How Being A Bully Changes Your Brain
Everyone reading this can hopefully agree that bullying is bad. Regardless, it happens all around the world on a daily basis, and almost anyone can become a target, seeing as even ultra-famous people like Elon Musk and Ozzy Osbourne have been victims of bullying. Even Robin Williams struggled with bullies in his youth. Robin Williams!
Seeing as there's no shortage of studies and articles about the effects of bullying on the bullied and the reasons bullies become that way, today we'll take different approach on the subject. Have you ever wondered what the long-term effects of bullying are to the bullies themselves? As in, the actual effects bullying has to their mind? Do they just grow out of it and become upstanding citizens, or does bullying leave some kind of mental scarring that affects their behavior for the rest of their days? Let's find out how being a bully changes your brain.
Bullying your brain chemistry
As Inverse tells us, roughly one in four people will partake in some form of antisocial behavior such as bullying, lying, petty crime or violence at some point of their life. Most of them grow out of this antisocial behavior, but when it comes to the few lifelong bullies among us, their behavior shows in their brain ... literally. A recent study has discovered that about 10 percent of people are long-term antisocials, and it turns out that the people who have kept up their bullying ways until the age of 45 tend to have smaller brains than those with more compassion toward their fellow man. They also have a noticeably "thinner cortex and smaller surface area in brain regions associated with executive function, motivation, and affect" than other people.
However, if a young bully happens to be reading this, don't worry. Your brain is by no means doomed ... as long as you only "exhibit antisocial behavior during adolescence," which means it'll all be good as long as you stop bullying. Hey, wow. That's actually a pretty strong anti-bullying message. They really should be teaching this in school.