked about this already, but this is what I mean why we can't, um, we shouldn't mix up aggression with bullying, because you can imagine how isolating that is to the kid who's been victimized. Um, how do they get out of that? And then they tend to learn that the way to get out of that is then to act like the jerk who's doing it to them. And now instead of having a prevalence rate of 30% bullying at your school, you have a prevalence rate in the 70s, because-

   7. CWChris Williamson25:58

      Do you, do you see that?

   8. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt25:59

      ... nobody fixed it.

   9. CWChris Williamson26:00

      Do ... Yeah, do you see this sort of, um, contagion within schools if there's a school that-

   10. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt26:06

       100%.

   11. CWChris Williamson26:08

       Why?

   12. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt26:08

       I go to schools where, um, and we do research across hundreds and hundreds of schools in Ontario, and some have low bullying rates, like 15%, and others have 70% bullying rates. And it really is about that, like, um, is anybody, um, holding them to account? And if you don't hold them to account, they will corrupt your environment.

   13. CWChris Williamson26:32

       And presumably that gets passed down from year to year as well.

   14. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt26:37

       Exactly. So there are like, think of it like, and I know you know this literature, but like, if you think about, like, dominance, the dominance literature really tells us that when somebody wields power, we pay attention to them. We emulate them. And they don't pay attention to us. They are, um, they're impervious to our signals of distress. They're not that interested in us. But we're profoundly interested in them, and they also represent a really important socializing component in their environment. So they're socializing everybody who's paying attention to them, um, in a way that we don't want them to be acting, right? Like, we don't want this to be the model of our citizenship at our school.

   15. CWChris Williamson27:22

       Which is why you have 15% schools as well as 70% schools.

   16. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt27:26

       Exactly. Yeah.

   17. CWChris Williamson27:28

       What about,

8. 27:29 – 29:20

   Ethnic Group Differences in Bullying

   1. CWChris Williamson27:29

      uh, ethnic group differences in bullying?

   2. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt27:32

      Yeah, so we did a really big meta analysis, and I was a little bit surprised, because if you look at, like, you just are gonna think that there's gonna be ethnic differences, um, e- ethnic and racial differences, just expect it, and we didn't find that at all for perpetration and for, uh, bullying victimization. Not at all. I mean, there's a little bit. Um, at the end of the day, it's about numeration. So if we are at a school where it's primarily South Asian and we're the only two white kids, then we're a little bit vulnerable. Um, but if you're the only two South Asian kids at a white school, you're vulnerable. So it really doesn't have to do with one race or ethnicity or j- it really has to do with who's wielding power, um, in your, in your particular school.

   3. CWChris Williamson28:21

      Mm-hmm. So, being a minority anywhere, probably not a, not fantastic unless you've, I don't know, you're some sort of sexy minority. I don't know. Um-

   4. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt28:30

      I was gonna say, there are some minorities that like, um, are more protected than others. So like in Canada, Black youth are seen as more cool, um, or as cooler.

   5. CWChris Williamson28:41

      Oh, wow. They're like a sh- a rare, shiny Charizard in, in Canada, I imagine.

   6. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt28:46

      Yeah, I, I'm not too sure, but I do know that like there's, um, there's something going on there. Um, I mean, we don't have the same history as the United States, right? We didn't have slavery and the like. Um, our immigrant profile looks different. Um, but so I, in our studies, we don't see Black youth being bullied as much, but we do see Asian students and South Asian students being bullied more than Black students. Um, but we always see white students in our studies being bullied the most and bullying others the most, but they represent the majority in our country.

   7. CWChris Williamson29:18

      Right, so it's, uh, that's always gonna be the

9. 29:20 – 33:02

   Are Obese Kids More Likely to Be Bullied?

   1. CWChris Williamson29:20

      case. All right, what about, um, the relationship between overweight and bullying?

   2. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt29:24

      So, okay, so there has been a lot of research showing that kids who are overweight and obese are more likely to be bullied. And then we did this study that like blew my mind because it was not at all what I thought was gonna be the case. So we follow kids perspectively for seven years, and what we found was that there was always an association between being bullied and being overweight, but that kids gained weight as a consequence of being treated poorly, and that's what was driving the association primarily. So it's not like they were big and then got bullied; they got bullied and then became bigger and then got bullied, and then it just kind of spiraled. So really unfair, but it makes sense because they become depressed and depression is associated with either, um, overeating or undereating, so you're gonna go one way or the other. And so to me, it, it fits, like, when I stood back and looked at it, I was like, "Oh, yeah, this makes sense." But this study needs to be replicated. It's only one study. We are the first to show it. It'll be interesting to see if others show it as well.

   3. CWChris Williamson30:29

      It seems like for both boys and girls, uh, attractiveness is one of the protective mechanisms or one of the enabling mechanisms, uh, you know, a very sort of obvious bestowed type of prestige, which c- y- I- you can then sort of transmute into dominance. And, um, being obese is one of the things that's gonna damage your attractiveness, whether you're fat coming in or get fatter as it goes on.

   4. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt30:53

      Yeah.

   5. CWChris Williamson30:53

      But the- the last thing that you want to do when you're a- a teenage boy or girl and everybody is highly scrutinizing the way that everybody else looks and changes day-to-day, month-to-month, year-to-year, uh, is to lose some attractiveness. And, uh, yeah, I suppose it's a vicious cycle that being bullied causes you to ... I mean, I- I don't know how many people get bullied in school and become more attractive because of it.

   6. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt31:17

      Yeah. Uh, I- I don't know wha- how that would work. Now, there is a little bit ... So can we talk about skinny kids a little bit? So skinny boys are vulnerable and, um, and especially skinny boys who are adolescents are very vulnerable, um, because that's not perceived as masculine, which kinda goes hand in hand with, um, being vulnerable, which is unfortunate. And then, um, thin girls get bullied but because of intersexual competition. So, like, even though, like, you're gonna see it on both, like, so thin children and thin adolescents are at risk.

   7. CWChris Williamson31:55

      Mm-hmm.

   8. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt31:55

      But the mechanism is different for boys and girls.

   9. CWChris Williamson31:58

      So interesting. So for the boys, it's insufficiently masculine, you don't have that dominance, you don't have that physical presence that would maybe say, "Hey, don't fuck with me." But for girls, it's because other girls see that as potential, like, uh, I guess sexual competition, for want of a better term for when talking about teenagers, but like precocious sexual competition or- or whatever, a- a- a future rival in one way or another because of the way that they look.

