Why People Bully: The Psychology Behind Power and Control
“Bullying isn’t about confidence—it’s about control. In this episode, I unpack the psychological roots of bullying behavior, the emotional insecurities it masks, and why some people feel powerful only when others feel small. This one’s for anyone who’s ever been pushed down—or has wondered why someone needed to.”
Transcript
Welcome to The Psychology of Us. I’m Professor RJ Starr, and this is the podcast where we explore the fascinating, sometimes uncomfortable, and always illuminating world of human psychology.
Today, we’re diving into a topic that affects all of us, whether we realize it or not, bullying. It’s easy to think of bullying as something that happens to kids on a playground. We picture a bigger kid shoving a smaller one into a locker or stealing lunch money. But bullying is so much more than that. It’s a deeply embedded social behavior, one that plays out in schools, workplaces, online, and even within families. It can take the form of subtle manipulation or outright cruelty. And despite how common it is, many people don’t fully understand why it happens, or what it does to those involved.
So today, we’re going to take a deeper look. Why do people bully? Why do some people become targets? And what happens to the bystanders who watch it unfold?
I want you to think about your own experiences as we go through this. Maybe you were bullied. Maybe you were the one doing the bullying. Maybe you stood on the sidelines, unsure of what to do. Wherever you were in that dynamic, there’s a psychology behind it, and that’s what we’re unpacking today.
The Psychology of the Bully
Let’s start with a question that might seem simple: Why do people bully?
Most people assume that bullies are just aggressive, angry individuals who enjoy causing harm. But that’s an oversimplification. Not all bullies are loud, violent, or even obvious. Some are charismatic. Some are calculating. And some don’t even realize that what they’re doing is bullying at all.
At its core, bullying is about power. It’s about establishing dominance, whether physically, socially, or psychologically. And to understand that, we have to look at something called Social Dominance Theory, developed by Jim Sidanius and Felicia Pratto. Their research explains how human groups naturally form hierarchies, someone always ends up on top, and someone ends up at the bottom. Bullying often serves to maintain those hierarchies. It’s a way for certain individuals to assert control, either to climb the social ladder or to make sure they don’t fall down it.
Now, this might sound cold and calculated, but the truth is, a lot of bullying is instinctive. It’s modeled behavior. We learn it by watching others. Albert Bandura’s Social Learning Theory tells us that people, especially children, imitate what they see. If a child grows up in an environment where aggression is rewarded, where manipulation gets results, they start to internalize that behavior.
And here’s where it gets complicated, some bullies don’t actually feel powerful. In fact, many are deeply insecure. They bully because it’s the only way they know to establish control over their environment. It’s not always about malice. Sometimes, it’s about fear, fear of being perceived as weak, fear of being excluded, fear of losing status.
I remember a kid from my own school days, let’s call him Mark. Mark was the kind of guy you’d expect to be the target of bullying. He was quiet, a little awkward, and didn’t fit in with the cool kids. But one day, seemingly overnight, Mark changed. He started mocking other students, humiliating them in subtle ways that weren’t always obvious to adults. He never threw a punch, never got detention, but he was brutal with his words. And it worked. He climbed the social ranks.
Years later, I ran into him again. And what he told me stuck with me. He admitted that he had been terrified of being on the receiving end of that same cruelty. He’d watched other kids get bullied, and instead of becoming a target, he made a choice, he was going to be the one holding the power. It was survival, in his mind.
That’s the thing about bullying, it’s not just about cruelty for cruelty’s sake. It’s a strategy. A dysfunctional, damaging strategy, but a strategy nonetheless.
But what about the people on the other side? What makes someone more likely to be bullied? Why do some people become targets while others seem immune?
The Psychology of the Victim
Some people seem to attract bullying more than others. It’s not fair, and it’s certainly not their fault, but there’s a psychological pattern to it. Understanding that pattern doesn’t just help us recognize who’s at risk, it helps us see the deeper dynamics of human interaction.
When you think of someone who has been bullied, what comes to mind? Maybe you picture a quiet kid, someone who keeps to themselves, maybe a little different from the rest. But the truth is, being bullied isn’t just about personality. It’s about perception, how someone is seen by their peers, their teachers, their coworkers.
