#941 Anthony Volk: The Evolutionary and Developmental Psychology of Bullying

00:00 Ricardo Lopes: Hello, everybody. Welcome to a new episode of the Decent. I'm your host, Ricardo Lobs. And today I'm joined by Doctor Anthony Volk. He is professor in the Department of Child and Youth Studies and associate member in the Department of Psychology at Brock University is interests include bullying, parenting, personality, psychopathy, and evolution of childhood. And today we're focusing mostly on bullying from an evolutionary and developmental perspective. So Dr Volk, welcome to the show. It's a big pleasure to everyone.

00:32 Anthony Volk: Hi. Thank you for having me.

00:34 Ricardo Lopes: Ok. So let's start perhaps with the basic question here. So uh from the perspective of psychology, scientific psychology here, let's say, what is bullying? How do you operationalize it exactly?

00:50 Anthony Volk: That's a good question. And uh it, it it's fair to say that it's still a topic of debate in the field. Uh How do we actually define bullying? The major criteria that we use for defining bullying is that bullying is a goal directed behavior. So it has a degree of intentionality, but we don't try to assess intentionality because that's a very difficult behavior if you did this, not by accident, whether it was for fun for uh power for pleasure. That's a key element. Secondly, it has to be harmful, so it can't be trivial. So uh the behavior has to actually cause some kind of lasting impact for individuals. And we know that in many cases, bullying has very serious impacts. And then lastly, um it has to have a power imbalance and the power imbalance is something that is difficult to capture and measure. But essentially, it means that the individual who's being targeted has a difficult time fighting back. So bullying is goal directed, harmful behavior that uh is captured in a particular power and balance at the moment that is uh behaved.

02:11 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm And how do you approach it from a developmental and evolutionary perspectives?

02:19 Anthony Volk: So that's a great question. Um One of the things that really got me started along this route was when I was looking at World Health Organization data, um they measure bullying across countries and I was part of the study in 2005 that was looking at Canadian data and we found that uh individuals who bullied had better mental health than people who weren't involved in bullying, which at the time I wondered if I was making a mistake with the data. Um I was just a graduate student but it was true um that these individuals actually had better mental health, which went against the common idea at the time that bullies were socially maladjusted individuals who didn't know how to behave. And in fact spoke to the fact that these are people who had skills for doing what they were doing. So maybe there is a reason behind this. And then when you follow that up with the logic that you find bullying in virtually every society that's been measured historical or present. Uh It suggests that either this is development that's gone wrong on a consistent and global level, or there might actually be some reason why people are engaging in this behavior.

03:39 Ricardo Lopes: So, from an evolutionary perspective, do you think that there's good enough evidence to make the case that it's perhaps a, a form of adaptive behavior?

03:53 Anthony Volk: Again, another really good question uh was if this is not maladaptive behavior, what's in it for the people who are doing it? And I want to be clear about a few different categories. Uh PEOPLE who are victimized, uh If you want to talk about them can suffer some really serious consequences. Uh You know, one of the analogies I like to use is that breaking a bone is something that is gonna cause permanent stress. If you exercise, um you will increase the density of your bone, but if you break it, you cause permanent damage. And that's what we see with bullying. The idea that conflict is bad isn't necessarily true, but high levels of conflict for individuals are really bad. So that's not adaptive. Individuals who are bullies and victims at the same time are also not very adaptive um because they suffer from the same consequences as victimization and they're the ones who fit the stereotype that we think of people without self control, good social skills, et cetera. But actual pure bullies who are the majority of bullies and who conduct the majority of bullying. So people who are bullies and not bullied in return, they seem to have a lot of benefits. Um AND we, we can talk about specifically what those are. But the reality is that these individuals, as I said, don't have mental health issues, they don't have self esteem issues, they don't have social uh cognitive issues. So they're, they have good social skills and they seem to get some really important benefits that are leading us to suggest that this might be an adaptive behavior.

05:30 Ricardo Lopes: So before we get into some of the advantages, particularly from an evolutionary perspective, what characterizes adolescent bullying, specifically

05:44 Anthony Volk: bullying is something that is, again, it's a form of behavior that carries an advantage in a power imbalance. And so there's many, many different ways of looking at bullying. Um One example that's gotten a lot of attention recently is cyber bullying where there's bullying that happens online, but bullying can be physical, it can be verbal, it can be indirect where you are excluding people or isolating people uh to cause them harm. So there are many different ways that bullying presents itself um in adolescence is particularly important because this is when we see the largest spike in bullying behavior. So longitudinal studies of aggression in general show that we are most aggressive when we're three or four years old, we haven't learned how to uh behave with other people. But bullying actually peaks not when we're three or four years old, it peaks when we're about 14 or 15. Um And that's something that makes adolescent bullying particularly important for studying because not only is this a peak time for bullying to behave, but we know adolescents in general is when a lot of behaviors become uh cemented or locked in or less plastic as we move to adulthood. So understanding why some people behave in this behavior uh allows us in adolescence to predict adult behavior uh much more efficiently than childhood behavior.