   10. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt32:25

       Exactly. Um, exactly. And then- then- and then there was a study that just came out that showed, um, this curve and it was looking at how, um, weight status maps onto mental health. So this was published in JAMA, just came out like a few months ago. And you see both ends. So you see the really thin kids being overly represented on having poor mental health, and then the overweight kids also having poorer mental health. More on the overweight side than the underweight side, um, but it really ... I- I think that that could be explained through peer processes.

   11. CWChris Williamson33:00

       Hmm. Talk to me about ... You've

10. 33:02 – 42:46

    How Boys & Girls Bully Differently

    1. CWChris Williamson33:02

       kind of touched on it there, this difference between girl bullying and boy bullying. W- w- h- how do they differ?

    2. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt33:09

       Um, boys are so obvious in their bullying. They're really ... Like, they value dominance and submission, so they are gonna put you in your place either physically or verbally and you're gonna know where you stand. If you have any flaw, Chris, they're gonna tell you what it is, right? And it's gonna be immediate and everybody's gonna mock you. With girls, it's more circuitous. Like, we value inclusion and exclusion a little bit more than boys, so we, um, use our relationships as a vehicle to cause harm. So we're more likely to use indirect aggression, which is also called social or relational aggression. So we will spread rumors about you, we'll exclude you from the peer group, um, those sorts of things. We'll give you a once-over and give you a death stare and mock and laugh at you and- and do that over and over again. Um, we'll pretend, you know, we are friends with you but we're really just trying to elicit information from you to use it against you.

    3. CWChris Williamson34:07

       Mm-hmm.

    4. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt34:07

       So we are, I think, are more instrumental and boys are more reactive. So we're proactive and boys are more reactive, although they can also be proactive boys.

    5. CWChris Williamson34:19

       How much cross-sex bullying happens?

    6. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt34:23

       So there's a little bit of cross-sex bullying. It mostly happens in elementary school. When they get to be in high school, they really just wanna date each other, so they don't do it as much.

    7. CWChris Williamson34:34

       (laughs)

    8. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt34:34

       Right?

    9. CWChris Williamson34:35

       It's ... Yeah, that's funny. They're interacting in one way or another, but it- it changes.

    10. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt34:40

        Yeah, exactly. And, uh, also, I think we've done a pretty good job at really making it clear that, you know, good boys don't pick on girls. So I think if you're doing that when you're 17, there ... You know, there's something pretty wrong about you.

    11. CWChris Williamson34:56

        Mm-hmm.

    12. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt34:56

        So yeah. So you tend to not see it as- as much as they get older. But when they're little kids and they haven't got the script yet and they haven't ... Or the memo hasn't been received, um, yeah, little boys can be little shits to girls but little girls can be little shits to boys.

    13. CWChris Williamson35:12

        I suppose until puberty kicks in, little boys and little girls, apart from one very specific part of their anatomy, are basically the s- ... Like, physically, they're the same thing, so there's not much difference between them. Uh, so I imagine even physically a eight-year-old girl could pick on an eight-year-old boy, but i- it's gonna be very rare for a 16-year-old girl to be able to pick on a 16-year-old boy.

    14. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt35:33

        Yeah. It's interesting, though. So the sex difference in- in the expression of bullying ... Um, so a lot of times people wanna say that there's no gender difference when it comes to indirect aggression, but they have not looked at it in terms of proportion. So they look at it in terms of means, and it's true boys use it, um, just as much as girls, but girls only use this. And they tend to focus on this form of bullying early on. So we can see it in, um, three-year-olds, four-year-olds, five-year-olds where, you know, "You can't sit with me during circle time."

    15. CWChris Williamson36:05

        Mm-hmm.

    16. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt36:05

        Um, they spread little rumors, you know, "Chris pees his pants," that sort of thing. Um, so they're- they're pretty mean. We- we did a couple studies, um, where we looked at toddlers and we did direct observations, and these girls were nasty.

    17. CWChris Williamson36:21

        What do you think that is? Is that just some really precocious, uh, version of the same dynamic, the venting, the intersexual competition, the sort of m- very manipulative, uh, ways that-... females are going to have to use sort of social networks and stuff when they grow up. Is this them just sandbox training grounding it very early on?

    18. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt36:46

        I like that you, I like how you described it. I think that really is what it is. They're practicing, they're honing a skill for the future. Kaj Bjorkquist, um, proposed this heterotopic continuity, uh-

    19. CWChris Williamson36:58

        Heterotopic-

    20. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt36:59

        ... model.

    21. CWChris Williamson36:59

        ... continuity-

    22. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt37:00

        Yeah, of aggression.

    23. CWChris Williamson37:01

        Fuck yeah.

    24. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt37:01

        And basically he talked about how, I mean, everybody eventually moves towards indirect aggression because it's the thing that society tolerates, but they don't-

    25. CWChris Williamson37:10

        Mm-hmm.

    26. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt37:10

        You know, we don't tolerate little girls punching little boys. We tolerate boys punching boys up until a certain point. But he also talked about how this happens, and one of the things is that girls just have superior verbal and social skills, um, early in life, and, and it continues across the lifespan. Um, I know a lot of people are, um, turned off by sex difference research, but you can't call yourself, um, a critical thinker if you don't think sex differences exist 'cause they certainly exist.

    27. CWChris Williamson37:42

        This is a, this is a safe space for you, Tracy.

    28. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt37:44

        (laughs) Yeah, yeah, yeah.

    29. CWChris Williamson37:45

        I don't think there's anyone, any, anyone listening who's-

    30. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt37:46

        But, yeah, i- it's such a robust finding.
11. 42:46 – 47:57

    What We Learn From Our Parents

    1. CWChris Williamson42:46

       think it's fascinating. I think that's so interesting to consider the, like th- how young this starts and what the ... Like, if you're two, what can you really do? Especially what can you do to mom and dad? But that's, um, something I've been thinking about an awful lot more recently, which is Lime and Stone or Brad Wilcox or, you know, whoever you want from, like, the Institute for Family Studies, both of whom have been on the show, but they have an agenda. Like they have an agenda of keeping families together. They're very pro-marriage. Uh, you know, Melissa Carney's work, the two-parent advantage- or two-parent privilege. Um, if you're looking at this stuff and you think, "Well, it's really important that parents stick together because we know that the outcomes from single parent homes aren't, aren't fantastic." But the way that parents stick together, what, what are the lessons that your kids are learning about what love is and attachment and, uh, dealing with disagreement and regulating, uh, dysregulation, and how do people come back together and what does that tell you about what you should expect from your friends and from future relationships? Is this really the best that you should hope for? Like this sort of, um, silent, objectively successful but experientially miserable relationship? Like is that really the pinnacle of what you're expecting in the rest of your life?

