Five-decade UK study finds that aggression at school leads to better-paying jobs, while those with emotional instability went on to earn less
Children who displayed aggressive behaviour at school, such as bullying or temper outbursts, are likely to earn more money in middle age, according to a five-decade study that upends the maxim that bullies do not prosper.
They are also more likely to have higher job satisfaction and be in more desirable jobs, say researchers from the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex.
The paper, published today, used data about almost 7,000 people born in 1970 whose lives have been tracked by the British Cohort Study. The research team examined data from primary school teachers who assessed the children’s social and emotional skills when they were 10 years old in 1980, and matched it to their lives at the age of 46 in 2016.
“We found that those children who teachers felt had problems with attention, peer relationships and emotional instability did end up earning less in the future, as we expected, but we were surprised to find a strong link between aggressive behaviour at school and higher earnings in later life,” said Prof Emilia Del Bono, one of the study’s authors.
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Makes sense. If you’re willing to take advantage of others, you can get advantages.
And these days, retaliation against adult bullies is not so straight forward.
Not to mention psychopathic tendencies are required to excel as an exec
Adult bullies are often idolized in our culture. They’re certainly rewarded in corporate workplaces where abusing others and not caring is seen as a sign of purposefulness and strength.
Exactly… and on the flip side, standing up for workplace injustice is a sign of insubordination and is punished. Even objectively discussing power dynamics gets a negative/uncomfortable reaction in my experience.
What I’m gathering from this is I should become some sort of crazed vigilante, who goes and punches bullies in the face at playgrounds
And I completely disagree about handling adult bullies. It’s quite straightforward. Just illegal.
Apparently punching children and assaulting adults with tire irons is “wrong” and “against the law”
Bullying bullies doesn’t teach them that bullying isn’t a path to power. It just teaches them that you’re higher up in the chain than they are, for now.
Ohhh, punch them harder, got it.
I can understand putting a subjective word like “wrong” in air quotes, since that’s a matter of judgement, not objectivity. But whether something is legal or illegal is usually pretty straightforward, and not subject to interpretation outside of a courtroom, and specifically by a judge or jury.
Average joe is not permitted to interpret the law however he thinks it ought to be interpreted, that would just be chaos.
My straight forward retaliation is do damage to them.
It’s almost like capitalism is designed to make sociopathy the more successful survival strategy
I was thinking about this the other day. I think no matter the system those willing to break the rules and find the cracks will always do so.
It isn’t a capitalism problem it is a human problem
That’s not the problem. The problem isn’t the people willing to exploit the system. They’re the sociopaths in question that capitalism is designed to help succeed.
The problem is, everyone else has to cosplay them in order to survive. And human nature, despite being communal, is more powerful than that in only one way; survival adaptation.
Our species will adapt as hard as it has to in order to survive, no matter what.
In a capitalist system (mind you, societal as well as economic, socialism strapped capitalism might actually work very well), because the best survival strategy is to be a sociopath or worse, most people will be forced to do so to at least some level.
Change the system, change the outcome.
Worth saying I am sort of playing devils advocate here.
Change it to what? It is easy to back seat yell “Capitalism Bad” but change to what? Every other isim has it’s own laundry list of issues. Which one is least corruptible by sosciopaths?
You don’t think sosciopaths are going to take more than there fair share in socialism, or skew the system over time? They aren’t going to find their may to the top in every single form of government to change the rules to their desires?
Quite a few will argue that we aren’t even in capatalisim any more, it has been corrupted and changed, massaged by “government” to the point of failure, the Austrian school of economics.
So it is easy to stand on the roof top and say “Capitalism is the problem” but it seems like a much deeper rot to me
As I already said, we’re not going to be able to get rid of the sociopaths. It’s a mental disorder, by chance and or trauma. They’ll always be with us, barring some genetic engineering that borders on eugenics. That’s not the point.
The point is to make them the minority, and have a system where everyone isn’t forced to act like them in order to succeed.
I’ve already stated a potential option. Capitalism on its own is technically a purely neutral economic system, provided it’s ONLY the economic system. We have expanded that system into our society as well, and that’s when it becomes toxic.
Use a capitalist economy, but strapped and locked down by socialist (true socialist, not the USSR or communist) principles and systems. Ensure that if capitalism has social effects, they’re extremely minor, and elevate the good of people above that of capital. Socialism Strapped Capitalism.
Good inroads to this are things like UBI, a maximum income, and ensuring social and environmental effects are included in corporate financial calculations.
It isn’t a capitalism problem it is a human problem
Capitalism is the human problem.
Let’s get rid of it.By that definition to get rid of capitalism we need to get rid of the people.
Oh man the “Capitalism bad” button is going to get really really tired at this pace.
Maybe bullies have been around and thriving even prior to capitalism. I bet lots of people would have felt “bullied” by Genghis Khan.
They didn’t suggest bullying is exclusive to capitalism, right?
Maybe bullies are more prosperous in particular economic systems.
It’s worse. Certain economic and social systems are designed to make the only viable, or most viable, survival strategy to be a sociopath or worse. Most people are forced to cosplay that at some level in these systems, whether they have those traits naturally or not, in order to survive. And despite human nature being communal, it’s more powerful in survival adaptation.
I think “bullies prosper” is a part of the human condition
I think you’re using this as an excuse to never learn emotional intelligence.
I didn’t realize we had Dr. Phil in the thread wow, thanks for your contribution. Definitely revealing nothing about yourself there.
There you go jumping to conclusions again
And it worked for genghis as it does for capitalists. What’s the issue?
Maybe it shouldn’t
Be the change you want to see my guy.
