Teasing: Harmful or Playful?
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A friend smirks at you and says, nice haircut. Did you lose a bet? Everyone laughs, but later at night you're staring at yourself in the mirror. Is teasing a form of love amongst friends or can it be harmful? Well, this topic hits home for me and we are going to discuss it with someone who has done research in this area. She's a child and youth studies professor at Brock University. Her name is Naomi Andrews. Naomi, welcome to the show.
Thanks so much for having me.
I've given this one a lot of thought because my friends and I use kind of mean spirited, but loving jokes as a way to kind of like transact in closeness, affection. I think a lot of adults do this, don't they?
Absolutely. Yeah. Teasing is a part of all of our lives for sure.
But of course, there's the line and the gray area. And that's what I want to discuss tonight. Let's start at the very young age when kids do it with each other. Like, can you paint me a picture where it could be perceived as kids just being kids or something that's actually pretty hurtful?
Yeah, with kids it's difficult because what we find is that for very young kids, they don't understand that teasing can be fun. When you talk to younger kids and you ask them about teasing, they think teasing is mean. They say, you know, you wouldn't tease your friend because they're your friend.
Is teasing a form of love or can it be harmful?
That would be mean. And it's not until early adolescence and into adolescence that... You kind of understand there's some nuance there. Right. And you can say something that, you know, has that bite to it, has some of that meanness in it, but can still be fun and friendly.
Teasing is interesting because it lives somewhere between joking and bullying. And I think that subtlety kids don't really always get that, do they?
Yeah. And I think even as adults, we don't always get that. I think, you know, teasing doesn't have a super clear definition, right? We know there's something to do with humor. There's, you know, there's some joking aspect to it, but then there's something to do with aggression. There's that kind of, you know, mean-ish nature. But I think we kind of throw around the word teasing a lot and we may not actually understand what it is all the time. Yeah. But we know it when it happens. Right. And we know that sometimes it can it can be fun and it can be super, super friendly. And we just are having a laugh with our friends. And sometimes it's not. Sometimes it can really be hurtful.
Sounds to me like the conclusion in the research in terms of teasing, whether it's good or bad. The answer is it depends, which is kind of like unsatisfying, but it's an honest answer. What are some of the ingredients that make it friendly, maybe even affectionate versus kind of harmful?
Yeah. So we've tried to map, you know, a picture of this kind of what is a harmful tease and what is a playful tease, because there's a lot that that goes into it. Right. Some of the key things we see is what is your relationship to the person? So in general, playful teasing happens between friends. And what some of our participants talk about is, you know, you need to know the person to know what type of teasing is OK and what type of teasing is not OK. And so typically, if it's your friend and you're trying to be fun and have a good time, you know what's OK to tease them about, right? Maybe you know that you can tease them that they're bad at basketball because they don't really care about basketball.
But, you know, you can't tease them about their grades at school because that's something they're really sensitive about. So that's definitely a big one is what is your relationship with that person? Another thing we see as being important is who else is around, right? So are you teasing someone in front of an audience? If it's a tease that's kind of maybe on the line or might be harmful, the audience can make it feel particularly harmful. Having other people kind of witness something that might be potentially embarrassing, having other people around can really increase that sense of embarrassment.
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