Study: Popularity makes kids more likely to bully

What they found was that only one-third of the students engaged in any bullying at all — physical force, taunts or gossip-spreading — but those who were moving up the school popularity chain bullied more as they went higher. Only when kids reached the very top 2% of the school’s social hierarchy or fell into the bottom 2% did their behavior change; these kids were the least aggressive.

“Seemingly normal well-adjusted kids can be aggressive,” says Faris, whose results are published in the new issue of the American Sociological Review. “We found that status increases aggression.”