    2. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt44:05

       Exactly. It's attachment theory, right? It's about this is the prototype, and is this the prototype you want kids to have? There was some studies done, I think Sarah Joffe is the one who did it, like maybe 15, 20 years ago, showing that it's actually really dangerous, um, for kids to be in a home with an antisocial dad. Their outcomes are better than not having that antisocial dad in the home.

    3. CWChris Williamson44:30

       Wow.

    4. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt44:30

       So like, yeah, so keep families together, but at what cost? I mean, it really, you know, it's like everything. There's always gonna be variance, there's always heterogeneity, and we have to be thinking about these nuances because it's not gonna be one size fits all. Yeah, having, um, a dad who's, you know, modeling really inappropriate behavior, and I know people are gonna say, "Well, what about moms?" This is the study that looked at dads. But yeah, any of these, these role models being corrupt is a problem. And that's, uh, also the peers. Like, having the leadership of your school be corrupt is not good for the health of your school.

    5. CWChris Williamson45:10

       Yeah. I, uh, it's, you're so right, and I think I pushed Brad on this point, and I think, I think he's, he arrives at the right place, which is basically, yes, there are, um, many cases in which a marriage would be better to break up than it would be to stay together, but it's his belief that the threshold for when you should break up has been lowered too much. That, you know, this person isn't helping me fulfill my, my highest ideal, or, you know, I really hate the way that they slurp their tea or whatever it may be, because of a million, a million different reasons that we don't need to get into. But I think w- finding out and resetting where that barometer lies and looking at interventions for relationships to, okay, how can we come back together, how can we have a hard reset on this so that we can really restart, and thinking about what is it that we're modeling for our kids. You know, am I, am I begrudgingly making my way through the next 18 years of this marriage so that my kids can leave a non-broken home, uh, but, you know, how, how much are they taking from, from the way that we interact? There's this video that you might have seen that's been floating around on Twitter which is, uh, the best thing that parents can do for their kids is show them how much they love each other, and it, it's this video of a child sat down on a couch, and it pans to the two parents salsa dancing out on a balcony together. It's a little bit kind of, of, of a meme, but, uh, definitely in, uh, in that regard, I think, yeah, it, it's not just about sticking together for the kids, it's about sticking together in a good way.

    6. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt46:36

       And, and I'll just add this because I think we'd be remissed if we didn't, one of the challenges about families breaking up is that oftentimes women and children are left in poverty, and poverty is a huge stressor. Poverty changes the brains of children, and so this is where, like, beyond the behavioral things that we're talking about and the socializing influence that we're talking about, um, if we could have kids and women not live in poverty, then I think we would see different outcomes, and if we-

    7. CWChris Williamson47:08

       Mm-hmm.

    8. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt47:08

       ... were to hold that statistically, uh, account for that statistically, I think that we would be making different, um, decisions, but also we would hold a different viewpoint about this.

    9. CWChris Williamson47:21

       Yeah, that's interesting. So, uh, a broken home isn't just a broken home. A lot of the time it's a poor home, and a poor home is a stressed home, and you can't-

    10. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt47:28

        E- exactly.

    11. CWChris Williamson47:29

        ... separate those out.

    12. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt47:30

        Yeah, uh, uh, I think those variances need to be, um, separated, accounted for, or their interactions need to be, um, you know, examined. But at the end of the day, we don't want kids to be hurt. Um, you know, obviously that's never gonna be good for a kid's life. And, and living in a home where everything is about love withdrawal and control, social control and the like, that's also not healthy.

    13. CWChris Williamson47:55

        What about, uh, bullying

12. 47:57 – 52:30

    Bullying of LGBT Youth

    1. CWChris Williamson47:57

       for LGBT youths? This is, uh, a topic that I keep seeing online.

    2. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt48:02

       Terrible. They are so unwell and they're so poorly treated. And especially right now with the current, um, anti-trans movement, um, I mean, they are not living a good life at all.

    3. CWChris Williamson48:17

       Let's, let's separate, just before we go any deeper actually, let's separate this to LGB and T, because, uh, even though the-

    4. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt48:26

       I agree.

    5. CWChris Williamson48:26

       ... fly under the same flag sometimes, uh, I don't think they're the same thing.

    6. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt48:30

       Okay. So we'll talk about, um, lesbian, gay, bisexual students are bullied at higher rates than heterosexual students, but again, um, the context matters. So if you're in a, let's say, performing arts school where there's an overrepresentation, you're not gonna be as bullied. Um, it gets back to numeration, that sort of thing, and also what the culture of the school is. But on average, they're not treated well. Um, they're bullied at higher rates for sure.... and trans youth are particularly vulnerable. Um, and also their mental health is off the chart. Like, their poor mental health is, um, higher than anything I've seen in my career. So we have this really massive study where we're following hundreds of thousands of kids in Ontario, and those who identify as trans are not doing well.

    7. CWChris Williamson49:20

       I guess with that point, it's difficult to know whether the kids are mentally distressed because they're trans or whether they're trans because they're mentally distressed.

    8. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt49:27

       I think the temporal precedence has not been established because it's been so politically challenging to study this, and this is always a problem. When politics get, interfere with science and knowledge, um, then you can't get to truth. I think that, you, we, you know that. We both know that.

    9. CWChris Williamson49:44

       Yeah.

    10. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt49:44

        This is a problem.

    11. CWChris Williamson49:45

        Yeah, I mean, it, well, the, uh, significantly higher rates of OCD, of autism, of neurodivergence in these groups, uh, and, you know, it, you're right. It's, when you're just talking about the wellbeing of kids and you just want somebody who can't really advocate for themselves, who's still very much at the mercy of their parents or their school or their caregivers or the state, they don't have agency, and you shouldn't expect them to have that same kind of agency over this stuff. And I think it's one of the reasons why the discussion around, like, trans youths, uh, becomes so fraught, because it, you can very quickly go from biological man who wants to be creepy in women's bathrooms to confused young girl who has really horrible mental health outcomes, and you go, "Well, y- y- you need to be able to hold these two worlds in-

    12. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt50:33

        Exactly.

