Bullying by Exclusion ? The Power of the Clique.

Imagine a place where people gather to work together because they
share the same values and want to benefit from each other's strengths
and learn from each other's mistakes. The group can offer particularly
powerful opportunities for insight, psychological healing and growing,
acceptance, and the many community occasions of genuine, mutual
enjoyment, with a deep sense of belonging.

Every community establishes a system of communication that in large
part establishes the level of trust that the individuals in that
community hold for one another. This system may be partly explicit,
that is, agreed rules, guidelines and processes are aimed to foster
openness and honesty and partly unconscious, whereby there will be
implicit approval or disapproval for certain behaviours and viewpoints.
However if the community's communication channels around the basic
intrinsic needs of certain members are not clear, mistrust will arise
manifesting in forms of gossip, backbiting, cliques and power
struggles.

It is difficult to define "gossip" in a way that suits everyone. Gossip
always involves talk about people who are not present, and such
conversations almost always occur in relatively small groups. Gossip is
informal, relaxed, inherently entertaining, and it frequently involves
aspects of people's lives that can be ethically assessed The tendency
to gossip seems to be at the very heart of the social lives of most
people, and a great portion of our conversations are concerned with
matters of social importance Levin and Arluke (1987), among others,
have proposed that gossip is universal because it is psychologically
and socially useful. Anthropologists have frequently identified gossip
as a cultural device that can be used not only by individuals to
advance their own interests, but also as a means by which groups can
enforce conformity to group norms. It is this dual nature of gossip,
which creates so much ambivalence toward it. The recognition of its
importance in maintaining group life makes acceptance of it a
necessity, but its potential for advancing the interests of one
individual at the expense of another poses a threat that must be
contained if the group is to function effectively.

Does Gossip primarily serve the interests of the group? Or do
individuals gossip only for their own benefit?. "Good Gossip" can be
understood to a degree as a form of Social Control. Natural, gossip can
indeed be a positive force in the life of a group. It can be used to
resolve ambiguity about group norms helping to help socialise newcomers
into the ways of the group, it can be an efficient way of reminding
group members about the importance of the group's norms and values, and
it can be an effective deterrent to deviance, becoming a tool for
punishing those who transgress.

Gossip can be an effective means of uncovering information about others
and a useful way of controlling the group "free-loader" who may be
tempted to violate group norms of reciprocity by taking more from the
group than they are willing to give. It can also serve as a levelling
instrument for counterbalancing the controlling tendencies of others,
making it a furtive activity by which other people's moral profiles are
constantly reviewed.

Negative Gossip can quite easily be employed as an individual strategy
for destroying peoples reputation, with the important role played by
gossip in group life often being overshadowed by the way it is used, to
advance the interests of individuals. The aspect of gossip that is
troubling to many is that it is not only a mechanism used by groups to
enforce conformity, but that it can also be a strategy used by
individuals to further their own reputations and selfish interests at
the expense of others. It offers a means of manipulating others'
reputations by passing on negative information about competitors or
enemies as well as a means of detecting betrayal by others in our
relationships.

Negative information about those we consider lower than us in status
would not be as useful to the clique, and they will be less interested
in passing along negative information about their allies and friends
than about people who are not allies. Conversely, positive information
good luck, sudden elevation of status about allies would be very likely
to be spread around, while positive information about non-allies should
be less interesting because it is not very useful in advancing one's
own interests.

It appears that we seem to be programmed to think of individuals as
automatically belonging to some sort of group. Perhaps the most
essential distinction we make among the people we meet is classifying
them into "in-group" or "out-group" membership. One of the most
reliable and vigorous finding in social psychological literature is the
tendency to like people who are similar to us in some way more than
those who are not. We naturally accept and like those who are just like
us, but we have to work harder at accepting diversity. One concern
about cliques is that they tend just reinforce their own narrow
beliefs. They gather together to reassure themselves and each other
that they have a community that thinks somewhat like they do.
Separation allows us to draw caricatures of out-group members that we
don't know well enough to see their dreams, desires, goals and
aspirations They become relegated to the position of adversary with
impure motives, that the in-group themselves have created.

On the other hand, the positive perceptions that we have of ourselves
get extended to other members of our in-group or clique as well.
In-group members are perceived as more moral, more capable, and
generally better than out-groups on almost every characteristic that we
consider to be important. Furthermore, any desirable behaviors that are
performed by in-group members are likely to be attributed to their
stable, highly positive traits.

Negative illusions about Out-groups: The belief that mistrust and fear
of strangers has a biological basis has a long history. Undeniably, the
complete failure to eliminate or even visibly reduce the racial and
ethnic hatred that has plagued humanity throughout its history suggests
that we are probably dealing with something that has very deep roots.
Anthropological evidence indicates that it has been historically
prevalent even in hunter-gatherer societies where strangers are almost
always regarded with suspicion and may even be killed. It is alleged
that this tendency may have been tailored because it provided a means
of preserving positive beliefs about one's own virtue, morality, and
goodness while still permitting the exploitation and oppression of
unrelated others when it would be advantageous.

Out-group members are judged as less worthy, moral, and competent as
compared to in-group members. The negative behaviour and failures of
out-group members are usually attributed to unstable, undesirable
character traits, but positive things that they do are explained as
luck or the result of some exceptional situational factor. Once
negative expectations about the members of out-groups are in place, we
seek out information that is consistent with our expectations and
ignore information that is inconsistent with it, causing us to see
exactly what we expect to see. This perceptual self-deception is an
illusory correlation, and it can make our impressions of others very
resistant to change, if, in fact the tendency to quickly stereotype
others and dismiss them as unworthy arises from a need to justify our
own bad behaviour.

Unfortunately, cliques, bullying and rejection are part of the human
experience, many bullies and cliques select targets on the basis of
competence and popularity. Jealousy of other people's abilities and a
wrongly perceived exclusion and envy of other people's capability,
talents and possession seem to be the conduits through which the serial
bully finds an outlet for their selfishness, seething resentment and
superior sense of entitlement.

Why me? Explanations of why the clique has chosen to exclude maybe put
down simply:

To being in the wrong place at the wrong time; being competent and
popular; unwittingly inviting comparison with, or drawing attention to
the bully's inadequacies and shortcomings, simply by being competent;
refusing to join the established clique; or showing independence of
thought with a strong sense of fair play.

Building real and lasting trust in a community requires the group to
find a way to ensure continual transparency about what is going on with
important issues. When individuals don't know what is going on, they
feel dis-empowered and consequently tend to hide their true feelings,
emotions and thoughts. Accordingly any community claiming to offer an
alternative to our present alienated society must establish an open
communication process committed to maintaining ongoing transparency in
a way that honours and embraces the emotional diversity of all the
members of the group.

It is intrinsic to human functioning, for people to be and feel
empowered, this holding true even in the groups. Empowerment is a major
issue and group members who are experimenting with imagination, must be
able to feel confident in their writing environment. In order to
establish an environment that supports, stimulates and promotes that
creativity, they must feel sustained in the milieu in which they
exhibit their art. Cliques do not offer positive re-enforcement and can
be seen as incompatible to the imaginative and creative force that
reverberates within all that aspire to artistry.