Inside Science News Briefs

A collection of brief stories from the world of science

By Jim Dawson
Inside Science News Service
October 6, 2008

Online Bullying Hits Most Teens

Cyber bullying is commonplace among teenagers and, like face-to-face bullying, can create anxiety, depression and actual physical illness in the kids who are victimized, according to a new study by psychologists at UCLA. "Bullying affects millions of students and is not limited to school grounds," said Jaana Juvonen, chair of UCLA's developmental psychology program. Teenagers spend so much of their time texting over cell phones and on the Internet, Juvonen noted, that "The Internet is not functioning as a separate environment but is connected with the social lives of kids in school. Our findings suggest that especially among heavy users of the Internet, cyber-bullying is a common experience, and the forms of online and in-school bullying are more alike than different." Juvonen and his team conducted an anonymous Web-based survey of 1,454 young people between the ages of 12 and 17. Forty-one percent of the teenagers reported between one and three online bullying incidents over the course of a year, 13 percent reported four to six incidents and 19 percent reported seven or more. Many of the teenagers don't realize that bullying is widespread and think it is only happening to them, she said. They blame themselves and that increases the risk of depression. "Cyber-bullying is not a plight of a few problematic children but a shared experience," she said. Most of the teens didn't tell their parents because they believed they just had to learn to deal with it, or because they feared their access to the Internet would be restricted. The most common forms of bullying online and in school involved name calling or insults, the teens said. Password theft, as well as threats, sending of embarrassing pictures, and spreading nasty rumors were also common. The research appeared in a recent issue of the Journal of School Health.

Bully Bosses are Throwbacks to Prehistoric Times

A long-term study of health workers in Australia has led University of New South Wales researcher Jeffrey Braithwaite to conclude that the overbearing way male managers in many work settings dress, posture and exercise power is due to human evolutionary biology. "Prehistoric behaviors, such as male domination, protecting what is perceived as their turf, and ostracizing those who do not agree with the group is more commonplace in everyday work situations than many of us want to accept," according to a release from the university's Institute for Health Innovation. "This tribal culture is similar to what we would have seen in hunter gatherer bands on the savannahs in southern Africa," said Braithwaite, whose paper appeared in a recent issue of the Journal of Health Organization and Management. "It's a surprise just how hard-wired this behavior is. It's predictable that a group will ostracize a whistleblower, for instance. It's understandable in the tribal framework. It explains all sorts of undesirable behaviors, including bullying." The study includes a few observations about managers that Braithwaite said seem universal: Meetings are held in the most senior manager's office, who typically dominates proceedings; managers do not spend as much time as people think sitting reading quietly, or attending to paperwork, and are instead out there maneuvering and positioning at meetings, one-on-one encounters and coffee cliques; and managers "rarely take lunch breaks." The paper, he said, was based on hundreds of interviews and observations over a 15-year period.

Why that Silly Love Song Might Not Be So Silly

A male bird singing a song directly to a female bird undergoes changes to the dopamine receptors on neurons in his brain that are associated with reward and pleasure. These changes are similar to those caused by addictive drugs. When a male bird sings a general song not directed at a female, the dopamine receptors are not triggered. The research, done on 41 adult male zebra finches at the RIKEN Brain Science Institute in Japan, monitored the singing of the birds and found two distinctive types of singing - undirected and directed. The undirected songs, sung by birds when they are alone, follow a pattern filled with variable notes. When a female flies in, however, the singing becomes less variable and the tempo speeds up. When the "love" song begins, the activation of the bird's dopamine receptors is triggered. Why do researchers care about bird brain dopamine and the emotional state of male finches? It turns out that the same type of dopamine receptors in human and other animal brains are programmed to have a positive emotional response to rewarding stimuli, such as food or sex, the researchers said. Earlier studies have shown that in humans, sexual rewards and the rewarding aspects of video games and chocolate can trigger the same type of brain circuits that are firing in the love-struck male finch. And these are the same circuits that are strengthened by such drugs as cocaine or amphetamine in a process that can lead to addiction. "Despite the distant evolutionary relationship between birds and humans," the researchers said, "it may be that during such intense social interactions as courtship, both share some similar emotional state." The research was published in the journal Public Library of Science.

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