07:18 Ricardo Lopes: But are there particular aspects of adolescent bullying that distinguish it from bullying in other stages of life? Like for example, in childhood and adulthood and o other stages,

07:34 Anthony Volk: one of the really important things that we've talked about in um adolescent bullying is the goals that are underlying bullying. And so certainly one of the major reasons why we think bullying happens. There was a lively debate and a good debate of whether bullying peaked because you had the uh social order disrupted when you went from middle school to high school or whatever the equivalent is in many Western countries. But that doesn't seem to explain it. What seems to explain it is the age related changes So it's not school related, it's age related. And we think that that's because one of the big things that comes online in adolescence that doesn't exist in childhood is uh the intersexual behavior of adolescents. So, you know, in English we say, you know, there's cooties and that the other sex when you're young are not people you want to interact with, they're not people you want to spend time with. But then by the time you're an adolescent, it starts becoming important on average recognizing people with different uh sexual Proclivities. But on average, it becomes important to start interacting with people from the opposite sex. And that's a major drive of bullying that we believe differing from adulthood as you get older, uh physical bullying becomes less common for two reasons. Uh One physical bullying between older adolescents is more severe than between younger Children. So if a couple of eight year olds are punching each other, you might get a couple of bruises. Couple of 18 year old men are hitting each other, you break jaws, right? So the consequences are more severe and because of that, it's harder to hide. So we see in adolescence a decrease in physical bullying um on average, but overall we see an increase in bullying um because we think that these stakes have gotten higher as the dating game um kicks into gear and individuals are competing more strongly than they did as Children

09:42 Ricardo Lopes: is bullying related to personality in any way? I mean, are there specific personality traits that predispose people to becoming bullies?

09:54 Anthony Volk: Yeah, we like to look at development. Uh YOU know, the analogy that I use is what's more important for making a chocolate chip cookie. Is it having chocolate or is it having an oven? You, you need both? So it's always the combination of the environment um and individual predispositions and when it comes to eat individual predispositions, personality is one of those factors that we know that has a genetic uh influence on its expression. And in particular, we use the Hexaco model um of bullying or sorry of personality. And the Hexaco model is different from other dimensions. And in that it has honesty, humility, the age at the start of the Hexaco and honesty, humility predicts your willingness to exploit others versus your willingness to pass on exploiting others. So if you see a wallet with uh €100 lying on the street, do you take those €100 or do you try and return them to somebody else? And there's advantages from an evolutionary perspective to both behaviors. If you give them back, you're being co-operative. If you keep that €100 then you are being um selfishly helping yourself. And that's the personality trait that we find that best predicts bullying, perpetration, it's not emotional empathy. So feeling what other people feel is not a great predictor of bullying, it's not being angry, that's not a great predictor of bullying. Um TO a lesser extent, being impulsive is part of uh predicting what bullying is. So that's conscientiousness. But across cultures primarily, it's having low honesty humility, which is the belief that you deserve better than others. And that means that when it comes to bullying other people, they're getting what they deserve because they're not as good as you. They're not as smart, they're not as strong, they're not as clever, they're not as popular. And so these people deserve uh the treatment that you give them and you deserve to benefit by their expense. And that's really the trait that most strongly predicts uh bullying behavior.

12:08 Ricardo Lopes: And so what sorts of evolutionary advantages would bullying behavior have?

12:17 Anthony Volk: So we're looking to try and describe the specific kinds of advantages that they have. We know from a wide array of longitudinal. Uh SO over time and international cross cultural data that a major advantage that bullying provides is it leads to popularity. Um So individuals who bully are more likely to become popular over time and popularity is important to differentiate from likability. So it doesn't necessarily mean that people like you. Um BUT it means that they recognize that you have social power and that you are capable of influencing the peer group. So that's a very common behavior that we've or outcome I should say that we've seen uh across time and across cultures around the world. Bullying can also get you material resources. So you can edge out competitors from the best spot in the playground, the best seat at the lunch cafeteria, um scholarship opportunities. Uh YOU know, in academia, you can try and edge people out of grants. Um So bullying can provide material resources as well as social resources. And then lastly, and most importantly, from an evolutionary perspective, uh it can provide reproductive advantages. So we know that bullying is associated with increased frequency of dating and having sex as adolescence. Um And I can say that we literally yesterday just submitted a paper showing that adolescents who bully 10 years on have more Children. Um So we longitudinally have shown that it is associated with having uh more of your genes being passed on to the next generation. So there's some really potent advantages for being involved with bullying.

14:18 Ricardo Lopes: So in the particular case of dating and mating opportunities, what would be the rationale here? I mean, for, for example, potential mating partners, why would females, for example, feel attracted to bullies?

14:39 Anthony Volk: That's a really good question that we are wondering ourselves and some of our data has helped answer that. Um So why would you want to be involved with somebody who's antisocial and takes advantage of their power? You would think that would be bad for the individual and it might be um we see mixed evidence about the quality of relationships that they have as adults. But one of the things that we found that was surprising is they actually invest more in their offspring. Um So let me ask about how much effort do you put into mating? How much effort you put into parenting and how much effort you put into yourself or somatic effort? Police report putting more effort into parenting. And these are uh at least in Canada, we talk about soccer moms or football moms and hockey dads. Um These you can imagine are the people who are yelling from the sideline, bullying the coach to play their kid. Um TELLING the teacher that their child needs more time and attention and this is advantageous for passing on your genes. You have somebody who is going to selfishly fight for their Children who are also related to you. So you have somebody who is securing resources at the same time as they are passing them on to your Children and, and somebody who uh I like to use as a case model for bullying Donald Trump. Uh He's married three supermodels. Uh So he's had success in attracting uh at least by some measures, high quality mates and he has the potential to invest millions of dollars in each of them. And that's, that's a potent advantage. If you're willing and able to secure resources for your offspring, then that's something that's potentially advantageous for somebody to partner with.

16:25 Ricardo Lopes: And does bullying have anything to do with power and balances of power?

