Bullying directed at individuals who are stronger in terms of ability, status, or life competence is well-described in the literature as a product of status threat, malicious envy, and threatened egotism, rather than simple dominance over a weak target.

Across school, online, and workplace settings, high-performing or high-status individuals are disproportionately targeted when their competence, visibility, or social capital elicits upward social comparison and envy-based threat. Models of workplace bullying show that when agents differ in productivity, envious actors may engage in systematic undermining and aggression toward more productive peers to restore relative standing or reduce the target’s advantage. Classroom and cyberbullying research similarly identifies malicious envy (envy with a destructive, not self-improving, orientation) as a predictor of bullying and cyber-aggression, especially under conditions of high interdependence and salient social comparison. 

On the perpetrator side, threatened egotism theory proposes that aggression is most likely when individuals hold grandiose self-views that are challenged by evidence of another’s superiority. High but unstable self-esteem and narcissism increase aggression when the self is threatened, including in response to more competent or respected others.  In organizational research this appears as “upward bullying”, where subordinates target supervisors or high performers whose competence or role-based authority is experienced as ego-threatening, particularly in climates with strong performance comparison and weak sanctions. 

In short, bullying of “stronger” targets is best conceptualized as status-regulation aggression: a strategic, often covert pattern of hostility (exclusion, derogation, obstruction of work, reputational attacks) driven by malicious envy and threatened self-worth, aimed at reducing the target’s advantage and restoring a fragile sense of relative superiority, rather than exploiting objective weakness.