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Does trait anger, trait anxiety or organisational position moderate the relationship between exposure to negative acts and self-labelling as a victim of workplace bullying?

TINA LØKKE VIE, LARS GLASØ & STÅLE EINARSEN

University of Bergen

Corresponding address: Tina Løkke Vie, University of Bergen, Department of Psychosocial Science, Christiesgate12, N – 5015, Bergen, Norway. Telephone: +4795869288. E–mail: [email protected]

Keywords: Workplace bullying; Self-labelling; Personality; Organisational position

Abstract This study investigates the relationship between exposure to negative acts at work (NAQ) and self-labelling as a victim of workplace bullying, and whether this relationship is moderated by the targets’ personality (trait anger and trait anxiety) or organisational position (leader vs. follower). A total of 466 employees partici- pated in the study, in which 61 self-labelled victims (13.7%) were identified. The results show that NAQ acts as a strong predictor of self-labelling, a relationship which is not moderated by the personal or situational factors examined. However, both trait anxiety and trait-anger acted as independent predictors of self-labelling. Hence, personality seems to influence the self-labelling process although further research is needed in order to understand this process more thoroughly.

Introduction Approximately five to thirty per cent of the European workforce is found to be exposed to some kind of bullying behaviour, with up to ten per cent labelling themselves as victims of bullying (Einarsen, Hoel, zapf et al., 2003). For the targets, such experiences can be both devastating and traumatic and may have

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68 Tina Løkke Vie, Lars Glasø & Ståle Einarsen

severe negative health effects (see Einarsen & Mikkelsen, 2003; Glasø, Nielsen, Einarsen et al, 2009). However, studies have shown a gross discrepancy between reporting exposure to bullying behaviours and labelling oneself as a victim of workplace bullying. Often, only half of the targets actually use the label ‘bullied’ in constructing an understanding of their experiences (Rayner, Hoel & Cooper, 2002). To further understand the targets’ subjective appraisal of being a victim of bullying at work, the aim of the present study is to examine the relationship between exposure to negative acts at work and self-labelling as a victim of work- place bullying, and explore whether this relationship is moderated by the targets’ personality or organisational position.

Workplace bullying The concept of workplace bullying, sometimes referred to as mobbing (Leymann, 1996), workplace abuse (Keashly, 1998) or workplace harassment (Brodsky, 1976), refers to situations where a person repeatedly and over a period of time feels subjected to negative treatment on the part of one or more persons, and where the person(s) exposed to the treatment have difficulty in defending them- selves against these actions (Olweus, 1993; Einarsen, 2000).

Typically, the cases of bullying are long lasting processes, which gradually “tear down” the victims through prolonged exposure to repeated negative acts. Studies in Sweden (Leymann, 1996) and Norway (Einarsen & Skogstad, 1996) have found the bullying cases to vary between fifteen to eighteen months, whereas a British study found that 67 per cent of the sample had been bullied for more than one year (Hoel, Cooper & Faragher, 2001). In the beginning of the bullying process the negative behaviours may be indirect and subtle and therefore difficult for the target to recognize and confront. The initial phase of the process tends to be fol- lowed by a stage of more direct negative acts, often leaving the targets humiliated, ridiculed and increasingly isolated (Leymann, 1996). Consequently, the targets become stigmatised and find it more and more difficult to defend themselves. As a result they may suffer from a wide range of stress symptoms, which in turn may lead them to withdraw from both social as well as professional activities (Hoel et al., 2001). In the end many victims consider the work situation so difficult that they choose to leave voluntarily, or they are forced out of the workplace by means of dismissal or redundancy (Leymann, 1990).

Thus, bullying is not a straightforward phenomenon, but rather a complex, multidimensional process, affected by both emotional and cognitive evaluations as well as socially imputed realities. However, although this description of the development of bullying seems to fit many bullying cases, we still do not know exactly how and at what time and level of intensity the exposure to negative

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acts turns into a bullying case. Accordingly, measuring workplace bullying is not an easy task and may be done according to a host of different criteria (Einarsen et al., 2003). In most studies bullying is measured by one of two methods (see Nielsen, Skogstad, Matthiesen et al., 2009): 1) The “operational method” and 2), the “self-labelling or subjective method”. In the first method, bullying is meas- ured by criteria based on reported exposure and duration of exposure to bullying behaviours (negative acts) without any reference to the phrase “bullying” (i.e., the Negative Acts Questionnaire; NAQ; Einarsen & Raknes, 1997). In the latter method, respondents are provided with a definition of bullying, and those who judge their experiences within a particular timescale to fit the definition are con- sidered bullied. Hence, this method reflects the individuals’ perception that they are in fact victims of bullying, and label themselves as such.

