Why do people enjoy bringing others down at their weakest?

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People have taken advantage of me, time and time again when I'm at my weakest points. I've been told to kill myself *twice* when I was in a suicidal mood. I even got bullied in a mental institution by two people who were almost 20 after a suicide attempt. I have rosacea, and feel a little insecure about my looks? One person actually came up to me in the hallway at my former school, and *screamed* in my face, as if I'm a freak -- which is totally ridiculous, but still, it's bullcrap. Looking back at that one, that person was just being a loser. The same has happened to many of my friends; one girl took advantage of one of my Gothic friends, who was in a horrible mood because one of her relatives died, so she ranted about how she's weak minded and has an unstable character.

There's other instances, but I'd rather not rant because it would be redundant. Again, the big question is: Why, oh why do people enjoy spitting on those who are at their weakest points? What's the psychology behind it? Do humans have a natural drive to bring down those who are not as strong, kind of like a pack mentality?

It's not exactly a natural drive. Infants are like this. Animals in the wild instinctually prey on the weak to survive and that's the early stage of development for human infants too. Many people in this dysfunctional culture, never develop beyond infantile stages of morality. But healthy development begins to leave these things behind even in young children, as they grow.

I believe everyone is valuable and good but in a way you also have to learn to see these sort of behaviours (not the people) as subhuman, because truly they are.

For a scientific model of this, see here and scroll down to the part about the six stages.

You know I would love to know the same thing because I just cannot do it to someone else... I can't understand why other people place so much importance on making you feel badly because of something THEY FEEL from the situation! If someone is mad at you, they have to let you know! It's like, well deal with your own feelings buddy and leave me out of it, unless I can actually DO something to fix the situation, LEAVE ME THE EFF ALONE! /end rant

I hear ya on this one, I really do.... my boss tells me today that he worked two 20 hour days covering for me when I was out with a sprained ankle that happened at work because of unsafe conditions (hello, not supposed to put ANYTHING on the walk-in floor, per ServSafe and OSHA *sigh* especially right in front of the door going inside!) and he told me, "not to make you feel guilty or anything (with that, but you should feel very guilty tone). Seriously, WTF is up with that!? I can't even get my puny little mind around that one... I just said, "I understand" "yes, Chef", Good bye!

That's not preying on the weak though. The guy had to work two 20 hour days in a row, which is really hard. It wasn't about you being weak.

He probably wasn't telling you that to make you feel guilty. I imagine he was telling you so that you knew he had sacrificed something to cover your responsibilities, so that you had a better grasp of things for purposes of reciprocity. To him, he's done you a good turn, and he's telling you so you can appreciate the difficulty involved and be reciprocal in the future.

Why would someone say "not to make you feel guilty"? I'm even more confused by your response I didn't want to miss work and I didn't get hurt on purpose, it was a combination of factors like any other accident that wasn't really anyone's fault. Sorry to respond, this isn't my thread or anything I am just more confused now. My apologies.
As an aside, I feel absolutely horrible that I was not only hurt and mad at myself for being a clutzy Aspie, but also that someone else did something I couldnt do without an injury in the best of circumstances, for me, over something so dumb and now it's this situation ugh (anyway) I'm logging off the site to avoid compulsively answering my own posts.

It could be a power thing. Maybe they have no control in their lives and they like the power trip. It could also be jealousy over something. In could be that they feel insecure themselves because maybe people bully them so they feel like they need to bully somebody else. Just ignore those people, fake people don't know what life really is and one day they'll regret their actions for causing people pain. They're also very immature.

To be sure you don't take it that way.



Right, but, it's not his fault you got hurt, either, yet he's paying a cost for it.

Reverse the situation. Let's say he got hurt, and you had to work two 20 hour days because of it. Maybe you had to miss something you really looked forward to, as well. You didn't do anything, it's not really your problem, yet there you are. Suffering. Naturally, this will cause some frustration. How do you deal with the frustration? Silently seethe about it under the surface? Make him feel guilty? These are not good approaches. One way you can deal with it is to think about reciprocity, that the other person will recognize what you did and appreciate it and maybe return the favour somehow, show your appreciation in some tangible way.

Ultimately showing up for work is your responsibility, nobody else's. When someone covers for you, they're doing you a favour - you owe them something because it wasn't their responsibility (even if you got hurt, it's still not). At the very least, appreciation. "Thankyou" for instance.

I don't imagine he was impressed with your response, because you said "I understand" but it would have been clear to him that you were lying (and you were because as you admit, you don't understand). If you're in a similar situation in the future, "thankyou, I really appreciate it" or something like that is the correct response. Additionally adding "if there's anything I can do to make it up to you, let me know" would be more than correct, that would be a perfect response.

Last edited by edgewaters on 28 May 2012, 5:05 pm, edited 4 times in total.

