| Relational
Aggression Overview
Until
the 1990s, it was widely assumed that girls were nicer than boys;
that they didn’t engage in bullying and domination of their schoolmates.
The assumption was wrong.
What
researchers found when they focused on the folkways of adolescent
girls was a form of aggression that was far more sophisticated,
covert and possibly more harmful than the physical oppression
of the traditional male schoolyard bully.
Instead
of targeting a victim’s physical inferiority or isolation, girl
bullies attacked their victims through what girls value most—their
friendships and social acceptance. The girl bully’s weapons were
exclusion, gossip, rumor and slander—techniques
that kept their assaults well below adult radar. This cruel form
of bullying was dubbed relational, social or indirect aggression,
and it has proven to be at least as common among preadolescent
and adolescent girls as physical bullying is among boys.
Adding
to the invisibility of the Machiavellian girl subculture that
practices relational aggression is the nature of the bully. Instead
of the openly domineering goon that springs to mind at the word
“bully,” the oppressors in the female social system were likely
to be among the most attractive, popular and socially prominent
girls in the class—the kind teachers and school administrators
dote on.
As
the study of relational aggression progressed, it was discovered
that girls held no patent on it. Boys practiced it as well, although
at a less sophisticated and probably less destructive level.
Since physical prowess largely defines the childhood and adolescent
male social order, physical bullying remains the preferred form
among boys.
The
female preference for relational aggression is usually attributed
to society’s image of the ideal female as a non-aggressive nurturer,
and the resulting social stigma that attaches to overtly aggressive
behavior by women, who risk negative labels (e.g., bitch,
nag or shrew). However, the origins of the preference probably
lie far deeper in human evolution. There are several likely components:
- Given
the very long childhood of humans, compared with other species,
and the female role as principal caregiver, genetic survival
favored the nurturing female, whose offspring were more likely
to survive to reproduce.
- Overt
aggression on the part of females carried greater risks if it
targeted the larger, more physically powerful male, or if aggression
against another female aroused the anger of a male relative
or mate of that female.
- Equivalent
behavior—interruption of resting, feeding, mating—is used by
females of other primate species to harass competitors, resulting
in stress levels in the target female that lower their prospects
of becoming successful breeders.
In
short, indirect aggression may be somewhat hard wired into the
female human psyche, and the expectation of overtly nurturing;
cooperative female behavior (and the reality of covert female
aggression) may date back to our proto-human and even pre-human
ancestors.
Another
factor in the female preference for social aggression is that
it does a very effective job of achieving aggression’s purpose—inflicting
pain. Indeed, it produces pain equivalent not only in intensity
but also in kind to that of physical injury.
Modern
medical imaging techniques have recently demonstrated that the
pain of social exclusion arises, in part, from the same brain
regions that report physical pain, and, in animal experiments,
opioid pain reducers, like morphine, and increased levels of the
brain’s own the pain-blocking endorphins, also blunted the pain
of social loss.
The
vulnerability of adolescent and preadolescent girls to relational
attacks arises from the importance they attach to their friends
and other social relationships. The motivation to use those relationships
as weapons derives from the same source.
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