16:33 Anthony Volk: Power is what differentiates bullying from regular aggression. Um So one of the really interesting things that we thought about once we started looking at bullying as an evolutionary advantage is why does it happen? Dominance, hierarchies are supposed to reduce the competition. So that number one and number 17 don't fight number 17 isn't a threat to number one and number 17 isn't gonna be able to beat number one. So why would you have this power and balance? We think it's because bullying is about a signal to the group or the individuals who are involved in it. And so number one isn't picking on number 17 because they need the resources of number 17. Number one is picking on number 17 to show number two and number three, what they are capable of, they are capable of aggression. They are capable of beating somebody who's a near level peer. So the power imbalance doesn't work if you have an 18 year old who's beating up an eight year old that's not going to impress anybody, but an 18 year old who can beat up another 18 year old or a 17 year old is sending a signal of this is what happens if you interact with me, I'm willing to be aggressive and I'm capable of doing damage. And studies from the Netherlands have shown that uh first that power and popularity are predictors of future bullying. So the phrase that power corrupts appears to be true. Um And secondly, that bullies rotate through victims and those who rotate through victims gain more popularity because they're sending more signals. So in biology, there's a, a term about honest signaling. The idea that if you send a signal, it has to be something that can easily be faked. So it's costly to send this signal. And so it is costly for an 18 year old to fight with another 18 year old that their 18 year old could fight back physically, uh emotionally, intellectually. But by virtue of having a power and balance to start with, it makes it less costly for the bully to send that signal. Like the right the most powerful signal a bully could send would be for an 18 year old to beat up the best mixed martial artist fighter or the strongest debater on the planet. But that's a really costly signal. So they don't try to aim that high. Instead they find the right balance between an individual who has some cost to defeat but is not so costly that they can fight back. And research again has shown the bullies are really good at picking individuals who can't hurt their popularity for whatever reason, because of their physical stature, their mental stature, their social stature, but they are still at a level that sends a signal that the bully is not somebody to, to interact with.

19:31 Ricardo Lopes: So another important question here, I guess is are there sex differences in bullying behavior that is, do female bullies differ from male bullies. And I guess in this case, both in terms of their, of the frequency of their bullying, but also in terms of their bullying behaviors specifically.

19:55 Anthony Volk: So, uh the first thing I'll say is one of the things that surprised us, particularly when we talk about bullying um outcomes and the advantages of being a bully is that there aren't major sex differences between individuals. Um So it's not simply that women prefer strong men. And that's the end of the story. Um THAT female bullies enjoy the same reproductive advantages, same social advantages and the same material advantages that male bullies do. But there are differences in how uh individuals bully and this is true for uh almost all kinds of aggression is that male bullies are much more likely to engage in physical bullying, physical bullying is risky. Uh You know, as I mentioned earlier, 18 year olds who are fighting can break jaws, um break bones grown men. You know, it's a very serious and risky endeavor. An evolutionary theory has repeatedly suggested and I think provided evidence for the fact that because women are typically the primary caregivers, they are less likely to engage in those really seriously risky kinds of behavior. Beyond that, you find that boys and girls engage in almost equal levels of bullying. So if you take out physical bullying, uh you find that girls engage in about 1 to 2% more uh relational bullying. So indirect attacking reputations than boys do. But it's a very small difference whereas physical aggression is about boys engaged, but 100% more uh bullying. So the forms that they use are are different, but the goals and the outcomes seem to be very similar

21:39 Ricardo Lopes: and and the levels then do not vary much between males and females.

21:45 Anthony Volk: Once you control for physical bullying, the levels are virtually identical. Um So uh you find bullying is more common amongst boys because this added layer of physical bullying that boys do. Um But once you take that out of the equation, which isn't trivial. So I don't want to say that boys and girls are equal because boys do engage in more bullying than girls do. But once you remove the physical bullying, then the two sexes are more or less equal.

22:14 Ricardo Lopes: And what about the victims themselves? I mean, what kinds of people do? Bullies tend to target? And are there also sex differences when it comes to the targets? Each sex tends to choose as victims?

22:32 Anthony Volk: Yeah. Uh The short answer is bullies choose targets who are easy to attack and that can depend on the bully characteristics and the individual's characteristics. An example that I like to use is Lou Ferigno who's an American bodybuilder at the same time as Arnold Schwarzenegger. Um HE was the incredible Hulk when they just painted him green, so massive individual and he was bullied relentlessly, a huge man. Uh BECAUSE he had a hearing disability. So people would make fun of the way he talked and his inability to quickly follow conversations. And that's not something you can punch your way out of. That's not something that you can physically uh overcome. And it was a weakness that bullies were able to exploit. And so bullies are really effective at finding the right weakness in victims. And you might ask, why do victims exist, why do they, why do they happen? The reality is that we're a social species. And one of the saddest incidents of bullying that I've seen uh Wendy Craig and Deb Pepper did a study where it was a, you know, BBC documentary like David Attenborough where they put microphones on kids and followed them around the playground. And you see a young girl who gets grabbed by a group of older girls and they start beating her up and kicking her on the ground, an adult walks by. So they stop and she, the girl has a chance to get up and walk away. Two minutes later, she walks back to the group and they grab her and start kicking her and throwing her to the ground again. And you say, why would this person ever want to be bullied and kicked? Why don't they just stay away? And the reality is that for humans being left alone is a death sentence uh in ancestral times. So these individuals are faced with the choice of either get this really negative attention or be left alone. And sadly, a lot of these kids, I, I don't want to use the word choose in that this is what they want to do, but they're left with a dilemma of either I am completely alone or I get negative attention. And that's unfortunately, what leads to a lot of victims being targeted. We know that people who are victimized uh have on average lower self esteem, uh and more emotional and anxiety problems. And we know that bullying causes more emotional anxiety problems. Some of the most damning evidence against victims and victimization. Why it matters is that it affects the expression of your immune system for 30 years after being bullied. So there are large epigenetic which means the expression of your genes are being changed. Uh It effects it last for decades. And the kids who are being victimized are really put in a difficult spot and, and just go a little further. One of the common, the most common recommendation for stopping bullying is getting the victims to fight back and that of course, makes them more costly to target. And that is the single most effective way to stop bullying. The problem is that's also the single most effective way to make bullying worse. Because if you put the bully in a spot where they are losing face, they're losing status, they're losing their chance to get dates, then they fight back even harder. And so asking individuals to fight back and defend themselves is asking individuals who are already chosen because they're in a disadvantage. They have either a limited physical strength or social strength or intellectual strength to fight back. It's putting the position where that can backfire on them. And the reality is that these individuals are not in a spot where there is a fair fight to gain back. And again, I use the example when a lot of people say, well, I was somebody picked on me and I fought back. It is good for Children to experience stress that makes them more resilient and stronger. Same thing happens with your bones that if you exercise your bones become stronger over time. But if you go past a certain limit, both with your bones and with your emotional capacity, you have a break and that break is never as strong as it was before. So Children who are victimized uh are like Children who have a broken arm or a broken leg, that arm or leg will never be as strong as it was before. And that's why we see these decades long experiences for most people, a small amount of conflict or a small amount of aggression towards you will help you be more resilient. But for Children who are victimized, this intense behavior that we've unfortunately seen can cause Children to, to kill themselves because they, they feel so pressured is causing really severe damage. So it's really important for me to emphasize that while bullying may have adaptive advantages for bullies, it is extremely costly for victims and the victims or individuals who have been chosen because they can't fight back effectively. And again, research shows us that bullies are very strategic in who they target. If you have a small uh physically weak bully, they will attack somebody who's socially isolated. If you have a physically strong bully, they'll attack somebody who's physically isolated or, or, or weaker. So it is really important for us to differentiate between the idea that bullying can be adapted for those who use it while still really costly for the victims and for society in general. Um AS a behavior.