    13. CWChris Williamson50:33

        ... in your mind at the same time." You're saying that you're, you're sort of being empathetic for women, but you're not being empathetic for this young girl who is even more, uh, vulnerable than the women, the adult women that you're supposed to be protecting. So yeah, it's, it's, it's a really interesting one, and, uh, I don't know, I think ... I, I kind of hope/get the sense that the f- de-focusing on the trans discussion, uh, which it could go either way with four more years of Trump, um, but by actually focusing on it less might normalize it a little bit more, um, and I, I feel like there was a l- the, maybe a little bit of, sort of, I don't know what you'd call it, like conceptual fatigue, um-

    14. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt51:13

        Mm-hmm.

    15. CWChris Williamson51:14

        ... around, around, around people hearing these sort of stories all the time, and maybe actually allowing them to take a backseat will help to sort of normalize, um, the, the discussion and make it a little bit less fiery. I don't know.

    16. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt51:27

        And, and also too, I'm, it's frustrating to see the exception always being hailed as truth, right? Like, these are, they, they are very sensational stories. They elicit a lot of reaction, um, they get circulated a lot, they get stuck in your brain because of how salient they are, um, and that then is weaponized against this group that's quite diverse.

    17. CWChris Williamson51:55

        Mm.

    18. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt51:55

        And that's a problem because we're really causing harm to individuals who don't fit that minority that is hailed as being the bogeyman.

    19. CWChris Williamson52:04

        Mm.

    20. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt52:04

        And, uh, it, yeah, it, I feel for trans kids. I very much do. I think that they're in a really tough spot, and, um, and we really need to be thinking about this. These are young people, so, um, ultimately, you know, society should be judged on how well they care for their most vulnerable, and I don't think our report card's very good in this area.

    21. CWChris Williamson52:29

        Yeah, I think that's a good point.

13. 52:30 – 57:01

    How Do Bullies View Their Victims?

    1. CWChris Williamson52:30

       So getting back to, I guess, the relationship between bullies and victims, um, how do bullies see their victims? There has to be some kind of moral disengagement, some sort of disrupted self-concept thing going on. What, w- what's happening here?

    2. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt52:47

       That's precisely the mechanism. They think they d- they, they think that, um, what they're doing is justified, that the person deserves their poor treatment. Um, and, and if they don't think it, they will convince themselves that they do. So they may have reacted impulsively and then justified it using moral, uh, disengagement principles, um, or they had already, uh, you know, they've already said this person's less, they've already dehumanized the individual, and then that has given them license to treat them poorly. Moral disengagement, I think, is the most important, uh, theory that explains how everyday people, um, become bullies, how everyday people can treat others poorly and still sleep with them, sleep with a, a good conscience, because really, it's about making our egregious acts more palatable.

    3. CWChris Williamson53:43

       Um, w- what is the process of moral disengagement or the mechanism?

    4. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt53:46

       So there's a variety of different cognitive strategies, but basically, you're trying to make your shitty behavior seem justified, okay. So you may dehumanize the victim, you may blame the victim, you may diffuse responsibility, um, you may make, uh, advantageous comparisons. So like, "Listen, I just called her stupid. Chris is the one who shoved her in the locker. Like, come on, not even comparable." So those are, like we use these, these mechanisms, these cognitive mechanisms, to, to live with ourselves for the crummy behavior that we did. The other thing that people who bully others tend to do is they tend to not pick up on the cues of distress, but in fairness, um, part of it is because the power has corrupted them, so they just don't see it. Their brain actually works differently. But the other part of it is that it's so embarrassing and humiliating to be bullied that a lot of times, and it's done so publicly, it really is typically a public event, that kids then, um, hide their distress. So the one cue that is needed for...... the public, the bystanders to come in and support me, um, is what I'm suppressing, and it's the one cue that maybe will get that bully to be morally engaged instead of disengaged, is the thing that I'm suppressing.

    5. CWChris Williamson55:14

       Right.

    6. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt55:14

       So it's, you know, i- it gets really ugly.

    7. CWChris Williamson55:17

       Yeah, I mean, the sh- the shame of being socially excluded, of being picked on causes you to hide your sadness, and sadness is the very thing that might cause this bystander effect to cease, or for teacher to notice, or for parents to realize, or for the bully, themselves, to actually breach this threshold of reduced empathy. Uh, is that something actually have you seen as you're tracking longitudinally? Do adult ex-bullies have less empathy?

    8. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt55:47

       Uh, th- I think in the moment ... So there is some evidence that yes, but I think in the moment is when they have, uh, an empathetic gap, because that is when the moral disengagement is taking place, and that's when they feel fully justified. So maybe when they look back at it with fresh eyes and, and none of the emotional valence attached to it, they're able to be a bit more objective. Um, you pointed at one thing though, and I just wanted to say, 'cause if I'm not plugging my study, what's the point of even being here?

    9. CWChris Williamson56:19

       (laughs)

    10. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt56:19

        Um, that, uh, we did a study of 1,700 teachers and we asked them, like, "Why would you, um, intervene on behalf of a kid who's been bullied?" Like, "What are the cues?" Like, "What is it that's gonna, um, that's gonna motivate you to do something?" And they said distress. Distress was the number one reason that they would intervene on behalf of kids who were bullied and teens who were bullied. And as I just said, they're suppressing distress. So we're counting on adults to lead in this area, and they're not able to pick up the one cue that they need to, to realize that something is, something nefarious is going on.

    11. CWChris Williamson56:59

        Yeah. That's so interesting. So

14. 57:01 – 1:01:40

    Why Bullying Is Especially Common in Schools

    1. CWChris Williamson57:01

       why does it happen so much in school? Is there something special about the setup of the school environment? Is it something about the teenage and puberty years that encourages bullying? Wh- what's going on?

