My daughter Aine is looking forward to the end of school this year. And not because of the normal expectations of summer fun. As I was driving her home one afternoon, she shifted in her seat and I knew she was about to say something important.
“Papa, I don’t like school anymore because there are some mean people in my class,” she said. And upon further discussion, the source of her problems centered on a couple kids who, from what Aine described, enjoy the trait of meanness.
Meanness has been studied by psychologists ever since Sigmund Freud. Being in a state of meanness is something that first of all, takes a lot of energy. People are not naturally inclined to be mean. If we were, we wouldn’t be around as a species.
But we do find people who are mean and for all intents and purposes are really good at it. And our society has become really expert at celebrating the act of being mean.
First of all, we have to look at Merriam-Webster Dictionary’s definition to get right to the crux of it. Meanness: the desire to cause pain for the satisfaction of doing harm.
Being mean is an active decision to cause pain. And with that pain comes a feeling of pleasure from inflicting such pain. Even a nine-year-old child can understand that the act of meanness or inflicting pain does give a cathartic rush to the person who is inflicting such pain. When American soldiers were caught being mean at Abu Ghraib prison during the Iraq War, they derived satisfaction from causing pain. Not even physical pain, though that occurred. It was the emotional pain that was the worst for the prisoners. Even the women guards were not immune to being mean*.
So where does meanness come from?
According to Psychology Today, it comes from an ancestral human dynamic for group behavior. In other words: people naturally make comparisons to other people. And these comparisons often make us feel worse about ourselves or better about ourselves. As we generally prefer to feel good, we are prone to making downward comparisons, or comparisons that enable us to look down on other people.
We see this especially when it comes to distinctions in groups, whether political, skin tone, cultural or religious or even sports.
It is easy to choose to be mean because it allows us to feel good about ourselves. The person practicing meanness gets a high from being mean. And it is not just individual to individual. Societal malice worship explains neo-fascism and why the leader of the Proud Boys, a white extremist, wasn’t even white. The idea is succinctly: I put you down to prop me up.
So where does a nine-year-old get the idea to become mean?
On one hand, psychologists will say this behavior comes from a lack of self-esteem. That by being mean, the person is practicing a sort of “best defense is a good offense” type of play. Children usually imitate their parents or siblings and this self-esteem crisis can result in the cultivation of meanness.
Aine’s schoolmates who are being mean will be mean to help them retain popularity or control of the herd. They do so because they don’t feel so great about themselves to begin and so, they practice meanness to protect such feelings of self-loathing.
The other scenario is a bit more intense.
People who are being mean do so because they display narcissistic psychopathic behavior. Psychology Today presents some research:
According to Florida State University’s Allison Daurio and Jeanette Taylor (2021), the quality of meanness is one of 3 defining features of psychopathy, the personality trait characterized by lack of remorse, inability to feel empathy, and a certain amount of ruthlessness….it’s possible to be high on meanness and show signs of other personality disorders, particularly those that share some features with antisocial personality disorder…Narcissistic personality disorder includes the “impetus to humiliate". Borderline personality disorder also incorporates meanness in the form of what the authors call “disaffiliated agency,” in which people pursue their own goals without regard to the needs of others.
It just got a bit rougher on the playground.
The hope, at least at Aine’s school, is that our teachers, educators and even parents can note such behavior early on and hopefully encourage positive attitudes in our children. Since meanness is a learned behavior, we may have to look long and hard at our own egos as to why our child might be acting out in such a way.
Meanness is one of those traits that we as people seem to put up with instead of preparing to protect against. Part of the protection against meanness is by acknowledging that meanness is occurring. That doesn’t necessarily have to be to the person’s face, but to yourself. And in the case of such meanness, mindfully creating distance, whether physically or mentally can help diffuse the natural reaction to a person intentionally creating pain.
And calling out meanness is in and of itself something we need to champion. The best example I heard was a day ago on NPR. They were interviewing five-year-olds who went to see Disney’s Little Mermaid movie. One five-year-old being told that critics panned the movie said, “Why do people have to be mean about something I liked?” Calling meanness out for what it is does carry power. We may not be able to help the individual who gets high from being mean, but it may help us practice intentionally a bit more kindness and love. And when we call out to others that we choose to practice kindness, that will triumph over any individual or society keen on being mean. The best example of this is a great poem, Outwitted by Edwin Markham:
HE DREW a circle that shut me out—
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in!
* Note: cruelty, is a word to describe rampant and active acts of meanness. I would argue that a mean person can function in society and be tolerated. Overly cynical people are a good example of mean people who can function to some degree. Cruelty is more than mean and well on its way to being evil. We usually lock up people who display cruelty.
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