I am, I was just responding to your question
I’m morbidly curious as to when you think capitalism started, considering your take here :V
Hint: it was fire
Yeah, bigger rams have been knocking around smaller rams since the advent of fire, which was when capitalism started. Thanks for all the big brain takes on this, I wish I’d get a better tally of how many complete dumbasses there are around here. 70 and counting.
Thank you for being my first block here, you galactic brain simpleton, you ;)
Capitalism rewards cut-throat behavior. No surprises there.
I mean that’s part of it but I think something that’s being overlooked is the overall mentality.
A bully who is used to getting their way and getting what they want is probably not going to have a hard time negotiating for higher pay when it comes to a job. They’re also probably more likely to leave a job that’s unsatisfactory. They’re also going to have higher levels of confidence.
Meanwhile I remember when I was a kid being told to keep my head down, keep my nose clean, don’t make waves, work hard to be rewarded and get ahead… And that’s just not how you get ahead.
Just a theory.
It would be the same in communism or any political system. Bullies will end up with the most influence.
Bullying is a part of British culture, the “yes m’lord” attitude is still strong within them, don’t cause a fuss, “keep calm and carry on” is their motto for a reason…
https://theweek.com/101863/why-england-s-schools-are-among-worst-in-world-for-bullying
https://www.agencycentral.co.uk/articles/does-the-uk-have-a-workplace-bullying-problem/
As someone who has spent half their life in the UK and the other half in the USA, specifically the English are particularly nasty and have a strange admiration for the “clever bully”, both in school and at work. That isn’t to say the USA doesn’t have bullies, they’re just not as universally admired.
Ever watch a video of Trump talking about other people who he finds threatening?
100% schoolyard bully. Only difference is that he’s not clever by adult standards.
bad comment, not a UK problem. this is c/science not “c/attack a nation people group because the study happened to be conducted in the UK”
The work tallies with previous research by economists including Nicholas Papageorge,who examined longitudinal studies in the UK and US in 2019 and found that “externalising” behaviour linked to aggression and hyperactivity was associated with lower educational attainment but higher earnings. (from the article)
uncomfortable with this being the headline and seems like without further research this could just be one of those confirmation bias things. seems to make some assumptions that we don’t know empirically such as:
- teachers in the 1980s were a good judge of character, fairly identifying who bullies whom
- that this aggressive behavior at 10 years old continues meaningfully into later life
not denying the scientific accuracy of the study, but the journalist integrity of making this the headline.
edit: you can read the original article here, and yeah the actual text of the summary vindicates my judgment of the Guardian article. the original authors frame it as an analysis of “socio-emotional skills,” not agression per se, because again, these kids are ten, not even in high school yet.
but we were surprised to find a strong link between aggressive behaviour at school and higher earnings in later life
I do not see how a normal human adult who has ever, like, worked in a corporate environment or customer service or ever read the political section of a newspaper or even literally just caught secondhand wind of the 2016 US election would instinctively believe that aggressive behavior doesn’t pay as an adult.
Either this person is a bully themselves, or we need to hook them up to some 19th century testing apparatus so we can extract whatever essence of naïveté and primal innocence they are apparently overproducing.
Brb going to bully preschoolers on the playground nearby then ask my boss for a raise.
I’m just going to copy this here since it fits like a glove:
We are ruled by people of the dark triad. Pretty much every person of the 1% lacks compassion and remorse, is manipulative and often impulsive. Think about the fact that you have more money than you can ever spend, yet you accept that people around you are homeless.
These people keep winning and get worshipped like gods so others follow their lead and the world drops into an infinite „fuck you, I got mine“ loop, resulting already in destroying our ecosystem and climate.
We need to get these people out of power. Long term by educating the masses and short term by sabotaging them as much as we can.
“Who teachers felt had problems…” Oh. Teachers. Those people who comes in AFTER things has gone far past reasonable limits, and assigns blame based on whoever the majority of the class points out as the instigator. 😒
Right.
This whole article is fucking bizarre. They act as if teachers judgments of students is somehow akin to psychologist diagnosis.
Sounds like an excuse to bully disabled people or at least slow reform to me.
What’s up with all the regressionist stuff going on?
@emptyother @stevedidwhat_infosec Glowies want people softened up and aggressive and circlejerking about social darwinist shit ISTFG it’s for war with China 😂🤣
I’ve never heard the word “Glowies” used irl before what is that?
Could you elaborate more on what you mean by softened up? In what way?
“Glowies” is fascist signaling. I don’t have a good non paywalled explanation so have this, i guess.
@stevedidwhat_infosec It just means CIA. You shouldn’t, it’s a pretty dark reference to when internet lolcow obsessives encouraged a schizophrenic operating systems coder who lived with his parents to say racist stuff. He does have one famous rant he rehashed s lot where he says “CIA [racial slur] all glow in the dark you can see them coming”. At this point it’s transcended any racist connotation as people have mistakenly picked it up without realizing, and it’s a meme
Ohoho but that’s where you’re wrong
TempleOS IS LIIIIIIIIFE
In all seriousness though, really sad that he passed before he could get real lasting help for his problems. RIP to another creative mind taken by mental illness.
@stevedidwhat_infosec Fr I don’t think people understand you can simultaneously find it funny and be deeply disturbed by what severe and acute mental illness and online reactionaries can do to someone.
Some just choose to live a more sensitive life so as to foster growth in more of our own species without excess stress or brashness in an already rough world, that is - for 99% of the population
I can see where most are coming from, it can be tough to form accurate judgments of people online so verifying/making good judgment calls of people during social interactions (this site, namely, and other like it) can be tough - most jump to conclusions
“lolcow”, damn you’ve got all the right wing dog whistles don’t you?
I thought the words they were usin were smelly.
Thanks for the intel, love OSINT.
Isn’t a bully just a baby bird trying to push another bird out of the nest?