However, despite strong associations between the self-labelling method and the behavioural assessment, direct comparisons between the two methods have shown a large discrepancy between reports of exposure to persistent negative acts on the one hand, and labelling of these experiences as bullying on the other. For example, in a study of 377 Danish business professionals, Salin (2001) found that 24 per cent reported that they had been subjected to at least one negative behav- iour on a weekly basis for the past six months, whereas only 9 per cent labelled themselves as victims of bullying when provided with the definition. However, there are also people who label their experiences as bullying without being “real” targets according to the behavioural assessment criteria. Einarsen et al. (2007), for example, showed that 2.9 per cent of the respondents label themselves as victims of bullying without being so according to the behavioural assessment, employing the operational criterion of exposure to at least one specific act a week.

This lack of consensus between the behavioural assessment and self-labelling reports not only questions the prevalence of these problems, but also leads to the questions: Which factors actually predict self-labelling as a victim of workplace bullying, and are there personal or situational variables that make some indi- viduals more or less likely to label themselves as “bullied” when facing bullying behaviour at work?

Self-labelling workplace bullying Undoubtedly, a high frequency of exposure to negative acts seems to be a main predictor of labelling workplace bullying, even though assessments of such acts are not always consistent with self-labelling reports (Rayner et al., 2002). Regrettably, there is a notable lack of research concerning other factors than exposure to negative acts that might influence the personal appraisal or labelling of oneself as a victim of workplace bullying (Hoel et al., 2001). Little attention

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70 Tina Løkke Vie, Lars Glasø & Ståle Einarsen

has, for example, been given to the role of personal and situational variables as potential moderators on the relationship between exposure to negative acts and self-labelling bullying. Following a stress theoretical framework, this lack of research is surprising as an individual’s own evaluation of the situation would undoubtedly be influenced by personal characteristics of the individual. One central question is, for example, whether targets who display certain personality traits are more or less likely to label themselves as victims of bullying or whether the targets’organisational position may act as an intervening variable on this relationship between exposure and self-labelling.

Previous research has produced a fairly consistent portrait of the “typical” victim as being more anxious and insecure than individuals in general, and has shown that personal dispositions such as neuroticism seem to be related to vic- tims of workplace bullying (Coyne, Seigne & Randall, 2000; Glasø, Matthiesen, Nielsen et al., 2007; Leymann & Gusstafson, 1996; zapf, 1999). Considering workplace bullying as a severe stressfull event, also trait anxiety, which is closely related to the personality trait of neuroticism, has commonly been linked to dif- ferent stress outcomes (Spielberger, 1983). Trait anxiety pertains specifically to a relatively stable individual difference in anxiety proneness and is defined as a general tendency to respond with anxiety to perceived threats in the environ- ment (Spielberger, 1983, p. 3). Moreover, individuals with high trait anxiety tend to have a more negative outlook of life than others and are less satisfied with themselves and their surroundings. Accordingly, such individuals may be prone to interpret ambiguous social information as threatening as well as respond- ing with anxiety towards those who display only mildly threatening behaviour. Furthermore, individuals with high trait anxiety are more prone to make hostile attributions to ambiguous behaviours, and consequently may report more vic- timization than employees low on this trait (Spielberger, 1983). Supporting this statement, Matthiesen and Einarsen (2004) found that some victims of bullying were extremely suspicious of the outside world, which could make them more likely to interpret others’ behaviour as being more malevolent. Those tendencies, and the argument presented above, suggest that highly anxious people are more likely to label themselves as targets of bullying when exposed to negative acts at work, compared to individuals low on this trait, leading to the first hypothesis of the present study:

Hypothesis 1: Trait anxiety moderates the relationship between exposure to negative acts and self-labelling as a victim of workplace bullying.