Sociologist Charles Horton Cooley introduced the concept of the looking-glass self, the idea that our self-image is shaped by how we think others see us. For kids who are bullied, this is particularly damaging. If you’re constantly treated as weak, as less valuable, as an outsider, you start to believe it. The way people treat us influences how we see ourselves, and for those who are targeted by bullies, that mirror can become a permanent distortion.
What makes someone a target? Psychologists have looked into this, and the answers aren’t always what you’d expect. Some research suggests that kids who are overly passive or socially anxious are more likely to be bullied because they don’t fight back. Others argue that it’s not just passivity, it’s any kind of difference. Being too quiet, too loud, too smart, too different in any way.
Then there’s something called the provocative victim, someone who gets bullied but also lashes out, creating a cycle where they are both victim and aggressor. These individuals often struggle with emotional regulation. They might be impulsive, reactive, or socially awkward, making them stand out in ways that frustrate their peers.
And that’s an important point, standing out. Because bullying isn’t just about individual personalities. It’s also about group dynamics. The reality is, many victims are targeted not because they’re weak, but because their presence challenges the social structure. They don’t fit into the expected mold. Maybe they’re too talented in a way that threatens others. Maybe they refuse to conform. Maybe they just don’t play along with the unspoken rules of the hierarchy.
Bullying thrives in environments where difference is seen as a threat rather than an asset. The workplace is a perfect example. You’d think that adults would have outgrown bullying, but in reality, workplace bullying is just as prevalent as childhood bullying, if not more. The difference is, instead of playground insults, it manifests as exclusion, sabotage, or manipulation. And again, the targets tend to be the ones who don’t conform, who challenge the status quo, who aren’t willing to play the political games required to fit in.
The long-term effects of bullying are profound. Studies have shown that being bullied in childhood increases the risk of anxiety, depression, and even PTSD later in life. And there’s something called learned helplessness, a concept developed by Martin Seligman. It happens when someone, after repeated negative experiences, stops trying to escape or fight back because they believe nothing will change. If every attempt to stand up for yourself has been met with more humiliation, more rejection, more pain, you eventually stop trying. And that learned helplessness carries into adulthood, shaping relationships, career choices, even self-worth.
I knew someone who had been bullied relentlessly as a child. They weren’t weak or passive, but they were different. And as an adult, that bullying stayed with them. They constantly questioned their value, even when they were in environments where no one was actually mistreating them. The damage bullying does isn’t just in the moment, it rewires the way people see themselves, making it harder to trust, harder to feel safe, harder to believe they belong.
The effects don’t just stop at the individual level. Bullying also thrives because of the people around it, the bystanders who either intervene or let it happen. That’s what we’re turning to next.
Bystanders and the Social Context
Bullying doesn’t happen in isolation. It’s not just about the bully and the target, it’s about everyone who sees it and what they do in response. And in most cases, people do nothing. Not because they don’t care, but because psychology is working against them in ways they don’t even realize.
There’s a concept in psychology called the bystander effect, first studied by John Darley and Bibb Latané in the late 1960s. It describes how people are less likely to intervene in a crisis when others are around. It sounds counterintuitive, you’d think that more people would mean a greater chance that someone steps in. But what actually happens is something called diffusion of responsibility. Everyone assumes that someone else will do something, so no one does anything at all.
I remember witnessing a situation like this firsthand. In high school, I saw a kid getting pushed around in the hallway. It wasn’t an all-out fight, but it was enough to be uncomfortable to watch. I wasn’t the only one there, there were plenty of students around. Some looked away, some even laughed nervously, but no one stepped in. Including me. And I think about that moment often. Not because I was afraid, but because I told myself it wasn’t my place to get involved.
That’s how bullying survives. Not just through aggression, but through silence.
Bystanders don’t always mean to enable bullying, but their inaction sends a message, that what’s happening is acceptable. And sometimes, they don’t just stand by; they become part of it, even if they wouldn’t normally behave that way. There’s another psychological concept at play here, conformity. Solomon Asch’s famous experiments in the 1950s showed how people will go along with a group even when they know the group is wrong. When you’re in a social setting where bullying is normalized, where calling it out makes you the outsider, the pressure to conform can be overwhelming.
