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.

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[–] azertyfun@sh.itjust.works 8 points 7 months ago

but we were surprised to find a strong link between aggressive behaviour at school and higher earnings in later life

I do not see how a normal human adult who has ever, like, worked in a corporate environment or customer service or ever read the political section of a newspaper or even literally just caught secondhand wind of the 2016 US election would instinctively believe that aggressive behavior doesn't pay as an adult.

Either this person is a bully themselves, or we need to hook them up to some 19th century testing apparatus so we can extract whatever essence of naïveté and primal innocence they are apparently overproducing.