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It's a common belief that letting children work out their differences teaches them how to get along as adults; they'll learn that conflict doesn't get them anywhere and that cooperation and compromise move them forward to their goals, whatever they may be.
But what if a goal is to
rise in the hierarchy ? To such kids conflict can be help, not hindrance. [bold added]
Stirring up conflict is how some young children manage to achieve top-dog status, according to a study recently published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences...the study showed a pattern among schoolchildren that stemmed from aggressors creating repeated conflicts; classmates would often submit rather than engage.
Researchers asked 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders to fill out detailed questionnaires at the beginning and end of the school year.
The results showed that children who maintained a frequent pattern of aggression had raised their status at the end of the term, while those who didn’t continue their confrontational behavior failed to get the popularity boost. In short, a small number of students in each grade kept initiating disagreement, presumably with the intention to command respect.
...“For people who care about their status, a disagreement is never just a disagreement. Whether you’re 15 or 50, everything is an exercise in maintaining and improving popularity.”
Other research has shown that such belligerent behavior, rather than being penalized, is rewarded even more at older ages.
Playground troublemakers achieve power by fomenting discord. It's clear that many of them went on to careers in news media, where inflaming differences gets rewarded by clicks and ratings,
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