Understanding Bullying or Bullying: Definition, Causes, and How to Overcome

Bullying often happens not only to teenagers, but also adults. And even it can happen in places that we consider as a safe place like school, religious institution, and workplace. The intensity of bullying that happens in society varies.

The worse thing is that some verbal bullying is covered as kidding, but in fact, it makes the victim uncomfortable. One of the examples of big scale bullying is that a student is excommunicated by other students because he or she has different physical appearance, cognitive things, or because he or she is not rich.

It is important for us to understand more about bullying and hopefully by understanding it, we can suppress this behavior so that there are no more bullying victims. Here is the explanation about bullying according to the Kampus Psikologi site.

Definitions of Bullying

Bullying is abuse of power and aggressive behaviour with the aim to hurt other people which are done by peers repeatedly and involves a real or perceived power imbalance between the perpetrator and the victim. (Olweus D. in Wolke & Lereya, 2015)

Meanwhile American Psychological Association (APA) defines bullying as a form of aggressive behaviour which is done repeatedly and intentionally to cause uncomfortable feeling or injury to the victim (Bullying, t.t.)

Based on two definitions above, we can conclude that bullying is an aggressive behaviour which is done by someone or a group of people intentionally and repeatedly with the aim to make other people uncomfortable or cause other bad effects like physical injury, psychologically, and socially.

The fact is that, in bullying, there are three parties involved including perpetrator, victim and bystanders. Bystanders on bullying refers to individuals who see bullying behavior online or cyberbullying or offline where bullying can be their friends, colleagues, teachers, bosses, coaches, parents and many more (Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs (ASPA), 2019).

Same as bystanders in the other events, bystanders in bullying can also give positive effects mainly in stopping the perpetrator’s behaviour. However, if the bystanders do nothing and they only see it, then bullying that is done by the perpetrator will not stop and tend to be more intense.

The Causes of Bullying

The cause of bullying is various. It cannot be seen from only one side, but we need to see from all sides involved. Here is the short explanation about the causes of bullying from perpetrator, victim, and bystander perspective.

1. 1. Perpetrator

The reasons why a person does bullying to others are different from one person to another. Seunagal (2021) explains that several things that can be the causes of bullying are feeling that the opposite side is a danger (perceived of threats), wanting to have power so that can be dominant, wanting to revenge, or trauma that he or she had in the past that has not be solved yet.

Let’s take an example. There was a senior in the swimming club named Rai and he bullied his junior named Nio because Rai felt that Nio could be more powerful than him and liked more by others in the club.

1. 2. Victim

Bullying can also be caused by several things related to the victim itself. There are some researches which show that victims of bullying have certain psychological characteristics such as experiencing negative emotions like being sad, angry, to become insecure (Emamzadeh, 2018).

In certain cases, victims of bullying tend to have a better side than the perpetrators so that the perpetrators feel that they are in danger if they compete with the victims like the victims are more skillful, agile, smart and many more (Gordon, 2020).

Let’s take an example again. Nio experienced bullying which was done by Rai, but it happened not because he was a junior, but Nio was someone who often felt insecure with his swimming ability that was not better than other members in the club. Because of this reason and also perceived threats, Rai bullied Nio.

1. 3. Bystanders

Bystanders who see bullying are able to have a role in this bullying. If they do nothing or just be silent when they are seeing bullying, it can increase bullying behaviour.

If you become bystanders, it can bring various effects, like the perpetrators and victims feel that the bystanders agree with bullying so that perpetrators will do it again and again while the victim will feel alone. (Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, 2019).

Types of Bullying

If we see bullying in general and based on the definitions that have been uttered previously, it can be understood that bullying has various types or forms. These types of bullying can be differentiated into several things based on certain categories. Generally, there are two types of bullying, namely traditional and cyberbullying (Smith, 2018).

1. 1. Traditional bullying is a type of bullying that is done offline and tends to be found in daily life. Some examples of traditional bullying are hitting, avoiding someone, forcing to ask money and many more.
   2. Cyberbullying is a form of bullying which is done through the internet or online. In the beginning, this type of bullying seldom happened, but now since technology has developed, this behavior increases as well. The example of cyberbullying is Afi is a student and he got bad comments about a photo that he just uploaded on his social media.

Besides the two types of bullying above, there are also some other types or forms of bullying. According to the New Zealand Ministry of Education (t.t.), there are at least three forms of bullying seen if we see from goals and behaviors.

Those three bullying types are explained below.