28:28 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm. So, I mean, there are probably particular cases, particular extreme cases where the psychological damage to the victims would be like permanent, I mean, would would last for the rest of their lives.

28:48 Anthony Volk: Uh uh Yes. Uh AND the data shows that that there are that mental health effects from bullying last for decades. We don't have an entire life data yet, but we know that 30 years after being bullied as an adolescent, there are still greater risks of mental health issues. Uh And that's by design, remember that what the bullying is trying to do is send a signal about how dangerous they are to cross paths with. And so the victim gets that signal, the victim realizes that if you meet this person, it it it can end really badly. And there's a debate in the bullying literature, if repetition needs to happen, how often does bullying need to happen for it to happen? I'm of this school of thought that it, it only needs to happen once. Um AND uh a colleague at a recent conference gave an example of a boy who went to school with a bully. Uh AND the first time the bully targeted them, the bully threw them to the ground and then started stomping on them and broke their ribs and broke their shoulders. That was the only incident between them. It didn't happen again. But you can imagine that's the only incident you need if you want to send a message and for the victim, that's the only incident you need for the rest of your life to be terrified of a physical confrontation. You had your, your body broken. If it had been more severe, it could have punctured your lung and died. These are really s potentially severe behaviors that uh again, the bullying is the bully is using as a signal to the rest of the peer group. Look what I can do, but the victim is very clearly see that, look what can happen to me. And these events can last traumatically for the entire life.

30:41 Ricardo Lopes: And the in the that particular case you described there, I mean, it could have been life threatening even directly. But there are other extreme cases where it's life threatening uh, in a different way that is, it can leave the person, the child, the adolescent to commit suicide even. Right.

31:04 Anthony Volk: Yeah. Yeah. I, I'm unfortunately aware of other cases where the bullying has led to the death of an individual, uh, directly because of what they've done. But you're right that also indirectly. Um, AND cyberbullying is a case where this has gotten a lot of attention. You put something online, um, that puts a child in a position where they feel that the entire world not necessarily incorrectly, the entire world can see their weaknesses and their failures. And that kind of pressure is so intense that unfortunately, it has resulted in many cases of, of Children killing themselves. And so this is not of behavior we can talk about more uh that is genetically determined and can't be changed. That's a a common theme in evolutionary theory, but it's also really too important to recognize it when we say that this is evolutionarily adaptive or it's natural for kids to engage in bullying. That doesn't mean it's good. You know, nature is happy to make a fuzzy cute bunny and it's happy to make a virus that eats that fuzzy bunny's brain alive. There, there's no good or bad coming from nature. So I really wanna emphasize that it, it's not saying that this is a naturalistic behavior that is good for us to endorse simply because it may have evolutionary advantages. The cost of victims are extreme.

32:26 Ricardo Lopes: So I would like to ask you a little bit more about the psychological traits of bullies. Earlier I asked you about personality traits. Does bullying relate in any way to psychopathic traits, particularly in men? Bullying

32:43 Anthony Volk: is correlated with low honesty, humility, which is correlated with the dark triad of behaviors which is narcissism, machiavellian. So, scheming and planning um and psychopathy and so it is absolutely related to all three. We find higher levels of psychopathy in men than in women. So that relationship is more common in men than women. I think when we go back to honesty, humility, it really relates to a, a willingness to exploit others for your own benefit. So if you think of a dark and selfish gene, uh and the prisoner's dilemma theory, which is often used to explain cooper operation. These are people who are willing to exploit others to get what they want. And a common theme that we hear from bullies is that the individual deserved it, right? They had it coming. Um Because they're stupid, they're ugly, they're, they're dumb, they, they're not good at interacting with others. And if you have this kind of arrogance, which is part of what underlies psychopathy uh saying that, you know, I'm better than other people. It goes along with the idea that then people get what they deserve. And so it makes it easier to victimize individuals because you view them as deserving victimization. And so we absolutely see a strong link between antisocial personality and bullying behavior.

34:10 Ricardo Lopes: And is there a link between bullying behavior and other sorts of psychopathology?