    2. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt57:15

       So first of all, bullying goes down as kids get older, so it is a lot more atypical in high school students than it is in elementary and middle school students. It really has to do about, like, there's so many different factors, but part of it is gonna be social skills, where their brain is, their brain development, social development, moral development, cognitive development, all those things interacting. Um, and there's also, like, they're vying for, uh, limited resources, so there's a little bit of resource scarcity, which I mispronounced as scarity twice the last time I was on your show. Didn't get bullied over that, Chris, so that's okay. So there's also a bit of resource scarcity that's involved. So all of these things interact. Um, they're just not that socially skilled. Um, in our intervention programs, we never talk about power, we never talk about how power corrupts, we never talk about how when you're afforded power, how it behooves you to be a good citizen, to not abuse your power. So, um, you know, we're not expecting kids are gonna have these lessons. Uh, y- at the end of the day, we're animals, right? We're primates. Um, this is what all primates do. Um, so we're socializing kids out of this.

    3. CWChris Williamson58:28

       Mm-hmm.

    4. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt58:28

       They're not necessarily socialized into it. Some of it is maintained through socialization, as we've spoken about. Like, I've said this over and over again. But I also think that we're coming to, um, the school with, like, these deficits to begin with.

    5. CWChris Williamson58:45

       Yeah. Yeah, you're having to fight against something that ... There's, there's like a bullying entropy which is always going to be there, and you're permanently going to have to intervene and intervene. But I, I guess one of the things that, at least to me, seems quite, uh, hope-inducing is that if you can intervene and create kind of a, a circuit breaker, uh, in the school, you can have this recursive culture thing work for you as opposed to against you. You can go from the 70% school to the 15% school, uh, and that, that seems quite reassuring. So I remember I was having this ... When I had my chat with Tony, and he said there's something to do with the ossification of social hierarchies and the fact that you don't move out of them much for a very long time. What's the role that that's got to play with childhood bullying? Because there is a, like, an obvious question. You get to university, and it's not happening as much, and then you get to the workplace, and even in the workplace, you know, people are there for a while, not quite so long. So you think, "Well, is it immaturity?" Is it some hypervigilance to social hierarchies that we have during puberty when we're trying to flee the nest and we're looking for who our partner might be and all the rest of it? Um, yeah, what, what's the unmoving, long-term exposure to the same social hierarchies and social people? What, what's the role that that's got to play?

    6. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:00:05

       I mean, it's precisely what you said, everything, all of the above. And you and I talked about it in the last time we spoke, too, is it really is. Like, the hierarchies are pretty pronounced in elementary and high school. Um, they're maintaining their power holding position, um, coercively, but also using prosocial means. So it really has to do with that. So, um, you know, how do you maintain power? Well, you abuse those below you, you scare them, but then you also charm them. So, like, it's, it's complicated. It's, again, this blending of prosocial and antisocial behavior. But, a- and then there's lack of autonomy. You spoke a little bit about that before. Um, and it really is that. Like, they don't have the same autonomy that you and I have. Um, you know, as friends in adulthood, you treat me poorly, I don't have to worry about seeing you again at school, so we're done. I can move on. Um, whereas in high school and elementary school, you are gonna see them again, um, and you're gonna have to manage that.... and there's just some kids that are just more dominant than others, right? And they're imposing their will on others, and not everybody's appreciating that, but not everybody has the same skill set to be able to impose their will on others. There, there's little primates, um, put together in same age bands, um, and then, then that same age band is then mixed with other age bands, and we wonder why it happens.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:01:33

       Hmm. How does bullying impact victims? What does it do to them?

    8. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:01:39

       It affects

15. 1:01:40 – 1:10:33

    How Bullying Impacts an Individual

    1. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:01:40

       all aspects of their life. It affects everything, in the immediate and in the long term. It affects their mental health, their physical health, their academic achievement, their sense of self. Um, it changes who they are fundamentally. And not only that, it lasts a lifetime. So studies that have followed individuals 30, 50 years show that you can identify somebody who was bullied at 10 and they still have higher mental health rates i- at 50, um, and at 60. It, it's a scar that never heals. Now some, of course, will have it, will get by, um, it, but for the most part, you won't. And the reason why you won't is that it's so salient, it's so disruptive, it serves a function for you to never forget. So it's a social pain that's seared in your amygdala and you're never gonna get past it. You may be better, you may get better, um, for sure, but, um, but it's, if you re- you think about it, so like if you and I did a thought experiment right now, and I know you said you were bullied as, as a child, and you think about those moments, you're probably gonna still have a visceral reaction. And that has an evolutionary significance. That not belonging is so salient, it's how-

    2. CWChris Williamson1:03:07

       Mm-hmm.

    3. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:03:08

       ... we got ahead as a human species. It's how we collaborate, that the neural alarm is massive when you don't. And so your brain is gonna never forget it, and neither will your body.

    4. CWChris Williamson1:03:21

       Are there some biological or genetic vulnerabilities to the effects of bullying?

    5. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:03:27

       So when we look at, um, you and I talked about this last time about 5-HTTLPR, the serotonin transporter gene. So and obviously like genetics have advanced, epigenetics is kinda like the new thing, they're doing full scans, um, full gene scans and the like. So, um, not th- so there's a few people looking at the genetic vulnerability, and there is a little bit, um, that exists. I can't tell you what specific genes are involved. I don't think that's the way to go. I, it doesn't make sense to me. I think that was the way to go 20 years ago, that's how we thought about it, but we don't think about it that way today. Um, I do think that there are other things that like, that obviously genes influence everything, so, um, the way a person sees the world is gonna also be attached to how they interpret events. Um, some people are just more sensitive to cues of belonging and not belonging, so they're high on rejection sensitivity. Um, some individuals are more anxious, um, so if you think about it from a biological perspective, their limbic system is more active, uh, their prefrontal cortex in a sense gets hijacked by their limbic system and it won't let them calm down, it won't let them be rational, it won't let them see things, um, as more nuanced. So all of these individual differences affect how an, a person deals with bullying. I think it's really important, and that's the bulk of my work is showing that, um, these, this kind of heterogeneity, 'cause it's really important because some kids do better than others, and then the kids who do better are kind of seen as the poster child of like-

    6. CWChris Williamson1:05:07

       Mm-hmm.

    7. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:05:07

       ... "This is what you should aspire to be-"

    8. CWChris Williamson1:05:09

       They worked through it.