That’s why bullying isn’t just about individuals. It’s about culture. It’s about the unspoken rules of a group, whether in school, at work, or online. And social media has amplified this in ways we’re still trying to fully understand.
One of the most disturbing trends in the digital age is how easily people get pulled into dogpiling, mass harassment campaigns where hundreds or even thousands of strangers target an individual online. Most of these people don’t even know the person they’re attacking. They’re just following the crowd, caught up in the moment, driven by the same psychological forces that make bystanders stay silent or turn into participants in real life.
And what’s worse is that social media gives people a sense of detachment. When you’re not face-to-face with someone, it’s easier to dehumanize them, to treat them as an abstract idea rather than a person with real emotions. Psychologists call this the online disinhibition effect, the way anonymity lowers empathy and increases cruelty.
But here’s the thing, bystanders also have power. Studies have shown that when even one person steps in against a bully, the dynamic shifts. The victim feels less alone. The bully loses their audience. And the people watching realize that silence isn’t the only option. It doesn’t take an army to change the course of bullying. It takes one person willing to break the pattern.
The question is, in a world where bullying has found new platforms and new methods, how do we stop it? The answer to that isn’t simple, but psychology gives us some clues.
The Digital Age and Cyberbullying
Bullying has always existed, but the way it happens has changed. What used to be confined to school hallways and playgrounds now follows people home, into their bedrooms, onto their phones, and into their minds long after the last message is sent. Cyberbullying is relentless. It doesn’t stop when the school bell rings, and it doesn’t require physical strength, just a screen and an audience.
One of the most significant differences between traditional bullying and cyberbullying is accessibility. In the past, a person might have been tormented at school but found relief at home. Now, the bullying continues online, texts, social media posts, anonymous messages. And because the internet never sleeps, neither does the harassment. Victims can receive dozens, even hundreds, of hateful comments within minutes. It’s public, it’s permanent, and it feels inescapable.
The psychology behind cyberbullying is different too. In face-to-face interactions, people still have to contend with social consequences, the discomfort of seeing another person’s reaction, the possibility of getting caught, the moral hesitation that comes with looking someone in the eyes. But online, all of that disappears. The screen creates distance. The person on the receiving end of the cruelty isn’t a real, living, breathing individual in the mind of the attacker, they’re just an account, a username, a profile picture.
This is what psychologists call the online disinhibition effect, a term coined by John Suler. When people are anonymous, they feel a sense of detachment from their actions. They say things they’d never say in person. They justify their words because they don’t have to witness the pain they cause. And when they see others doing the same thing, the behavior spreads.
There’s a chilling case that illustrates just how powerful this can be. In 2012, a Canadian teenager named Amanda Todd shared a YouTube video telling her story. She had been blackmailed, harassed, and cyberbullied to the point of complete emotional collapse. She held up flashcards explaining what had happened to her, how relentless the bullying was, how it followed her no matter where she went. A few weeks later, she died by suicide. And even after her death, the bullying didn’t stop. Strangers online mocked her, turned her tragedy into a joke, and continued the harassment as if she had never been a real person at all.
That’s the dark side of the internet, it can strip people of their humanity. But it doesn’t have to.
The same tools that enable cyberbullying also provide opportunities for connection, support, and accountability. Just as bystanders can make a difference in real life, they can make a difference online. The simple act of challenging cruelty, reporting harmful content, calling out harassment, offering support to victims, can disrupt the cycle. Research shows that when bullies don’t get the validation they expect, when they’re met with resistance instead of approval, their behavior diminishes.
And then there’s the question of resilience, how people can psychologically protect themselves from the effects of online bullying. Because the truth is, as long as there’s an internet, there will be cruelty on it. The solution isn’t just to police every comment section or ban every harmful post, it’s to equip people with the tools to withstand and recover from attacks on their dignity and self-worth.
