THEY are the queen bees of the school playground. Researchers have analysed the psychological techniques by which “alpha females” bully those they want to exclude.

The researchers found these dominant girls manipulate the ambitions of “wannabes” to be accepted into the inner circle and use them to enforce the exclusion of girls they have decided to target.

Unlike boys, these girls turn only rarely to violence, but the authors believe the subtle undermining of confidence can be far more damaging and have lifelong effects on some victims.

Tactics used by the in group include encouraging the chosen victim to organise a party and then ensuring no one turns up.

Other examples of bullying found by Valerie Besag, the author of the study, included inviting a girl to join the clique and then insisting she drops her existing friends.

“Within a few weeks the girl would be excluded from the clique, her old friends would reject her and she would be left totally isolated,” said Besag, a former teacher and educational psychologist.

“Even as adults, the victims can still be left wary of social events and worry about their appearance and behaviour.”

Besag’s findings reflect research in America entitled Queen Bees and Wannabes, which formed the basis of the film Mean Girls.

In the film, children have a fixed place in the social ranking, from “skanky slut” at the bottom to the “plastics” at the top, who are cheerleaders for a queen bee who heads the group.

In 1989 a Hollywood black comedy called Heathers showed the cruelty of a trio of high school girls all called Heather. Their victim ended up killing them.

For her book, Understanding Girls’ Friendships, Fights and Feuds, Besag filmed groups of 11-year-old girls over 16 months at a lunchtime club. Although they were inhibited by the presence of cameras at first, after a while they reverted to their natural behaviour.

The results, said Besag, demonstrated that girls regarded friendships as more important than academic success. The outer circle lived in fear of being pushed out of the friendship group.

“Any girl in the group studied could arrive at school to find her friends of the previous day had decided to exclude her and had alienated her from the rest of the class.”

A Home Office study of 12 to 16-year-olds found that about a third said they had been victims of bullying in the previous year.

Teenage girls this weekend confirmed Besag’s observations. One 14-year-old at a girls’ school in south London said: “I’m not one of the leaders, so I feel I have to do as they tell me. They want to control everyone. They do mean things like arranging to meet outside school, but they don’t tell one girl. You get to know and you can get very upset. You get to the point when you can’t bear being in the same room as them.”

Sadie Sale, 20, a beauty therapist from Cribyn in mid-Wales, said she has been told by the class leaders what she should wear and how she should do her hair for the school disco. “I did it and they just laughed at me and said I looked ridiculous.”

Sale was then made to bully another girl as an “initiation rite” to gain acceptance.

More seriously, they got her to beat up another girl. “I really felt for this girl . . . I was scared — I’d never picked a fight before — but I could see them smiling and saying ‘Go on Sadie’ and I thought, ‘Maybe after this they will actually like me.’ The police were called and I was cautioned. I was about 13 and it gave me a huge buzz.”

Sue Palmer, an expert on bullying employed as a consultant by schools, said hormones could be at the root of girls’ actions. “They are awash with changes to their bodies and there is research that has identified changes in the pre-frontal cortex that makes it more difficult for them to understand the feelings of others,” she said.

Head teachers suggested the worst age for girl bullying was 12 to 13. Stuart Westley, master of Haileybury, an independent school in Hertford, said: “Girl bullying is more subtle and covert. They mostly exclude girls from the friendship group or hide their possessions.

“It is important to be vigilant and alert to the possibilities. Boys tend to go for more simplistic bullying.”

Additional reporting: Laura St Quinton

NASTY TRICKS

• Missing the victim out of a party invitation and posting pictures of the event on a website
  
• Making a girl drop her old friends if she wants to join the in-group, then excluding her anyway
  
• Stealing a victim’s exercise books from the homework pile and hiding them

Explore UK News

• Crime News

• Education News

• Health News

• Scotland News

Times Recommends

• Oh no, Mr Darling: you have failed
• BBC survives dogfight over Kennel Club expose
• Where the Rosetta belongs can’t be set in stone