What if the bully isn’t always the villain?

 In movies and real life, the bully is always easy to identify. They are loud, unapologetic, cruel and couldn’t care less about what people have to say. They say things that hurt and do things we find hard to understand.

So we ask a simple question: WHY?

Why would someone intentionally cause pain? Why choose aggression over kindness?

Society always taught us that bullies are the VILLAINS and that people are defined entirely by their actions.

But what if bullying is not always a personality trait, but sometimes just a symptom?

A symptom of insecurity, learned behaviour, unmet needs or environments where power becomes the only way to feel seen.

If we stop viewing bullying as the ULTIMATE VILLAIN and start understanding their perspective, the idea shifts. It’s no longer about a “bad person” doing “bad things”; it’s about a person using the only tools they were ever given to survive in a world they don’t trust.

Imagine walking into a crowded room and bumping into someone you don’t know. Most people will think this is just a coincidence due to the number of people present. However, a bully sees it as a sign of hostility. They are not reading the room correctly; they are misinterpreting it, viewing every action as a deliberate threat.

This is known as “hostile attribution bias.” To them, the world feels like a constant battlefield where you must strike first to avoid being struck. Their reaction isn’t really about the other person; it’s a defence mechanism. They’re not trying to be “the villain,” but they’re just trying to feel safe by asserting dominance.

We are all mirrors because we are constantly mirroring the behaviours we learn from the environment. This is known as the “Social Learning Theory.”

Cruelty is a hand-me-down. If a child grows up in an environment where conflict is resolved by force, they learn that empathy is a liability and that empathising with someone makes one weak. Many bullies are actually powerless in one area of their lives and “borrow” power from another area to feel a sense of independence. They use the only version of “power” that they learned from their surroundings.

Bullies often confuse “being feared” with “being respected.” They cannot distinguish between dominance (power through fear) and prestige (power through respect). Fear is like a never-ending debt that must constantly be extracted, while respect is granted freely. By choosing fear, the bully gains momentarily but loses genuine connection in the bigger picture. 

We live in a world where we are rewarded when we “crush the competition.” We’ve built a society that treats life like a math problem, which only one person can get right. So, for one to win, the other one has to lose.

From the classrooms to boardroom meetings, we are conditioned to believe that “success is a finite resource,” and the only way to secure our piece is to snatch it from someone else. If the world is a competition for survival, then “bullying” isn’t being mean; it’s just a tactic used to win.

We often assume that bullies choose to be cold. It is often way more complex than that, but we choose not to look at it because it is difficult to understand. We choose to label them with a “VILLAIN” tag because that is the simplest, easiest thing to do.

When a person lives in a state of chronic stress, the brain enters “survival mode.” The fear center of the brain (amygdala) takes over. It shuts down the part of the brain responsible for empathy and social logic (prefrontal cortex). In this state, it isn’t just a lack of will to be kind; it’s a physiological inability to access empathy. Due to this, they view kindness as a liability.

We live in a world that prioritises IQ (Intelligence Quotient) over EQ (Emotional Quotient). People use aggression because they don’t know how to express and cope with their own feelings. Aggression is a “loud” way of expressing a “silent” hurt. It’s not a choice of cruelty; it arises from the lack of options.

Social Media has turned life into a real-time scoreboard, measured with the number of likes, views, followers, and the pressure to stay on top constantly. In the digital world, “boycotting” or “crushing” someone becomes a shortcut to gain instant validation.

The context has shifted from the playground to the pocket, making the “competition for survival” an essential. In this space, it is no longer about aggression; it's about performance. When a person targets another, and the numbers go up, the scoreboard “tells” them they are right. This creates a loop where the individual feels like they are the “winners”, backed by other people online.

A bully has never been the “lone wolf” and exists only because of a group that allows it.

Imagine being a part of that very big group in school. During one conversation, one person decides to say something mean about another person. Everyone stops talking instantly and stays silent, looking at each other, but no one decides to take a stand for the other person. This is known as the “Bystander Effect.”

To the bully, the silence of the others in the group feels like applause. By simply doing nothing, the group has unanimously “voted” in favour of such behaviour. According to the bully, he is the performer, and the silent people are the audience.

Society at large has quietly redefined bullying as "winning," so in some way or another, we are all "bullies."

We provide the scoreboard, the audience, the silence…

Who, then, is the real bully? And do you now really think bullies are VILLAINS?

Stay tuned for more such insights. 

Saina Chakrabarti - Creator of PsychLens