Is the effect of workplace bullying exposure on subjective well-being mediated through the frustration of the need for relatedness? A longitudinal six-wave study.

Workplace bullying is a serious phenomenon that has serious detrimental effects on victim’s health, attitudes, and work-related behavior. Drawing on self-determination theory, we propose that bullying exposure thwarts employee’s need for relatedness with the result of decreased well-being. Studies examining these mechanisms used either a cross-sectional design (Trépanier et al., 2013) or a longitudinal design with (not theoretically justified) long time intervals (i.e., 12-month time lag; Trépanier et al., 2015). Therefore, the aim of our study was to test this mediation in a longitudinal design with much shorter time intervals (i.e. monthly), whether to see if the bullying exposure also shows short-term effects on well-being. A six-wave online survey design with monthly time lag was employed and data were collected among U.S. employees. The sample consists of 1,595 respondents (55.8% females, n=890, ageM = 36.9, ageSD =10.3). Workplace bullying exposure was assessed with the S-NAQ (Notelaers et al., 2018), frustration of the need for relatedness with the Psychological Needs Thwarting Scale (Bartholomew et al., 2011) and well-being with the WHO-5 well-being-index (Topp et al., 2015). Cross-lagged mediation analysis within a structural equation modeling framework confirmed the mediation model: Bullying exposure was significantly related to a change in frustration of relatedness and frustration of relatedness was significantly related to a change in well-being across all waves. The study findings advance the field through showing that bullying exposure has not only a long-term effect on well-being but also a short one, and that this effect is mediated through the frustration of relatedness.