This isn’t just about preventing bullying. It’s about reshaping the culture that allows it to thrive. And that starts with understanding what works, and what doesn’t, when it comes to intervention.
Interventions and Prevention
If bullying, whether in person or online, is a problem of power, of social dynamics, of learned behavior, then the question becomes: how do we stop it? How do we change behavior that, in some cases, has been ingrained for years? The answer isn’t simple, and it isn’t one-size-fits-all. But psychology gives us some insights into what works, and what doesn’t.
One of the biggest mistakes people make when addressing bullying is assuming that punishment is the solution. The instinct is understandable, someone bullies, so they should be punished. But research shows that punitive measures alone don’t actually stop bullying. In some cases, they make it worse. A bully who is simply punished, without any intervention that addresses why they’re engaging in that behavior in the first place, often doubles down. They either get sneakier, or they redirect their aggression elsewhere.
Instead of focusing only on punishment, successful interventions focus on changing the social environment that allows bullying to happen in the first place. That means shifting the culture of schools, workplaces, and online spaces to make cruelty socially unacceptable.
In schools, some of the most effective anti-bullying programs don’t just target bullies and victims, they involve bystanders. Studies have shown that when students are taught how to safely intervene, how to support peers, and how to recognize subtle forms of bullying, bullying rates drop dramatically. A study published in the Journal of Educational Psychology found that schools with bystander intervention training saw a significant reduction in bullying incidents.
The reason is simple: bullying thrives on an audience. When that audience turns against it, the power dynamic shifts.
This isn’t just true for children. The workplace is another environment where bullying flourishes, and once again, interventions that involve the broader social structure, not just the bully and the victim, are the most effective. Research from the Workplace Bullying Institute has found that organizations with strong anti-bullying cultures, where employees feel empowered to speak up, experience significantly lower rates of workplace harassment.
Then there’s the issue of resilience. Preventing bullying isn’t just about stopping bullies, it’s about helping people develop psychological tools to protect themselves when bullying does happen.
Resilience isn’t about ignoring pain or pretending words don’t hurt. It’s about reframing experiences. Cognitive-behavioral psychology teaches us that the way we interpret an event is just as important, if not more, than the event itself. When someone is bullied, they often internalize the experience. They start to believe the things being said about them. They see themselves through the bully’s eyes. That’s where the real damage happens.
But if a person learns to challenge those interpretations, to see bullying as a reflection of the bully’s issues rather than their own worth, they take back control. They separate their identity from the cruelty they experience.
I once knew someone who had been bullied for years. And when they talked about it, they didn’t just talk about the pain, it was there, of course, but what stuck with them most was how long they carried those words, how much they believed them. It took years to unlearn the idea that they weren’t good enough, weren’t strong enough, weren’t valuable. That’s the real cost of bullying, not just the moment of cruelty, but the way it embeds itself into a person’s identity.
That’s why prevention has to be about more than stopping bad behavior. It has to be about teaching people, especially children, how to see themselves accurately, how to develop an internal sense of self-worth that isn’t easily shattered by external cruelty. It has to be about changing the entire system that allows bullying to happen in the first place.
And most importantly, it has to be about giving people, bullies, victims, and bystanders, the tools to make different choices. Because bullying isn’t just a personal failing. It’s a social phenomenon. And that means the solution has to be social, too.
Living with the Knowledge That Bullying Exists
Bullying doesn’t always end when the immediate aggression stops. For many people, the effects linger, sometimes for years, sometimes for a lifetime. It shapes self-perception, alters the way they interact with others, and, in some cases, limits what they believe they are capable of. Even if the physical bruises fade, the psychological ones often don’t.
Some people carry these experiences in obvious ways, deep anxiety, avoidance of social situations, struggles with trust. Others carry them more subtly, in the way they second-guess themselves, in the hesitation before speaking up, in the lingering belief that they are somehow lesser than the people around them.
Psychologists have studied the long-term effects of bullying, and the findings are striking. Research from King’s College London followed individuals who had been bullied in childhood and found that, decades later, they were still at higher risk for anxiety, depression, and lower self-esteem. The effects of bullying weren’t just emotional, they extended to economic and social outcomes. People who had been bullied as children were more likely to struggle with relationships, with employment, with feeling a sense of belonging in the world.