34:20 Anthony Volk: That was one of the things that we, as I mentioned at the start, we really early on interest and we thought we'd see the idea that these bullies are, you know, low in self esteem, they have bad social skills, poor theory of mind, which means understanding how other people think and they don't. Um THAT'S true of bully victims. And why we think that that stereotype is persisted is because bully victims are the kids who are both bullies and victims and they come from bad households, they have poor social skills and they're likely the ones who are being caught, the head of the football team, uh the cheerleader, uh who's queen of the cheerleaders, uh the, the, the straight A student, these are people who know how to avoid being caught. And so they don't get viewed by adults as being bullies more often, but they're engaging in this behavior much more than the bully victims. And the damage that they do is much more severe because they have these good social skills. So the really negative outcomes being associated with bullying are number one, you're more likely to be involved with antisocial behavior later on. I think that's partly because they have these antisocial traits to begin with, say low honesty, humility or psychopathy as you mentioned. And then people are less likely to like you. So there's a big difference between uh likability and popularity and you can see this distinction in all kinds of literature. It's an evolutionary psychology, it's dominance and prestige in politics. They talk about hard versus soft power. The idea is that you can influence people by coercing them or by having them want to be with you. So, being motivated to cooper with you and consistently bullies are rated as being less light. And I'll go back to my example of Donald Trump. Uh Even many of his supporters will say they don't like the way he behaves, they don't like what he does and the way he treats people, but they respect that he's effective, they respect that he can get the job done. And if he's on their side, he's getting them resources that they need. And so that's the, the trade off that bullies are having that people respect that they're dominant and powerful and can get their way, but they don't particularly like or trust them because they have shown that when push comes to shove, to shove, they're willing to hurt other people to get what they want. And people are rightly um concerned with the fact that if you're willing to do this to XYZ, they're willing to do it to you if you get in their way. So when we talk about the, the cost of bullying, that's one of the major costs is that while people respect the power the bullies have and acknowledge the power the bullies have. They don't like them. And that's potentially a really serious issue. If the bully ever loses their power, then they don't have allies who want to stay with them or help support them. So, I it's a precarious position for Belize to be in

37:26 Ricardo Lopes: a and so particularly when it comes to, of course, childhood and adolescent bullying, lots of it happen uh at school. So are there any social factors related to the way schools are structured that might contribute to bullying behavior?

37:47 Anthony Volk: Absolutely. You know, the same thing when I mentioned the the chocolate chip cookie, you need to have the oven for it to develop a polar bear's fur makes no sense in the Sahara Desert. So you have to understand the environment if you want to understand evolutionary adaptations and we know that more competitive environments uh are more likely to cause bullying. We know that um an absence of supervision is more likely to cause bullying, but only for individuals who have low uh honesty, humility or antisocial personality traits. So for individuals who are not predisposed to take advantage of others, it doesn't matter if adults are paying attention, but for individuals who are predisposed to maybe take advantage of others for their own benefit, then it really matters if adults are focusing in on uh that behavior or not. And interestingly data has recently corroborated that for the outcomes of victims. It's actually worse when there are fewer victims in a classroom. So if you're victimized and there's 10 other people in the class who are victimized. Out of 30 your mental health outcomes are better than if you're the only one in the entire class. And that deals with this idea of being isolated uh and being selected as somebody who's not part of the group. So both for bullies and for victims, the social environment has a major impact and we see this across cultures that every culture we've looked at shows bullying, but its prevalence rates are so that slightly different, the ratio of bullies to victims are slightly different and the most common or frequencies of different kinds of bullying. So physical versus relational are different across cultures. And that's really important to understand because it suggests that bullying is a faculty of adaptation. What we mean by that is its likelihood of happening. It's likelihood of being expressed depends on the environmental conditions. So a a great quote that I have from uh some adolescents is they, we were asking them why they would be involved with defending somebody else. And one of them said I didn't get involved because that person was really big. But if my friends were around with me, then I would have stepped in. And so they recognize the power disadvantage that they're not capable of stopping this powerful bully at the time. But if the environmental circumstances were different and they had four or five friends behind them, then they might have stepped in and stopped it. So, bullying really depends a lot on the environmental contingency uh that operates around it. I don't know if I, if I can go a little further, somebody who I've labeled somebody else who I've labeled as a bully, uh as an adult is Vladimir Putin, uh who tried attacking Ukraine a weaker country and you can clearly see that Ukraine needs help from other bystanders from Europe and North America to support it. And if they don't have that, that's going to encourage the bully to keep going on. And as of this recording, uh there's debate in the US Senate about providing aid to Ukraine and Putin just released a statement saying that he's not backing down until he gets what he wants, which is directly related to the fact that he's seeing a lack of support in the environment or potentially a lack of support in the environment. And so the environmental conditions are really important for adjusting the costs and benefits of bullying and therefore the likelihood that somebody will engage in bullying.

41:32 Ricardo Lopes: So one of the things that you mentioned there that I want to ask you more about is uh at the beginning, you mentioned that a competitive environments promote bullying behavior. So in the case of schools, is that related in any way, also to the fact that there's academic performance there to be measured academic achievements and all of that or not,

41:59 Anthony Volk: any time you have a non zero sum competition, you're likely to see less bullying by non zero sum means everybody can benefit when only one person can benefit, then you're likely to see an increase in bullying. And the reason is it becomes more adaptive to bully. So if there's um an academic prize for Greatest Interview, um and you, you and I are competing for that, then there's more motive for us to try and win that prize. If there's only one, whereas that prize is given to anybody who does a good interview, then we can focus on our own achievements without trying to attack the other individual. So absolutely, when we find higher levels of income inequality, we've looked at this uh at global levels, higher levels of income inequality are associated with higher levels of bullying. And the idea there is it's more adaptive to compete when there are big and rare prizes for winning. The, the more that we make prizes egalitarian, the less incentive there is to compete for those prizes and competing again um is often done by individuals who have this predisposition to want to try and uh be number one and win those competitions.