1. 1. Physical bullying

This is one of traditional bullying forms where in this bullying there is an act or intention to hurt the victim’s physique (New Zealand Ministry of Education, t.t.). Some of these physical bullying are hitting, kicking, pinching, stealing and/or damaging others’ items, and many more. This kind of bullying is easier to be known because it is clearly seen by people around.

1. 2. Verbal bullying

This bullying form has similarities with physical bullying because it is also easier to be found in traditional bullying or cyberbullying. It is because verbal bullying is usually done by writing or saying uncomfortable words or sentences (New Zealand Ministry of Education, t.t.). Let’s take an example. There is a new employee named Ina and she gets sarcastic sentences that hurt her every time she does not do the task given by her seniors.

1. 3. Social bullying

Different from physical bullying and verbal bullying that tend to be done directly to an individual, social bullying is a form of bullying that is aimed to damage someone’s relationship or reputation (New Zealand Ministry of Education, t.t.). This social bullying often happens in society, but many people do not realize it. The example of social bullying is when Via invites her friends not to befriend with Nini because she is a new student at school and comes from a village.

Impacts of Bullying

Bullying can happen anywhere, regardless of the age or status of the victim. There are many bullying issues that happen in various settings such as workplaces, educational institutions, and even the environment where they live. Bullying is able to give a negative impact for all parties involved.

The victims of bullying can experience various things in the short term or long term. Generally, the shirt term effects of bullying for the victim are trauma, anger, depression, anxiety, psychosomatic, decreased achievement, decreased motivation to suicidal thoughts (“The Long Term Effects of Bullying” t.t.; Wolke & Lereya, 2015).

How about the long-term effects of bullying? The victim of bullying may not be able to adapt when they are adults or their ability in adapting is reduced, such as difficulty maintaining long-term romantic relationships, difficulty adapting at work and so on (Wolke & Lereya, 2015).

From the perpetrator’s perspective, the bullying behavior that they did can have a negative impact for themselves, especially when they are adults. Some of them tend to be more involved in criminal activities such as vandalism, drug abuse, being abusive, and so on (Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, 2019).

The impact of bullying is not only on victims and perpetrators, but also to bystanders. If bullying happens at school, the impact may be the bystanders will play truant and in a broader context bystanders can experience an increase in drug use, smoking, and experience psychological health problems such as anxiety and depression as well as physical problems. (Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, 2019).

How to Overcome Bullying

After you understand bullying as you have read above, now it is better for you to also learn about the ways to prevent bullying and overcome it so that you are able to know what you must do when you see or experience bullying.

In general, there are several ways that you are able to do to stop bullying that happens to yourself or to others.

1. 1. Communicate bullying that you experience or see to someone that you trust. You can communicate it with your teachers, friends, brothers, sisters, spouse, etc.
   2. If bullying happens in a formal environment such as at school or office, you have to report it to the head of the department of division that can help you like school counsellor, human resources etc.
   3. Amy Cooper Hakim in Barth (2017) explained that when facing a bullying perpetrator, we have to strive to be confident to show that you are strong without having to respond with violence.
   4. When you talk with the perpetrator of bullying, answer assertively but without emotion to show that you do not want to be a victim, don’t want to “apologize” for what they accuse, but also don’t make a fuss with them (Signe Whitson in Barth, 2017).
   5. Set clear boundaries for what can be done professionally and stay firm so that bullying does not develop (Chrissy Scivicque in Barth, 2017).
   6. Let’s say that the condition is not conducive and the threats are increasing. If so, seek help from the police to prevent the spread of violence.
   7. Besides, you are able to seek the help of a health professional physically and psychologically if you think that you need where it is done to minimize the impact on you.

Let’s say that you are not a victim of bullying, but you are a bystander. If so, you must try to find a way to stop it. Here are several ways that you are able to do to stop or overcome bullying if you are bystanders where these ways are developed from the article Becoming an Upstander to Bullying Just Got Easier! (2018)

1. 1. You have to ask about bullying behavior to the perpetrator, like asking whether the thing that they do is right or not and whether there is any particular basis for doing that.
   2. Divert the attention of the perpetrator through certain activities to reduce or prevent bullying which is out of control.
   3. If there are other people who see the bullying or become bystanders, you can come together to show to the perpetrators that the witnesses do not agree with their behaviour.
   4. The most important thing is to approach the victims and convince them that they are not alone.
   5. If you are not able to contribute directly, you are able to help to make a report to the authorities or to give your support to the victims of bullying.

That’s all the explanation about bullying. Hopefully, after reading this, it can increase people’s awareness about the danger of bullying. If you see people around you being bullied, you have to do something as explained above to prevent or to stop it.