However, the picture is blurred. Although some victims are found to be more anxious than others, studies among schoolchildren have also shown that some

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targets of bullying tend not to be highly anxious, but instead highly aggressive. Trait anger is a dispositional characteristic that might be related to those targets, also labeled provocative victims (Olweus, 1993). Trait anger refers to a personal disposition that predisposes some persons to experience and respond to envi- ronmental stimuli with “angry feelings”, such as irritation or frustration, and more readily so than do others (Spielberger, 1996). People high on trait anger are likely to experience a great deal of frustration and tend to be highly sensitive to criticism, perceived affronts, and negative evaluation by others. Accordingly, persons who are highly angry may also perceive themselves as being victimized by a broader range of aggressive actions than those who are low on this trait. Thus, it is not unlikely that also trait anger may be a personality trait that makes some individuals more apt to perceive themselves as victims of bullying when exposed to negative acts at work. Hence, our second hypothesis is as follows:

Hypothesis 2: Trait anger moderates the relationship between exposure to nega- tive acts and self-labelling as a victim of workplace bullying.

Another relevant question concerns organisational status or position (leader versus follower). As previously mentioned, one central aspect of the bullying experience concerns the imbalance in power between the parties. Although this power disparity may have many origins, including physical size and colleagues’ support (Bowling & Beehr, 2006), this power imbalance may also mirror a formal power structure as would be the case when the perpetrator is in a higher posi- tion in the organisational hierarchy relative to the target (Einarsen & Hoel, 2008). Accordingly, subordinates may be at a heightened risk for feelings of humiliation because they may perceive themselves as being relatively powerless, compared to individuals in leadership positions. Also, bullying behaviors may be perceived differently by leaders than by followers, because of the role and expectations related to the leader position. In a recent Norwegian study, for example, Skogstad, Glasø and Hetland (2008) found that leaders label themselves less frequently as victims than do non-leaders, although they were exposed to the same degree of bullying behaviour. Furthermore, Glasø and Einarsen (2006) showed that leaders compared to non-leaders are less likely to let their negative emotions affect their job satisfaction. Based on the findings and the arguments presented above we predict the following:

Hypothesis 3: Organisational position moderates the relationship between exposure to negative acts and self-labelling as a victim of workplace bullying.

The present study will hopefully contribute to a better understanding of how the

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72 Tina Løkke Vie, Lars Glasø & Ståle Einarsen

relationship between exposure to harassment at work and labelling oneself as a victim of workplace bullying is influenced by factors such as trait anxiety, trait anger and organisational position.

Method

Sample The present study is based on data from anonymous self-report questionnaires, distributed to 837 employees in a sea transport organization, operating on the Norwegian coastline. A total of 466 respondents completed the questionnaires, giving an overall response rate of 55.8 %. Of these, 57.5 % were leaders and 42.5 % were followers. In total 86.3 % (n = 383) of the respondents were males. Females comprised 13.7 % of the sample (n = 61). The mean age of the sample were 45 years (SD = 11. 77), age ranging from 17 to 66 years.

Instruments Spielberger’s (1983; 1996) State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) and State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory (STAXI). In sum the scale consists of 32 items where 20 items measure trait anxiety and the following 12 items trait anger. Cronbach’s alpha was satisfactory for both scales, at 0.88 and 0.75, respectively. An example of an item that measures anxiety is “I feel nervous and restless”, while “I get angry when other people’s mistakes go beyond me” is an example of an item that meas- ures anger. For each item the respondents are asked to what extent they generally feel this way, with response categories ranging on a four-point scale from “Not at all” to ”Very much” in the anxiety scale, and from ” Never” to ”Almost always” in the anger scale.

Organisational position. The respondents were asked whether they were hold- ing a leadership position or not.

Self-labelling. The respondents were presented with a global definition of bully- ing (See Einarsen & Skogstad, 1996; Olweus, 1993) reading as follows: “Bullying takes place when one or more persons systematically and over time feel that they have been subjected to negative treatment on the part of one or more persons, in a situation in which the person(s) exposed to the treatment have difficulty in defending themselves against them”. This definition was immediately followed up by the question `using the above definition, please state whether or not you have been bullied at work over the last 6 months’, response categories being: “no”, “yes, occasionally”, “yes, now and then”, “yes, weekly” and “yes, several times a week ”. The respondents reporting alternative 2, 3, 4, and 5 were considered self-labelled victims of bullying in the present study.

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73Self-labelling workplace bullying

Negative Acts Questionnaire Revised (NAQ; Einarsen, Hoel & Notelaers, 2009). In this study NAQ comprises 9 items measuring self-reported exposure to specific negative acts. The scale showed a satisfactory internal consistency, measured by Cronbach’s alpha (= 0.89). All items are described in behavioural terms with no reference to the phrase “bullying”, thus measuring perceived exposure to bullying behaviours without forcing the respondents to label these situations as bullying. The NAQ-R contains items referring to both direct (e.g., verbal abuse, offensive remarks) and indirect behaviours (e.g., social isolation, slander). For each item the respondents are asked how often they have been exposed to the behaviour during the last six months. The response categories are: “never”, ”now and then”, ”about monthly”, ”about weekly”, ”about daily”.