43:23 Ricardo Lopes: And when and why do people intervene in bullying incidents? There is they see someone being a victim of a particular bullying incident when and why do they decide to intervene?

43:40 Anthony Volk: So there's two primary reasons that tend to predict uh what we call defenders, bullying. Uh IN bullying instance, when somebody steps in to try and protect the victim. Uh The first is a sense of moral empathy. So not necessarily emotional empathy, I feel what they feel, but a, a sense of justice and what's right. And that's high honesty, humility. But it's also interestingly associated with higher levels of power. And that makes sense when you again consider that bullying is based on a power of disadvantage. So weaker individuals rarely intervene because their intervention is ineffective. Um I if the most popular kids in the class are picking on somebody and you're number 20 out of 30 you're not likely to change the behavior of number 12 and three. BASED on your popularity and your strength. On the other hand, if number three is bullying and you're number one in the class in terms of popularity and and social status, then you can effectively apply your power to end that. So interestingly, and it's something that we're very interested in following. Um INDIVIDUALS can use their social power in a prosocial way by intervening and stopping the bully and individuals who do that gain popularity, they also gain liability. So they get the most of the best of both worlds and that people say that yes, this person has effective power like bullies do, but they like them because they use it in a way that helps other people. That is the best way that we have found to being popular and light, you know, kind of the two benefits of people recognize that you have power, but they like being around you because you don't abuse it. So that's a particularly interesting direction that we wanna really explore and um look at for interventions which I'm sure we'll chat about. Um But I can maybe mention here is a good point that interventions that rely on peers to step in have been shown to be effective. Uh Kiva is the, the model that's been done out of Finland with Christina Salma Ali, it's been tested around the world reduces bullying by about 20 25% which is uh for better or for worse, but the best that we have, but it doesn't work for high popularity bullies who unfortunately most of the bullies so peers can intervene and stop low and medium status bullies from bullying. And so the popular kids can say, hey, knock it off. But when it's the popular kids who are doing the bullying, peers don't have much of an impact because it they're not at the top of the power scheme. So it's really important to consider the implications of power and the willingness of people to step in and the effectiveness of people to step in. Uh You know, as I said, I've written a couple of articles uh in Canadian newspapers about Vladimir Putin being a bully. I unfortunately do not have the power to stop Vladimir Putin's behavior. I know as, as a single academic, my power effect on him is negligible. Right. And that's, that would be the same thing in a classroom if the popular kids are bullying and somebody wants to try and defend them without power, your likelihood of being able to stop it is very low. Doesn't mean that we shouldn't try. Um, BUT it does mean that the effectiveness is, is greatly diminished.

47:14 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm. Uh So I have here one more topic that I would like to ask you about and then a couple of questions from a patron of the show, but just before we get into the final topic, uh still about on the topic of bullying. Uh AND when it comes to intervention specifically, so because of the very nefarious individual and societal effects that bullying has as we talked about here today, uh I mean, from a and since you come from an evolutionary and developmental perspective, do we know of any good interventions to reduce bullying uh effectively?

47:58 Anthony Volk: You know, that that's the really big question. Um And we have learned a lot in 20 years about what works and what doesn't work. Um So some of the things that don't work are asking the victims to fight back. Um BECAUSE as I said earlier, that uh often backfires and makes the problem worse. Having the bully and the victim sit down together and try and mediate, it makes the problem worse. The bully says you ratted on me and we see the bullying goes down but then it goes back worse than it was before and zero tolerance policies where schools say if you do this, we're gonna suspend you and that doesn't work because bullies are smart and don't get caught. So that's not very effective. What does work? I've mentioned the Kiva program that is effective in stopping a low and medium popularity bullies, uh not effective with higher popularity bullies. A really interesting study was done in Norway where uh Dan Elvas was kind of the the the godfather of bullying research. And he was able to implement a program where the federal government, their version of provincial and municipal and schools and parents all cracked down on bullying and they reduced bullying by almost 40% which is the biggest reduction we've seen. But of course, it was very intensive to try and maintain this focus on bullying. And what was really instructive was after three years as governments do. They said, ok, well, that problem's solved, let's stop investing in it. And bullying immediately shot back up to pre intervention levels, which is really important from an evolutionary perspective because it tells us that bullying is not simply a learned or copycat behavior. If it was students would have copied that low level and kept it at low levels. The fact that it popped back up tells us that it's sensitive to costs and benefits when adults really tried to make it uh costly, that bullies avoided doing it. What we focused on in our group is a program called meaningful roles where we try and teach bullies to get the goals that they want without hurting others. Right? So I'm not often invited to schools anymore. I was invited frequently early in my career. But when I go to schools and say bullying will get you sex, popularity and resources and we can't catch you. That's not a good message for adolescence, right? Because of course, those are things that adolescents want. Uh And many people beyond adolescence want. So instead, we're taking the message of, we recognize that sex and popularity and resources are important to you. But there's better ways of getting them, there's ways of getting them in particular that will make you popular and light. So if you wanna be popular in the classroom, uh we can give you the role of whenever somebody comes in the classroom, you say hello, David, welcome to uh Mrs Smith's grade seven classroom. And so every person who walks in that classroom recognizes that person who used to be a bully and they're getting the popularity that they wanted, they're getting the attention that they want, but they're doing it in a nice way. And so number one, it takes away from their time and ability to bully others because they're doing something else. And number two, it's showing them that they can get what they want without having to be antisocial towards other people. And I think that's a really critical factor that we have to acknowledge because otherwise it, it's a really hard sell to say to adolescents. Stop doing this. We can't catch you doing this and it's getting you more sex and popularity. That's, that's, those are very powerful incentives for individuals to behave in that way. So we need to find better ways of showing how people can get those goals without being antisocial towards other people.