    9. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:05:10

       ... or the fact that you're not doing as well as Becky is because there's something wrong with you. Chris, if you just weren't so whiny, if you just weren't so, um, squeaky, whatever you want to call it, then, you know, you could be okay. Just suck it up and you'll be okay. Um, so I'm really trying to chronicle this. There's a lot of individual differences, but there really is a difference in how they see the world sometimes, but again, back to that temporal priority. Is it the case that they're treated poorly and then it changes their worldview? Or do they have a worldview that's different that then, um-

    10. CWChris Williamson1:05:45

        Causes them to be treated poorly.

    11. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:05:46

        ... the peer group picks up on and then it moves forward? Our studies typically show symptoms driven effects, meaning that kids who have poorer mental health are picked on, then that makes their mental health poorer. And if you've ever been around depressed people, you can kind of see what's happening, um, they seem aloof, they don't seem interested, they don't have a lot of motivation, they're not a lot of fun. I'm not expecting them to be, I'm not saying that at all, but the peer group doesn't quite like that, so then they pick up, they pick up on those cues of being unwell and then pick on these kids and then make them even more unwell.

    12. CWChris Williamson1:06:23

        Mm-hmm.

    13. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:06:24

        So, and then there's gonna be some kids who arrive at school ready to get at her, and then they're treated so poorly and then they become unwell, and then their worldview changes.

    14. CWChris Williamson1:06:36

        I suppose the ruthless thing about that is that if you've got this predisposition to ruminating brain, to being a little bit more anxious, and then something happens to further activate that, like the very fear that you had about the world has sort of come to pass, and the raw materials that you had that were there ready to be activated, whether it's from an epigenetic, genetic predisposition standpoint, whether it's from a worldview perspective, whether it's from the patents that you've learned from your parents at home or whatever, um, yeah, you kind of get a, a...... 2X, 3X multiplier bonus that pushes you further into this sort of dysfunctional, uh, perspective?

    15. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:07:19

        I love how you said that. And it's kind of like... Okay, so if we think about it, so the biology has changed in some way, right? So we know, and I'll just pick on the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, the HPA axis, which is our stress response system. I've done a lot of work on that. We've published longitudinal studies. We know what's happening, um, when it comes to HPA, uh, dysfunction and bullying. So kids who are bullied tend to either overproduce or under-produce cortisol, and in time they under-produce cortisol. So in the... When you're faced with an acute stressor, your HPA axis, um, reacts, right? Like you ramp up a- a flight or fight, um, reaction. I mean obviously it's a little bit more complicated than that, but- but, you know, I'm just giving a basic mechanism. And then, uh, 20 minutes later cortisol has spiked. And so that's what we're measuring. We're measuring cortisol and how it's coming up. And so your... First time you're getting bullied, Chris, your cortisol is going to be high, high, high, high. And then as I follow you for the next three years, eventually one thing I'm going to see is that your cortisol is going to be low, and it's an adaptive process. So there's a... You know, the body is set on f- for homeostasis. It's set to like keep you, um, doing well, surviving, thriving as best as you can, even in difficult environments. So bringing down your cortisol is a good way of doing it. And it could be brought down because your glucocorticoid receptor sites are now damaged from your brain being bathed in cortisol. There's other mechanisms that also explain this. But the point of the matter is, is now we have low cortisol, and so your reaction to future stressors looks different now, and not just the stressors of bullying, the stressors across your life. And so now we have changed... The way a person is interacting and behaving in their world is a function of being terrible to them. And that bothers me, because this- these behavioral and biological changes set them up for future, um, risk. So they're more likely to be at risk for post-traumatic stress disorder. So now Chris, you've been bullied as a kid, long ta- longstanding bullying issue. Now your HPA has downregulated itself as a protective factor, and you get into a horrific car accident when you're 22 years old and you end up with PTSD that's debilitating, and it causes you significant harm for the next five years. If you hadn't had that experience, PTSD probably wouldn't have been in your future. And that's the stuff that we're looking at and we're working on. So you can ex- so risk is exacerbated in the future because of the relationships that our th- our grade three s- children have or our 10th graders are having. So it really behooves us to step up, uh, step it up on term- in terms of intervention and prevention, right?

    16. CWChris Williamson1:10:32

        Yeah.

16. 1:10:33 – 1:15:34

    Overcoming Bullying as an Adult

    1. CWChris Williamson1:10:33

       What about overcoming it, overcoming childhood bullying as an adult? Has there been much work done on how people after the fact can help?

    2. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:10:43

       So I focused on not overcoming it, and I know that sounds horrible, but that's kind of like... 'Cause I'm trying to get people motivated to change this. So I've really focused on the ones who aren't doing well. I don't think we have a good grasp of those who have done well, just like we don't really understand the true positive leaders. So if I, you know, if you have young scientists that are listening and they're just starting their career, I want to know more about those who were bullied and seemed to do okay. Um, I wanted... And maybe they had a protective, um, gene. Maybe there was something about the way... Like maybe the other protective... It might not even have been biological protective mechanism. It could have been their family was so amazing.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:11:26

       Older brother.

    4. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:11:27

       You know, like there's going to be so many things in the... But that would be great because historically we haven't focused on positive side of things. We've really focused on deficits and what's negative. So I want to know that.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:11:39

       Mm-hmm. But I think, you know, even the people that have got the deficits in later life would be interested in knowing, "Okay, th- this thing happened to me and maybe I'm carrying it with me to varying degrees. Uh, how can I learn to overcome or how can I-"

    6. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:11:53

       Exactly.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:11:53

       "... learn to move, move past that, maybe reprogram some of that, uh, that world view that you said?"

    8. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:12:00

       And I think that comes down to therapy, like cognitive behavior- behavioral therapy would be really good. Can I mention another thing that kind of makes me... So like in my book I really mentioned that, like at the end of the day, we don't know what the long-term implications are. Like, well, we have an idea that it's not going to be good. Um, we don't know if this can be fixed, if we can change this, how bullying gets under the skin to confer a risk. You know, I imagine we can 'cause we're quite plastic. There's a lot of plasticity. Um, one of the things that we're doing is we're trying to reduce bullying in earnest, and what studies are showing, and we just showed it, um, we still need to publish it, but it's just replicating what's been shown across Europe. Um, there's this healthy context paradox where if you reduce bullying, the few kids left in the school who are bullied have worse mental outcomes. So in a sense, we've now made some kids even more vulnerable by reducing bullying.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:13:01

       Hmm. Why?