We are not very different than animals so... what do you expect.

Sorry that happened to you. It's too brutal for me even to read something like this

Sometimes they are feeling weak themselves, and think kicking someone else when their down will help them feel better about them self. I wonder if it actually does make such people feel better about themselves.

First of all, *hugs*

I've had that sort of thing happen to me, too. People become like wild dogs and attack the weakest one. I do not understand it at all.

Its a novel that's been severely criticized (for good reason, its very derogatory to an ethnic group, namely Polish people) but there's this book called The Painted Bird which gets its title from an incident in the story in which a bird is captured out of a flock, painted, and then released back to its flock, whereupon the flock attacks and kills the bird. I think it describes something about groups in general.

It has actually made me feel better about myself in the past but then many years after, I would remember some of the horrible things I have done or said in the past and they haunt me. But when I did things like that, it was when I was filled with rage and hatred and just needed to make someone suffer in some way. I discovered that verbally abusing others was the most effective, but now I wish I could go back in time and prevent myself from hurting the people I have hurt in this manner. Some of them I have no idea how to contact so apologizing and asking for forgiveness isn't going to be possible.

It's easier than bringing others down at their strongest.

I think it is partly instinctive and partly based on the "bully's" self confidence level. We've all heard "survival of the fittest" before. Lots of animals will hide any weakness in the wild if they are sick or are injured to ward off predators, who thrive on weakness. It does hold merit in places like the animal kingdom, and even in human interaction.

This makes me come to my second theory. Insecure people are common bullies. They feel inadequate to others in one way or another, and picking on others fills the void of emptiness they possess. Don't let these people get you down, they are some of the most horrible and pathetic humans that exist.

I was bullied me and it made me weary of people and just plain bitter. Only trust opinions of people you genuinely trust. Realize that there are good people out there, but you have to watch out for the animals.

This type of behaviour can be termed 'spite' and it is basically the opposite side of the coin to altruism. Both are selcted for genetically and give advantages to a person's genes, depending on the circumstances. Altruism has been shown to often be linked to how related a person is to another ie you act more altruistically towards a person with your own genes or with a closer link to your own genes and conversely often more spitefully/less altruistically towards a person with unrelated genes.

Hamiltonian Spite:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamiltonian_spite

"Within the field of social evolution, Hamiltonian spite is a term for those behaviours that occur between (among) conspecifics, and have a cost for the actor and a negative impact (harm) for the recipient(s). Why do animals and humans exhibit spiteful behaviours?"

"Theories on altruism and spitefulness

W. D. Hamilton published an influential paper on altruism in 1964 to explain why genetic kin tend to help each other. He argued that genetically related individuals are likely to carry the copies of the same alleles, thus helping kins may ensure that the copies of the actors' alleles pass into next generations.

While this became a widely accepted and highly popular idea, few scientists noticed that he also published a second paper that modifies this view, or at least adds further important points to it. This paper argues that by measuring the genetic relatedness between any two (randomly chosen) individuals of a population several times, we can identify an average level of relatedness. Theoretical models predict that (1) it is adaptive for an individual to be altruistic to any other individuals that are more closely related to it than this average level, and also that (2) it is adaptive for an individual to be spiteful against any other individuals that are less closely related to it than this average level. The indirect adaptive benefits of such acts can surpass certain costs of the act (either helpful or harmful) itself. Hamilton mentioned birds and fishes exhibiting infanticide (more specifically: ovicide) as examples for such behaviours.

Briefly, an individual can increase the chance of its genetic alleles to be passed to the next generations either by helping those that are more closely related, or by harming those that are less closely related than relationship by chance."

I suppose the theory could be posited that if a person has autistic genes they are less closely related to most people in genetic terms hence less likely to be shown alutruism and more likely spite?

Makes sense to me anyway.

There's invariably a biological imperative to all human behaviour - we think we act of our own volition but it's invariably the genes controlling us! We are just gene carriers.

Bullying is normal human behaviour unfortunately. We live in a world where it's survival of the fittest and that's what tends to happen. Mentally healthy people are seen as genetically fitter then those who get depressed and commit suicide - it's perfectly logical, if brutal but then life is brutal! People are killing each other all the time - violence is the norm not the exception for human beings. We've just evolved to see it all as uncivilised but it's a thin veneer of civilisation that breaks down very easily. Most people prefer to delude themselves that life is nicer/people are kinder than they are though. I prefer reality. Self-delusion is probably the better way to go tho as the reality is too depressing!

Not invariably. This is true for all animals, but not humans because we are sentient. We're capable of overriding instinct by conscious will.



I have not noticed this - to me most people seem to see everyone as out to exploit them. Even people who obviously couldn't care less. They mostly do this to enable their own exploitive behaviours (everyone else does it, so I have to, its not my fault - thus resolving the cognitive dissonance of doing what they know is wrong).