Five-decade UK study finds that aggression at school leads to better-paying jobs, while those with emotional instability went on to earn less

Five-decade UK study finds that aggression at school leads to better-paying jobs, while those with emotional instability went on to earn less

Children who displayed aggressive behaviour at school, such as bullying or temper outbursts, are likely to earn more money in middle age, according to a five-decade study that upends the maxim that bullies do not prosper.

They are also more likely to have higher job satisfaction and be in more desirable jobs, say researchers from the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex.

The paper, published today, used data about almost 7,000 people born in 1970 whose lives have been tracked by the British Cohort Study. The research team examined data from primary school teachers who assessed the children’s social and emotional skills when they were 10 years old in 1980, and matched it to their lives at the age of 46 in 2016.

“We found that those children who teachers felt had problems with attention, peer relationships and emotional instability did end up earning less in the future, as we expected, but we were surprised to find a strong link between aggressive behaviour at school and higher earnings in later life,” said Prof Emilia Del Bono, one of the study’s authors.

  • TCGM@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    7 months ago

    That’s not the problem. The problem isn’t the people willing to exploit the system. They’re the sociopaths in question that capitalism is designed to help succeed.

    The problem is, everyone else has to cosplay them in order to survive. And human nature, despite being communal, is more powerful than that in only one way; survival adaptation.

    Our species will adapt as hard as it has to in order to survive, no matter what.

    In a capitalist system (mind you, societal as well as economic, socialism strapped capitalism might actually work very well), because the best survival strategy is to be a sociopath or worse, most people will be forced to do so to at least some level.

    Change the system, change the outcome.

    • PersonalDevKit@aussie.zone
      1·
      7 months ago

      Worth saying I am sort of playing devils advocate here.

      Change it to what? It is easy to back seat yell “Capitalism Bad” but change to what? Every other isim has it’s own laundry list of issues. Which one is least corruptible by sosciopaths?

      You don’t think sosciopaths are going to take more than there fair share in socialism, or skew the system over time? They aren’t going to find their may to the top in every single form of government to change the rules to their desires?

      Quite a few will argue that we aren’t even in capatalisim any more, it has been corrupted and changed, massaged by “government” to the point of failure, the Austrian school of economics.

      So it is easy to stand on the roof top and say “Capitalism is the problem” but it seems like a much deeper rot to me

      • TCGM@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        7 months ago

        As I already said, we’re not going to be able to get rid of the sociopaths. It’s a mental disorder, by chance and or trauma. They’ll always be with us, barring some genetic engineering that borders on eugenics. That’s not the point.

        The point is to make them the minority, and have a system where everyone isn’t forced to act like them in order to succeed.

        I’ve already stated a potential option. Capitalism on its own is technically a purely neutral economic system, provided it’s ONLY the economic system. We have expanded that system into our society as well, and that’s when it becomes toxic.

        Use a capitalist economy, but strapped and locked down by socialist (true socialist, not the USSR or communist) principles and systems. Ensure that if capitalism has social effects, they’re extremely minor, and elevate the good of people above that of capital. Socialism Strapped Capitalism.

        Good inroads to this are things like UBI, a maximum income, and ensuring social and environmental effects are included in corporate financial calculations.