    10. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:13:01

        So what do you think that's about? 'Cause I know you're a smart guy and you usually have the answer.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:13:05

        All right.

    12. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:13:05

        So...

    13. CWChris Williamson1:13:06

        Well, look, if I was to, if I was to totally bro science this and pull it out of my ass, I would guess that, I would guess that what you're able to do is...... l- l- lower the threshold of, or- or- or increase the threshold basically for what high-status bullies think is acceptable behavior, or who they think that they should be able to go after. But the problem being that they still need to maintain power and control in one form or another, which means that a smaller number of lower-status victims are bullied more intensely because you're spreading the same or a similar amount of bullying across fewer victims.

    14. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:13:46

        So, I think there's gonna be a little bit of that, and that part wasn't, hasn't, to my knowledge, hasn't been really looked at, but I love your answer. So I will tell you the answer to that 'cause we have the data and I'll be able to know that. I think it comes back to also attributions. If there's a lot of us being picked on, the attribution is, "These guys are just jerks." Like, "It's not about me because I'm not the only one."

    15. CWChris Williamson1:14:11

        Mm-hmm.

    16. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:14:11

        But if I'm the only one or there's only a few of us, we, there's something fundamentally wrong with us. That is, I think, the attribution error that occurs. So we're trying our best to reduce bullying, and in doing so, we're causing harm to a certain segment of the population.

    17. CWChris Williamson1:14:31

        (laughs)

    18. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:14:31

        So now I am going to school after school, tomorrow I'm presenting to 170 principals in Quebec, but I do this all the time and I present the data and I say, "Here are the rates in your school. We've done a great job at reducing bullying in your school. Can we get your school counselors to now, um, recognize that you have even, you have kids that are even more vulnerable than they were before?" Isn't that a bit messed up?

    19. CWChris Williamson1:14:59

        It's ruthless. It's, uh, I- I mean I don't know what the, I don't know what the solution to that is because, eh, eh, you're, the suffering of the few saving the suffering of the many, but then it's m- it's more on those few, so if you end up with worse mental health outcomes-

    20. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:15:17

        I know.

    21. CWChris Williamson1:15:18

        ... it feels, it feels a little bit like an- an-

    22. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:15:19

        I know. It's like, it's not what you would ever have expected, right? You would just think, like, in a sense, we're doing God's work by reducing bullying. (laughs)

    23. CWChris Williamson1:15:27

        Uh-huh.

    24. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:15:28

        And yet, w- the precious few who are left behind are doing worse than we've ever seen.

17. 1:15:34 – 1:18:29

    Does Bullying Build Resilience?

    1. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:15:34

    2. CWChris Williamson1:15:34

       What do you say to people who push back and say, "Well, bullying's good for developing resilience," or, you know, "I was bullied as a kid and it made me a stronger person," or, "It prevents you from being too weak"?

    3. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:15:45

       I hate that, and I get asked that all the time. Uh, it triggers me. Um, so I always think, like, well okay, so you think you've done well but let's just say, um, I u- I do a lot of stuff in sports 'cause I'm a high performance soccer coach, I coach, uh, Team Ontario for the U17 girls and, uh, our Canada gains team. Uh, but in any event, the reason I mention that 'cause it's a really easy way to explain this. So, you are now an Olympian, Chris, right? You've won two Olympic gold medals in swimming, and you say, "You know, the reason I'm, uh, an Olympian is because I was bullied. It made me stronger, it made me more resilient." And I always say, "What if you were supposed to win 15 medals?" Like, so you know, you don't know what your top performance is. You don't know where you're supposed to be and where, um, how far you can excel. You think that it didn't do anything to you, but there's gonna be a biological component that definitely did that. Now, there are always exceptions to the rules, so I would be open-minded to maybe some people do better as a consequence of that. I'm struck by how often people don't want to change their experience. If they could go back, they don't wanna change their experience 'cause they think it's what made them who they are today.

    4. CWChris Williamson1:17:03

       Yeah.

    5. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:17:03

       But you could never know what your life would look like without that because you've experienced it and it can't be erased.

    6. CWChris Williamson1:17:11

       Well, it's the difference between saying, "I achieved this because of that," and, "I achieved this in spite of that."

    7. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:17:16

       Exactly.

    8. CWChris Williamson1:17:18

       Yeah. Yeah, fascinating. I mean, look, it's- it's, in many ways, it's cope. It's a way for an adult who went through a tough thing as a kid to look back and say, "Well, this wasn't so bad. I don't need to hold onto the grudges because without that, I wouldn't be who I am," as opposed to, "Without that, I would be more of who I am."

    9. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:17:39

       And also, too, it's about making meaning from really terrible s- um, circumstances. Like, we all want to be able to explain why that terrible thing happened to us, and, um, and make sense of it. So, it makes sense to me. Um, the people that I work with, so I'm a professor of counseling psychology, I supervise counseling psychologists of the future. The clients that they are managing, which are numerous, more than I would be able to do as a single clinician, um, these individuals are not doing well. They, th- the, my students are overwhelmingly seeing individuals who had poor interpersonal relationships, either with peers or with a caregiver.

    10. CWChris Williamson1:18:25

        Mm.

    11. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:18:25

        Most, a lot of people are not forgetting these experiences.

18. 1:18:29 – 1:29:24

    How Effective Are The Interventions?

    1. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:18:29

    2. CWChris Williamson1:18:29

       How effective are most interventions at the moment? Give me the world of interventions.

    3. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:18:34

       20% max. Not at all.

    4. CWChris Williamson1:18:35

       And what- what does 20% mean?

    5. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:18:37

       20% reduction in bullying is what we're doing, at our best.

    6. CWChris Williamson1:18:41

       School-wide?

    7. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:18:41

       And we're doing it in younger kids and not in high school. It becomes entrenched as it get, k- so it goes down, but the few victims that are left are, in a sense, lifetime victims, so it becomes entrenched. We're not doing a good job at all. When we use a whole school approach, we're better, um, when we have multiple components, we're better, when we involved, um, younger kids, we're better. I think that, um, that group I told you that's not moving are the really high-status, popular kids who are creating the norms for your school, so really problematic. Um, we can't, we can't figure this out...... quick enough, and I think it's because, um, we have focused... In a way, I think we have to bring it back and, like, in a sense, like, strip it down to its essence, and its essence is that I think this is part of the human condition.

    8. CWChris Williamson1:19:33

       Uh-huh.