This isn’t surprising when you consider what bullying does to a person’s sense of self. When someone is repeatedly told, through words or actions, that they are weak, that they don’t belong, that they are inferior in some way, those messages don’t just disappear. They embed themselves into the way a person sees the world. And without conscious effort, they can become part of a person’s internal narrative.
But here’s the most important part: the effects of bullying are not permanent. They can be unlearned. They can be rewritten.
Cognitive-behavioral therapy has shown us that the way we interpret our past shapes our present and future. Someone who was bullied might walk through life believing that they are fundamentally unworthy of respect, of love, of success. But when that belief is challenged, when they begin to see the bullying for what it was, a reflection of the bully’s psychology rather than their own value, things start to shift.
This is why narrative psychology, the way we tell the story of our lives, is so powerful. If a person sees their past experiences of bullying as proof of their own inadequacy, that belief will shape everything. But if they begin to see it differently, as something they survived, as something that tested them but did not define them, the psychological grip of bullying starts to loosen.
I’ve spoken with people who, years after being bullied, realized that the beliefs they held about themselves weren’t actually true. They had internalized someone else’s cruelty and carried it as their own identity. And once they recognized that, once they consciously re-examined the story they had been telling themselves, things changed. They saw their experiences as something to overcome, not something to be trapped by.
This doesn’t mean ignoring pain or pretending bullying didn’t happen. It means refusing to let it be the defining force in your life. It means recognizing that healing isn’t about forgetting, it’s about reclaiming your own narrative.
Understanding bullying, why it happens, who it affects, and how it embeds itself into the human psyche, isn’t just about reducing harm in the present. It’s about helping people recognize how these experiences shape them and, more importantly, how they can reshape themselves in the aftermath.
That’s where real change happens, not just in stopping bullies, but in ensuring that those who have been bullied are not defined by the worst moments of their past.
Closing Thoughts
Bullying is often reduced to a simple story, one person is cruel, another suffers, and eventually, the situation resolves. But as we’ve explored, the reality is far more complex. Bullying isn’t just about bad behavior; it’s about power, psychology, and the social structures that allow it to persist. It happens in childhood, in adulthood, in workplaces, in relationships, and now, more than ever, in the digital spaces we occupy.
For those who have been bullied, the effects don’t always end when the bullying stops. The words, the experiences, the feelings, they linger. They shape identity, self-perception, and in some cases, the choices a person makes for the rest of their life. But just as bullying can leave a lasting imprint, so can resilience. So can healing. So can the conscious decision to refuse to let someone else’s cruelty define who you are.
For those who have bullied, whether intentionally or through social pressure, there’s an opportunity to reflect. To ask, “Why did I do that? What need was I trying to meet? What fear was I trying to suppress?” Because bullying isn’t just about malice, it’s often about insecurity, about power, about survival in a social system that rewards dominance. And if that’s the case, then changing that behavior isn’t just about guilt, it’s about growth.
For bystanders, the choice is always there. To speak up. To intervene. To break the cycle of silence that allows cruelty to thrive. Even one voice of opposition can change the trajectory of a bullying situation. One person willing to say, “That’s not okay,” can shift the entire dynamic.
And for all of us, whether we’ve been bullied, been bullies, or been bystanders, there’s the larger question, what kind of world do we want to create? Do we want to live in a world where cruelty is a means to power, where silence enables harm, where people carry the weight of their worst experiences long after they’ve ended? Or do we want something different?
Psychology gives us tools to understand human behavior, but understanding isn’t enough. It has to lead to action. To awareness. To change. Because bullying isn’t just something that happens to other people, it’s something that reflects the culture we live in. And that means we all have a role to play in what happens next.
If today’s episode resonated with you, I’d love to hear your thoughts. You can reach out at ProfRJStarr@outlook.com or continue the conversation on social media. And if you found this discussion valuable, consider sharing it with someone who might need to hear it.
Thank you for listening to The Psychology of Us. I’m Professor RJ Starr. Until next time, take care of yourself, and take care of each other.