51:52 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm. So changing topics, then I would like to ask you about something that is perhaps, I don't know to what extent exactly, but perhaps somewhat related to bullying. But what is classroom in civility and how is it conceptualized by both students and teachers

52:15 Anthony Volk: classroom incivility was something that uh my former colleague Zito Marini, who passed away a few years ago was interested in and it's basically following the rules that we have for governing civil behavior or appropriate social behavior. So, uh standing in line quietly, not talking when the teacher is talking, uh not packing up your books early, not making rude jokes to other people in the class. And these kinds of behaviors were often viewed as fairly trivial. Um AND not worth worrying about compared to some of the more severe behaviors that we've seen in the classroom. But what we've seen is that the same personality traits that predict more antisocial behavior, predict uncivil behavior and that these incivil behaviors over time predict your behavior in more severe situations. So kids who are likely to pack up their books early, who are likely to talk when the teacher is talking are also more likely over time to bully other kids and, and cause uh more severe antisocial problems. So, what we think is happening is that civility is again a form of costly signaling. So why do we say the word, please? You know, if you're having some nice tapas tonight, uh and I want some of that octopus. Why do I have to say? Can you please pass me that? Not just pass me that it's because adding the word please is showing you that I'm willing to make effort to be civil and cooper when you don't have that. If I just said pass me the octopus, then I am showing that I don't care about investing in that relationship. I don't care about investing in that cost and that seems to be a low level but important route of antisocial behavior.

54:19 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm And so uh I have then two questions from a patron of the show, as I mentioned earlier, Bernardo Sei. And they are basically about some of the work you've been doing on life history theory and life history strategies and topics of the sort. So, uh the first one has to do directly with one of your papers titled Historical and The Hunter Gatherer Perspectives on Fast, slow life history strategies. And the question is uh could you discuss if the predictions made by life history theory about environmental effects are supported by the historical evidence we have or not?

55:03 Anthony Volk: So it depends what aspect of life history theory. Life history theory evolve in biology. No pun intended um as a way of explaining how organisms allocate their time and energy across their lifespan. So, did they spend it more in chasing mates and raising their offspring and growing a big body? Um And so that it is a very viable and active part in the biological literature, what came into the human literature um were theories that said in harsh environments, individuals should speed up their reproduction so that they could reproduce before they died. The reality um is that when we look at those effects, they're small across cultures. Um And I'm involved in reviewing a, a rebuttal to what I said, I'm trying to pick my words carefully here. Uh But the basic idea is that there's a very small effect that being in antisocial or stressful environments is more likely to cause early puberty and having more Children. The first problem with that is it doesn't consider the reverse effects in that we know that individuals who have early puberty and have kids when they're teenagers, in modern societies are much more likely to then have bad environment. So, if you were a 15 year old girl in Spain and you're pregnant, you're likely to drop out of high school, you're less likely to go to university, you're less likely to have a stable marriage, you're less likely to have financial stability, you're more likely to be involved with substance abuse. And these are big effects. So we see right away that the opposite explanation has a much stronger uh effect size to it, that it's not that bad environments are causing people to mature more quickly. But being an early mature and in particular, having Children early is a significant risk factor um for their development in modern societies. Historically, when we look at the data, the data is unequivocal that historically, in the past, individuals who had more resources were able to have puberty sooner because they had the physical resources, they were able to have shorter inter birth intervals because they either could restore their nutrition faster as women or have uh wet nurses and or as men, they could have more wives or uh concubines or, you know, out of marriage partners that they could reproduce with. And the genetic evidence shows this as well that repeatedly in human history, a small group of men have dominated the gene pool. So 1% of all people alive today are descended from Genghis Khan, uh the founders of the original first Chinese civilization. Um A group of men from that time who we believe are likely to be the rulers of that time are related to 20% of Chinese men alive today. Uh You find the same correlations in Ireland, in the Middle East where small groups of individuals have exploited their resources and didn't have a slow strategy. And that's the thing. They didn't delay the reproduction. They didn't have fewer Children that they invest in. Instead they invested heavily in reproduction. So why do we see what we see today? Uh I think partly because of what I've said, um that's that we're looking at it the wrong way. It's not the environment causing the early reproduction. It's the early reproduction leading to the environment. And secondly, we are in a demographically, very unusual time for human beings. And one of the major, if not the biggest question, evolutionary psychology is, why don't we repro reproduce more often? So as a uh faculty in uh uh in Canada, my salary is public. So I make about 100 and $75,000 a year as a full professor. Now, why don't I have 15 kids? I have three, which is more than a lot of professors. Why not? 15? Why not 20? I can theoretically support them. And we're in a very strange place demographically. Um And this is where I think some of the confusion comes from, is looking at modern humans and how we behave versus what was available in the past. So uh put differently if somebody was in a harsh environment in the past and they wanted to speed up the reproduction where did they get the resources from? You can have uh 10 kids in Spain or in Canada where we have social networks where the government will provide you free education to an extent for food and housing and medical care that didn't exist 1000 years ago, 10,000 years ago, 100,000 years ago, if you're a hunter gatherer and you have 10 Children and you can't provide for them, they die. It's a really maladapted outcome. So that's why I think it's really important for life history theory. But for behavior and evolutionary theory in general to look beyond modern examples. So uh as much as we're pleased that we found data showing that uh it's currently adaptive to be a bully and that you have more offspring. That's not the same thing as saying that it was adaptive in the past. We do have lots of other evidence that it was adaptive in the past. But we have to be very careful about using modern data to draw conclusions about how we used to live ancestrally

1:00:55 Ricardo Lopes: and so related to that. The also the second question, how do we know if life history strategies are the product of nature or nurture? Most studies on the subject are correlation