    9. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:19:33

       And if you do that, then I think your interventions are gonna look a bit different. And, uh, so I came out of a lab as a postdoc. Richard Tremblay is, like, the highest cited Canadian psychologist, maybe one of the highest cited psychologists in the world. I was his postdoc student, and he taught me about how kids are socialized out of aggression. They're not socialized into it.

    10. CWChris Williamson1:19:59

        Mm-hmm.

    11. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:19:59

        Of course there's gonna be some socialization component to it, for sure. You know, um, we're not saying that never exists. But the idea that most people hold is that kids are aggressive because they've been modeled, uh, they've, they've, um, in- they've been influenced by aggressive models, right, role models. Um, but this- the research that I did with Richard and has been replicated worldwide and has l- is longstanding, like we follow kids from birth all the way into, um, long into adulthood, is that most kids get socialized out of this. Um, now I know it seems like I'm not being consistent because I really, really emphasized a lot about how, um, popular bullies socialize the group. But they came in probably with this need for dominance. They came in with, uh, a Machiavellian worldview. They came in with the tools that were needed in order to be effective in what they're doing, and so if our intervention programs focused a little bit more on that, maybe we'd be more successful. Does that make sense?

    12. CWChris Williamson1:21:08

        It does. Uh, w- what are the current most commonly used anti-bullying interventions?

    13. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:21:15

        So there's one that's pretty popular. It's called the Kiva program. It comes out of Norway, uh, sorry, not Norway, Finland, um, and Kristiina Sammuvalli's the one who, uh, put this together. Eh, it has quite a bit of success in Finland, but Finland's a small country. Um, its rollout in a bigger place like the UK or Canada or the United States may not be, um, is not as, is not a, it's not as successful in these contexts, um, what the preliminary data are suggesting. There's also the Olweus, um, anti-bullying program. So Dan Olweus, we spoke about, the Scandinavian who, um, did most of his studies in Norway. The- his early efforts had a 50% reduction in bullying, but they implicated every aspect of society. So everywhere you turn, you had the same lesson, so quite successful there. Um, not as successful in North America or in the UK. Um...

    14. CWChris Williamson1:22:12

        Mm-hmm. What's the principles behind it?

    15. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:22:15

        The principles behind it, so Olweus is about, um, creating awareness and involvement, and the Kiva component is really about engaging the bystanders, which is the way to go. So if you, because the source, you know, so bullying tends to happen in public. Bullying tends to be used in order to achieve and maintain power, and so it's the peer group that's affording you that power. They're the ones who are either gonna accept what you're doing or they're gonna reject what you're doing. So if you could get the peer group to reject what popular bullies are doing, or even the Nelson-type bullies are doing, then you'd be in a better position of reducing it.

    16. CWChris Williamson1:22:59

        Because you've removed the in- you've removed the incentive to do it.

    17. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:23:02

        Exactly.

    18. CWChris Williamson1:23:03

        Interesting. Okay, so how much or how effective is it to make bullies realize how much of an impact that they're having? You know, you've given all this compelling evidence about what it's going to do in later life and what it does to them at the time and their educational outcomes, and they're gonna gain weight, and they're gonna be blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, as adults, th- this is the entire way that, uh, campaigns for malaria nets and stuff like that are done, right? Here is a story of what your effort could have as a positive or a negative impact. Uh, how effective is it to say to bullies, "Look at all of the downstream implications of doing this. This is what..." Is that not an option?

    19. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:23:43

        So there is. So there's a few programs that are, um, designed to increase, uh, moral engagement, and so there are interventions, bullying interventions, that specifically target moral disengagement and moral engagement, and they are m- they're c- they're not... Nothing is, like, very efficacious, but, you know, they're doing something. There's a bit of a reduction. So I think that that i- should, should be, um, applauded and replicated. The issue is that, um, schools invest in this when they have a bullying problem, and then, but for the most part, they're not consistent in their investment.

    20. CWChris Williamson1:24:24

        Mm-hmm.

    21. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:24:24

        So whatever we're gonna do, we're gonna have to do it early and then maintain it over time. Um, social-emotional learning is really efficacious at just reducing aggression, which is part of bullying, um, but there's a huge anti-social-emotional learning movement in the United States. I don't know if you know about that.

    22. CWChris Williamson1:24:45

        Nope.

    23. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:24:45

        You know, because you can't socialize kids in schools. That's the proo- purview, purview of the parents. Um, like, how dare you even try. Uh, you know, get that woke, uh, BS out of our schools, that sort of thing. And yet the evidence is pretty strong when it comes to social-emotional learning. So there's a bit of a backlash against it, but we-

    24. CWChris Williamson1:25:06

        I guess it depends what, what direction...

    25. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:25:08

        ... need to be sustaining our efforts.

    26. CWChris Williamson1:25:10

        Yeah, it depends what direction the social and emotional learning is going toward, whether it's going toward that there's no genders or the, the, the biological sexes.

    27. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:25:16

        Well, that's what they think it is, but it's not.

    28. CWChris Williamson1:25:19

        ... yeah, this- so, you know, w- I saw this last year, um, there was a pivot in UK schools away from criticizing toxic masculinity and toward promoting positive masculinity. Now, the campaigns were exactly the same. It was very much derogating lots of typical behavior that you would see from boys and, and young men, uh, and done in the classic frame that everybody that isn't insane hates. Um, but this is one of those times where maybe it'll, a rebrand could be useful, uh, and you might be able to, you know, t- t- cool, it's called social emotional learning. Not anymore. Now it's called, n- now it's called, like, holistic interaction treatment or h- b- you know, behavioral success or something like that. And, um, yeah, you r- uh, this is one of the times where a, a, a, a rebrand might be, might be a good idea.

    29. TVDr Tracy Vaillancourt1:26:09

        Yeah. We're, we're gonna have to do something. I mean, again, this derails individuals' potential. Not all. I mean, I don't want your listeners to have been bullied and worried about what this is gonna mean for their memory and their health and all of those things in the future. I mean, that's not, it's not fait accompli. There's, there's a lot of heterogeneity as I keep saying, and I, I think hope is really important. One of the things I think's the saddest part, so beyond the fact that we have some few remaining kids who are very vulnerable, is that we could do a pretty good job at getting people to not actively bully others, but we can't get kids to include kids.

Episode duration: 1:42:27