Lisa Ling's "If You Really Knew Me Study"

Journalist Lisa Ling who once was a co-host on The View is one of my favorite writers. She now hosts shows for National Geographic and free-lances for Dateline and other news organizations. Her work as a writer is a direct reflection of who she is; warm, kind, funny and comfortable with herself. Ling told Oprah Winfrey that she wasn't always content with herself as an adolescent and has dedicated a large portion of her time in teen behavior studies, including peer harassment and conflict resolutions in order to help teens deal with one another in a positive way as a way to eliminate the escalating conflicts and tragic violence seen at high schools like Columbine.

Peer harassment is usually done by peers making fun of their peers repeatedly. A person can make fun of someone's personality, features, ethnicity, size, height, weight, social or economic class, belief system, spirituality, thoughts or things that the person likes in an undermining, insulting or degrading way as a form of peer harassment. This can be done by exaggerating or satirizing someone's personality or re-enacting their thoughts in a negative twist to attempt to bring them down. Psychologists say it is usually done in groups, panels or cliques. Another form of peer harassment is perpetuating rumors about someone's family, life, sexuality, upbringings or anything about them with the direct intention to humiliate, anger or cause a reaction in order to engage their peer in arguments that could lead up to fights or worse. While this behavior is often played out in high school it is done at a higher level in adulthood.

Lisa Ling stated that growing up people often misjudged her based on her looks and her ethnicity. Ling dealt with issues that many adolescents and teenagers face today. In 2006, Ling did a long-term study with teenagers at a Detroit high school. The basis of her research was titled "If you really knew me you would know........." This research was a way for students and teachers to explore and know each other beyond what they saw on the outside and beyond their personal perceptions as a way of bringing different cliques together and encouraging togetherness in school. It was also a research that identified and studied the behavior and actions of students in high school as well as the psychological and social factors of their behavior. Ling had students participate in different activities and questionnaires to help understand each other better.

Often as human beings we draw perceptions and conclusions of people based on their looks, status and outside appearance. Rarely do we take the time out to actually know each other as individuals. Ling examined these perceptions with the students. Students at the school were put in groups and asked to describe what they knew about each other. Some of the students were popular some were considered nerds. Some were rich and some were poor. Others were nice and others were bullies. It was the average American high school with different cliques and clubs.

There was a student who was one of the most popular students at school. He was a great athlete. His family was rich and he drove a nice car. Many of the students said that they envied him and wished they were like him because he was a jock, had money and was considered good looking. Some students said they wished they were as popular as him and would have liked to trade places with him. They would have liked to live his life. They were a few students who simply didn't like him because they thought he had it all. Bluntly put they were jealous of him. Because they perceived him to have it all they thought it was okay to hate on him in order to lift themselves up. They envied him.

Ling allowed all the students to state what they thought about each other. She then allowed each student to say, "If you really knew me you would know..." When it came to the so-called popular jock's turn he let his peers inside his life. He said, If you really knew me you would know that my father abandoned me when I was younger. My whole life I have been affected by this and try to be the best to please my father somehow. ' He said he tried to compensate by what he might have lacked to make his father leave him. Because of this he often over-achieved and excelled to please his family and carry on their name. He also said because of who he was and because he had "so called" money he found it very difficult to really find genuine friends who were not trying to befriend him for all the wrong reasons. He valued friendship but knew true friendship was hard to come by. He then said "if you really knew me you would know my mother has cancer and has been ill for a long time. I wake up early in the morning to take care of her before school. After school I come home and attend to her because she can no longer operate on her own. "

The fear of knowing his mother could die any day affected him greatly, especially knowing she was all he had left. He carried all of these fears inside. Everyday he woke up to this reality and dealt with it. The irony of this is none of the students even knew any of this. They knew nothing about what he was actually dealing with. Yet they were so quick to trade places with him and justify their behavior towards him because they were jealous.

Ling and the students dealt with issues from racism, sexism, popularity, bullies, relationships etc. I feel that the latter example was the best summary of her research. The truth is we don't all really know each other well. We are all different. Whether a person is a jock, an emo, goth, skater, artist, cheerleader,prep,hood, musician or whatever they are- the point is simply that they are themselves. That is what is most important. Judging others is usually what creates conflict and "the inability of acceptance" as Ling stated, spirals into situations that can often become very drastic as we've seen in high schools on the news.

There were psychological and social factors discovered in the research that made certain people likable or unlikeable as the study showed. People have different traits that cause other people to gravitate towards them or not gravitate towards them. Everybody is different and no one has the authority to force their opinions on anyone or peer harass them if they disagree with their belief system or who they are. Another finding in the study was that when it comes to females the basis of their conflict often involved competition over a guy.

One thing that is universally factual as adolescence or adults is that we at times teach others how we want to be treated by our own behavior. People often reciprocate behavior. Anytime anyone is obsessively negative or mean towards many people, they are simply saying, "Look at me I hate myself and I don't know what to do." Also if you know yourselves you will not feel the need or desire to be hateful because you will be at one and content.

Although we're not all going to like each other. A person who consistently has to make fun of others to the point where it becomes visible to everybody is only playing out how they feel about themselves. Negative. Picking on others and making fun of them on a consistent basis over a long period of time; whether directly, indirectly or using projection to live out what a person desires to say is called "peer harassment." It is a problem and an intolerance and deep-seeded prejudice to try and control other's people's behavior and bring them down, not realizing that most people are stronger then that. If a person doesn't agree with other people's thoughts,spirituality, creativity, idealism or what they say that is not a license to attack others' thought process. We learn from our mistakes as we become older. If you don't like people or you disagree with their ideas simply stop being a participant in their lives and begin to live your own. Life is about learning and improving to become better over time. We all do things that others may not like at points in our lives but we are supposed to grow from that and learn to use discretion while respecting other people's thoughts. We have to change ourselves to become better before we can change anyone else.

This research is directly taken from Lisa Ling's article "If You Really Knew Me..."