The association between workplace bullying exposure and workplace bullying perpetration – The role of frustration of the need for relatedness

Workplace bullying (WB) is a serious phenomenon that has serious detrimental effects on victim’s health, attitudes, and work-related behavior (Nielsen & Einarsen, 2012). WB is seen as an escalated conflict, where both parties engage in increasing overt acts of aggression (e.g., Einarsen et al., 2011). This perspective is supported by one of the most robust finding in WB and aggression literature, the association between experienced workplace aggression and enacting in workplace aggression (e.g., Baillien et al., 2016). However, there are only a few studies that have researched the mechanism between these phenomena (Samnani & Singh 2012). Self-determination theory (SDT) might explain this link. As need frustration is linked to less self-control (Vansteenkiste & Ryan, 2012), the frustration of the need for relatedness might also lead to increased aggressive behavior. Drawing on SDT, we propose that bullying exposure thwarts employee’s need for relatedness that increase aggressive behavior. Thus, the aim of our study was to test this mediation in a longitudinal design with short time intervals (i.e. monthly). 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). Being a perpetrator of bullying was measured by the same nine items of the S-NAQ, however, formulated in an active manner (e.g., Baillien et al., 2011). Finally, frustration of the need for relatedness was assessed with the Psychological Needs Thwarting Scale (Bartholomew et al., 2011). Cross-lagged mediation analysis within a path modeling framework only partially confirmed the proposed model: WB exposure was significantly related to a change in frustration of relatedness. However, frustration of relatedness did (most of the time) not increase WB perpetration, but WB exposure. These longitudinal findings underline the vicious circle nature of WB exposure.