1:01:11 Anthony Volk: really good questions from your patron. Um One of the things that you would expect if you saw say, for example, uh the argument being that harsh environments cause you to speed up puberty. And I've argued the opposite. And Sarah Hury in her book, um, was the first one to do that. I think it was, uh, Mother Nature mentioned this possibility that it was this reverse effect. And you would expect that if you were, had a teenage mother, uh, who gave birth to you, who didn't go to high school, who didn't have a stable relationship because not surprisingly, teenage relationships are not as strong as getting married in your late twenties or thirties, um who doesn't have a lot of income. So it looks like this person's harsh environment is associated with their uh earlier reproduction. But not only is that being influenced by the environment that they're raised in, they're watching their mother's behavior. So father absence is commonly something that is associated with the faster life history. But if they're observing their way that their mother behaves, we know from a huge range of uh studies that Children imitate their parents. Uh It, it's an evolutionarily adaptive strategy. It underlies the earliest evolutionary psychology which is Bowie's attachment that you should copy what your parents did because they managed to survive and reproduce and make you. So they're, they're at least a good enough model to copy from the environment. So if an individual is being born uh in an environment to a teenage mother who doesn't go to high school, who has unstable relationships, it's not shocking that that person is then more likely to grow up in uh an environment and become less likely to go to high school and graduate high school and have stable partners because they're learning from the environment. So I would completely agree with the idea that we need to be very cautious about these correlational um behaviors and make sure that we're looking at them from all the different perspectives that could cause causation, which is a bad way of saying when we have correlations, you wanna make sure that it's not just going in one direction that other directions have been looked at and have been found less plausible. And in the case of life history theory, the effect sizes are much larger in the direction going from having a mother. And we know that genetics are really strongly involved with early reproduction and timing of anarchy that having mother in that situation is a really big effect size for you having risks later on in your development, going the other direction. It's a really small effect size that being in that environment predicting you having early reproduction is a very small factor and probably the result of that larger correlation. So more research needs to be done in the directions of these effects and then especially we need to look and make sure that they make sense historically because as I said earlier, uh you know, it reminds me of a 19 eighties commercial for burgers where they were saying, where is the beef? It was, you know, looking at a mcdonald's hamburger and saying it's so small. That's the reality. How does this happen in the in ancestral environment? How do you speed up your reproduction if you're in a one acre farm, uh or one square kilometer farm and you already have two or three people living there? How do you get more food? There's, there's not social systems like we have today that will provide for your offspring. So we need to look at the viability of these theories um in the environments that they would have evolved in.

1:05:03 Ricardo Lopes: Great. So, Doctor Volt, just before we go, would you like to tell people where they can find you and your work on the internet?

1:05:12 Anthony Volk: Uh I maintain a relatively low profile. Um But if you Google my name, uh you'll, you'll see my labs. Uh There's Brock U dot C A slash Vogue, V as in Victor Olk lab as well as uh Brock U dot C A slash brave, which is um a group of us who are studying bullying from an evolutionary perspective and trying to intervene. Um So I always welcome any thoughts or questions or ideas that folks have. Um But generally I try to stay off of arguments uh on social media because it's not my forte for engaging in those, but I welcome any thoughts, ideas or questions that folks may have.

1:05:57 Ricardo Lopes: So thank you so much again for taking the time to come on the show. It's been a real pleasure to talk with you. Thank you for having me. Hi guys. Thank you for watching this interview. Until the end. If you liked it, please share it. Leave a like and hit the subscription button. The show is brought to you by N Lights Learning and development. Then differently check the website at N lights.com and also please consider supporting the show on Patreon or paypal. I would also like to give a huge thank you to my main patrons and paypal supporters, Perego Larson, Jerry Muller and Frederick Suno Bernard Seche O of Alex Adam Castle Matthew Whitting B no wolf, Tim Ho Erica LJ Conners, Philip Forrest Connelly. Then the Met Robert Wine in NAI Z Mar Nevs calling in Hobel Governor Mikel Stormer Samuel Andre Francis for Agns Ferger Ken Hall, her ma J and Lain Jung Y and the Samuel K Hes Mark Smith J. Tom Hummel. S friends, David Sloan Wilson Yasa, dear Roman Roach Diego and Jan Punter Romani Charlotte Bli Nicole Barba, Adam Hunt, Pavla Stassi Na Me, Gary G Alman, Sam of Zal Ari and Y Polton John Barboza, Julian Price Edward Hall, Eden Broder Douglas Fry Franca Gilon Cortez or Scott Zachary ftdw Daniel Friedman, William Buckner, Paul Giorgio, Luke Loki, Georgio, Theophano, Chris Williams and Peter Wo David Williams Di A Costa, Anton Erickson Charles Murray, Alex Shaw, Marie Martinez, Coralie Chevalier, Bangalore Fists, Larry Dey Junior, Old Ebon Starry Michael Bailey. Then spur by Robert Grassy Zorn, Jeff mcmahon, Jake Zul Barnabas Radick Mark Temple, Thomas Dvor Luke Neeson, Chris Tory Kimberley Johnson, Benjamin Gilbert Jessica Week in the B brand Nicholas Carlson, Ismael Bensley Man, George Katis Valentine Steinman, Perlis Kate Von Goler, Alexander Abert Liam Dan Biar Masoud Ali Mohammadi Perpendicular Jer Urla. Good enough, Gregory Hastings David Pins of Sean Nelson, Mike Levin and Jos Net. A special thanks to my producers is our web, Jim Frank Lucani, Tom Vig and Bernard N Cortes Dixon, Bendik Muller Thomas Rumble, Catherine and Patrick Tobin, John Carl, Negro, Nick Ortiz and Nick Golden. And to my executive producers, Matthew lavender, Si Adrian Bogdan Knit and Rosie. Thank you for all.