NCJ Number
211236
Date Published
2005
Length
24 pages
Annotation
This chapter uses an evolutionary and biopsychosocial approach to explain bullying in prisons.
Abstract
If "bullying" is defined as "the use of aggression and the threat of aggression to intimidate and exert coercive control over others," then it is endemic to the social behavior of many species. Social behaviors that are aggressive and threatening evolved over many millions of years as strategic solutions to the challenges of social competition. In group-living animals, such as primates, social hierarchies have emerged to control fighting via subordinates being prepared to back down or submit to a threat from a more powerful individual. The submissive display is a powerful inhibitor of aggression. The basic aims of power/rank-seeking and bullying are to get what one wants, deter others from challenging, and generally to influence situations to one's own advantage. Humans, with their most recently evolved capacities for symbolic thought and self-identities that link people together on the basis of attractiveness, have significantly modified the styles and tactics of bullying. In these contexts, bullying often focuses on rendering others as undesirable or unattractive for the purpose of gaining social advantage and acceptance in a competitive social environment. Humans, however, have also evolved high-level strategies for expressing warmth, compassion, and affiliation to others. An antidote to bullying is the development of a social environment in which social acceptance and status are measured by warmth and support in meeting the needs of others in the group. The ecology of prison, on the other hand, seems ideally suited to the use of self-protective and intimidating strategies, especially for people who have operated in such social environments outside of prison. 65 references