{"id":48768,"date":"2018-01-10T15:02:24","date_gmt":"2018-01-10T20:02:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=48768"},"modified":"2018-01-11T15:24:33","modified_gmt":"2018-01-11T20:24:33","slug":"teens-who-bully-will-use-those-traits-to-get-sex-new-research-shows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2018\/01\/teens-who-bully-will-use-those-traits-to-get-sex-new-research-shows\/","title":{"rendered":"Teens who bully will use those traits to get sex, new research shows"},"content":{"rendered":"

New research by Brock University shows adolescent bullies have a higher number of sexual partners than their non-bullying peers.<\/p>\n

Building on previous studies on the issue, Brock Associate Professor of Child and Youth Studies Tony Volk looked at what makes teens willing and able to use bullying as a strategy to meet their sexual needs.<\/p>\n

\u201cIs it being really angry? Is it being really reckless? Is it being really low in empathy? These are all common ideas to explain this behaviour,\u201d says Volk, whose research was published last month in the journal Evolutionary Psychology Science<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe answer, generally speaking, was no to all of that,\u201d he says. \u201cThe one common personality trait was being willing to exploit others, an arrogant belief that you deserve better than other people or that different rules apply to you, something, sadly, we see in the adult world.\u201d<\/p>\n

The research team, headed by Volk, set up two groups, one consisting of younger teens with an average age of 13.5, and another group with an average age of 18.5.<\/p>\n

Participants in both groups filled out the HEXACO Personality Inventory<\/a> and a questionnaire that measured how frequently they were involved in bullying activities in school.<\/p>\n

Co-developed by Brock University and the University of Calgary, the HEXACO model measures six major dimensions of personality: honesty-humility; emotionality; extraversion; agreeableness (versus anger); conscientiousness; and openness to experience.<\/p>\n

The team found that both older and younger teens who scored low in honesty-humility were most \u201cwilling and able to use bullying as a way to get sexual partners, which in turn may increase their sexual opportunities,\u201d says the study, titled \u201cDo Bullies Have More Sex? The Role of Personality.\u201d <\/a><\/p>\n

Older teens who scored low on agreeableness and were more introverted were also more likely to be bullies, although they didn\u2019t necessarily have more sexual partners than their non-bullying peers.<\/p>\n

Teens bullying to gain sexual partners exhibit several characteristic behaviours, Volks says.<\/p>\n

Boys tend to intimidate girls by controlling the girls\u2019 movements and who they have access to, and threaten to harm the girls\u2019 reputations if they don\u2019t go along with the boys\u2019 demands.<\/p>\n

Volk says girls tend to \u201cbrowbeat\u201d boys into doing what the girls want and also threaten to harm the boys\u2019 reputations.<\/p>\n

Both boys and girls will attack their same-sex competitors.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause the bullies view themselves as being more deserving and others as less deserving, they\u2019re more likely to view life as a competition where there are winners and losers: \u2018I\u2019m going to knock down the losers so I can be a winner,\u2019\u201d says Volk.<\/p>\n

Opinions vary as to the \u2018nature versus nurture\u2019 debate on whether bullying and other types of behaviours are biologically determined or come about as a result of environment.<\/p>\n

This includes mixed messages about respecting women and prominent figures who bully to get what they want, says Volk.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe analogy I always use when I talk about development is that it\u2019s like baking chocolate chip cookies,\u201d says Volk. \u201cWhat\u2019s more important to have? Chocolate chips, which are your biological ingredients, or an oven, which is the environment? You need both.\u201d<\/p>\n

He says bullying by teens who score low on honesty-humility can be reduced if parents are aware of their teens\u2019 activities.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur results suggest that both research and intervention efforts with older and younger adolescents need to recognize and respond to the relationships between personality, sex and bullying,\u201d says the study, whose first author, Daniel Provenzano, was a master\u2019s student at Brock. Provenzano is now at the University of Windsor.<\/p>\n

There are ways to cut down on teen bullying, says Volk. These include:<\/p>\n