There are only four reasons why people are mean. Once you know the motivation, it becomes much easier to figure out how to stop the behavior.
Through SQUABBLES®, I teach students how to identify what we call the Meanness Motivation behind aggressive behavior. Instead of getting stuck asking, “Why are they doing this to me?” students learn a simple framework for understanding what the other person is trying to accomplish. The four Meanness Motivations are Bothering, Joking, Criticism, and Hurting.
Once a student knows how to identify the motivation behind aggressive behavior, they’re able to respond and defuse that behavior in two simple steps. It’s incredibly easy to learn and extremely effective at helping students understand what to do before a conflict escalates.
1. Bothering: They Want a Reaction
Bothering is one of the most easily recognized motivations. A person who is bothering has one goal: they want to psychologically dominate someone else. They get an emotional payoff by making the other person feel small and seeing that their behavior has gotten a reaction.
Maybe they keep calling you the same name, make the same annoying sound every time you walk by, or repeat something because they’ve discovered exactly what gets under your skin. Every time you get upset, they know the button still works. The more emotional the reaction, the more powerful they may feel.
The response is simple: don’t get upset and treat them like a friend. I’m not saying you need to become their best friend. You need to have the attitude that you don’t care and are completely unfazed by their attempts to provoke you.
When the aggressor is expecting you to respond like an enemy and lash out but you don’t, it throws them off their game. The power imbalance they’re trying to establish isn’t working, which often takes away the reason to continue.
2. Joking: They Want a Laugh, at Your Expense
A jokester’s motivation is to make themselves, and often others, laugh. To accomplish this, they’ll frequently roast someone else, meaning you may become the butt of one of their jokes. They may not be trying to psychologically dominate you; their primary payoff is the laughter.
The response is to not get upset and laugh. An emotionally healthy person is able to make and take a joke about themselves. If you’re not able to genuinely laugh, you can give a remark such as, “That’s funny,” or “You should be a comedian.”
The point is to show that the joke didn’t have the power to hurt you. When you demonstrate that you’re unfazed, you remove much of the emotional payoff from using humor against you.
I explain this motivation and response in more detail in How to Stop Mean Joking Behavior.
3. Criticism: They Want to Point out a Fault or Difference
A critic wants to point out your faults. Their goal is to get you to acknowledge your flaws or shortcomings, and they’ll often repeat the message until they believe you’ve gotten it or they’ve seen improvement. Our natural response is usually to defend ourselves, tell them they’re wrong, or criticize them back.
Unfortunately, arguing often keeps the conflict going. Instead, don’t get upset and thank them. Someone who is mature values criticism that can help them grow, and thanking the person communicates that you interpret criticism as potentially helpful rather than automatically harmful.
You don’t have to agree with what the person said. You also don’t have to convince them that they’re wrong. By staying calm and thanking them, you keep control over your own emotions and make it much harder for criticism to be used as a weapon.
4. Hurting: They Want You to Feel Pain
Hurting is different because this person really wants to see you suffer. Their goal is for you to feel pain, and that behavior often comes from a deep wound, a deeply held belief, an unmet need, or an irrational thinking pattern on their end. You may have heard the age-old phrase, “Hurt people hurt people.”
The response is to not get upset and apologize. While that may sound controversial, we have to understand why people hurt in the first place. People who are hurting often feel victimized themselves, and they may want to feel heard and know that someone else cares.
I’m not saying that you should admit to doing something you didn’t do. You can say, “I’m sorry you’re struggling,” “I’m sorry we’re not getting along,” or simply acknowledge the pain they’re experiencing. By doing that, you allow the person to feel seen, heard, and cared for, which can help defuse the conflict.
I explain this approach more fully in How to Stop People Who Want to Hurt You.
Two Simple Steps to Find Peace
You’ll notice that every response starts the same way: don’t get upset. This is foundational to the Peace Sign Approach™, my psychological approach to helping students respond to social aggression. Rather than trying to control the aggressor, the student first learns to manage their own emotional response.
The second step is to treat the person like a friend, but that response looks slightly different depending on the motivation. When someone is bothering you, treat them like a friend. When they’re joking, laugh. When they’re criticizing, thank them. When they’re hurting, apologize or acknowledge their pain.
The goal isn’t to defeat the other person, embarrass them, or win an argument. The goal is to find peace.
Knowing the Skill Isn’t Enough
Reading these responses is easy. Using them while someone is actually embarrassing, criticizing, irritating, or hurting you is much harder, which is why I believe role-playing is so important. Through rehearsing scenarios, students can practice the skills in a safe environment without consequences while receiving coaching and feedback.
Research supports this emphasis on active practice. A meta-analysis examining 95 studies of interventions designed to reduce adolescent aggression found behavioral practice and problem-solving among the components associated with more effective interventions for general student populations.
This is why the Peace Sign Approach™ isn’t something I simply explain to students. We practice it. Students need an opportunity to experience the skill before they’re expected to use it when a real conflict happens.
There’s One Important Exception: Physical Danger
Students also need to discern the difference between subjective harm and objective harm. Subjective harm is when someone is attempting to hurt your feelings. Objective harm is when someone is trying to hurt your body or your property.
Any time students feel threatened or believe they’re in danger of being objectively harmed, they need to get out of the situation immediately and seek an adult. If someone threatens you, physically attacks you, steals from you, destroys your property, or makes you believe you’re physically unsafe, your primary job in that moment is to get away, stay safe, and get help.
Resilience education doesn’t mean asking students to tolerate danger. It means giving them the skills to solve the social problems they can safely solve while teaching them when adult intervention is absolutely necessary.
Resilience Education Gives Students Their Power Back
The biggest mistake students make when faced with aggression is getting upset. That emotional reaction is often exactly what the aggressor is looking for. With a couple of skills and a simple practice session, students can learn how to stay calm in the moment, allowing them to keep their power and look strong and confident even if they don’t feel strong and confident.
We can’t control every mean person a student will encounter, but we can prepare students to respond. Once they understand the motivation behind aggression, have a simple framework for responding, and practice using it, the interaction becomes much less mysterious. They begin to realize that they aren’t powerless.
That’s resilience education, and it’s the reason I developed the Peace Sign Approach™. If you’d like to introduce these skills to your students, my free Rethink Bullying® Mini-Course includes three video lessons and discussion guides for grades 4–12.