Statistics Statistical analyses were conducted using the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) 15.0. Frequency-, reliability- and correlation-analyses were employed. In order to investigate whether organisational position or the targets’ personality predict self- labelling, a logistic regression analysis was conducted. Self-labelling (0=non-labeller, 1=self-labeller) comprised the criterion variable, whereas exposure to negative acts, organisational position and the personality traits comprised the predictor variables. When the 95% confidence interval for the Odds ratio does not include 1.00, the predictor is related to the criterion variable. The level of significance for all the analyses was set to .05.

Results A total of 64.4 % of the respondents reported exposure to at least one negative act during the previous six months indicating such exposure to be quite common in

Table 1. Means, standard deviations, and correlations for all the studies’ variables.

Variables M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

1. Age 45.07 11.77 -

2. Gender .86 .35 .17** -

3. Position .58 .49 .22** .38** -

4. Anxiety 1.57 .38 –.05 .02 –.09 -

5. Anger 1.49 .32 .02 –.06 –.15** .32** -

6. NAQ 1.29 .43 –.04 –.05 –.09* .36** .30** -

7. Self-lab. bullying .14 .34 –.04 –.09 –.13** .30** .27** .60** –

** p<.01; * p<.05., two-tailed, n= 397-448, women = 0, men = 1, subordinate = 0, leaders = 1

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74 Tina Løkke Vie, Lars Glasø & Ståle Einarsen

the working place. Among the respondents, 6.2 % reported exposure to at least one negative act on a weekly basis or more often, thus being victims of bullying according to the criteria suggested by Leymann (1996). Yet, quite unexpectedly a higher percentage of the respondents (13.7 %) labelled themselves as victims of bullying, including those who claim it to happen on a more occasional basis.

The mean, standard deviation and correlation coefficients among the variables in the present study are reported in Table 1. Significant correlations were found between self-labelling and all the study’s variables (trait anxiety, trait anger, organi- sational position and NAQ) and between NAQ and all the moderator variables (trait anxiety, trait anger and organisational position).

Table 2. Testing the moderating effects of personality and organisational position on the relationship between exposure to negative acts and self-labelling workplace bullying, using logistic regression analysis (0= not bullied, 1= bullied).

Step Predictor Odds Ratio 95% cI (lower/upper)

1 NAQ 3.25*** 2.24-4.71

Trait anxiety 1.62** 1.17-2.25

Trait anger 1.41* 1.01-1.96

2 NAQ 3.50*** 2.32-5.27

Trait anxiety 1.72** 1.21-2.44

Trait anger 1.41* 1.01-1.95

NAQ*Trait anxiety 0.86 0.62-1.20

1 NAQ 3.25*** 2.24-4.71

Trait anxiety 1.62** 1.17-2.25

Trait anger 1.41* 1.01-1.96

2 NAQ 3.18*** 2.18-4.64

Trait anxiety 1.63** 1.17-2.26

Trait anger 1.34 0.93-1.95

NAQ*Trait anger 1.13 0.74-1.73

1 NAQ 4.31*** 2.89-6.42

Position 0.40 0.36-1.49

2 NAQ 5.6*** 2.91-10.89

Position 0.87 0.40-1.88

NAQ*Position 0.28 0.28-1.45

*** p<.001; **p<.01; * p<.05., N = 385-392

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75Self-labelling workplace bullying

Logistic regression was performed to test the hypotheses of the study. As shown in Table 2, exposure to bullying behaviours (NAQ) acted as a strong predictor of self-labelling, revealing an odds ratio of about 4. Respondents reporting high exposure to negative acts were more than four times as likely to label them- selves as bullied victims than those who experienced less exposure to negative acts when controlled for age and gender. However, as shown in table 2, neither trait anger, trait anxiety nor organisational position moderated the relationship between exposure to negative acts and self perceived victimization in the present study, thus rejecting all three hypotheses. However, both trait anxiety and trait anger acted as individual predictors of self-labelling when controlled for NAQ.

Discussion The aim of this study was to examine whether the relationship between exposure to negative acts and self-labeling as a victim of bullying was moderated by trait anger and trait anxiety or by the target’s organisational position. In accordance with previous research (e.g., Glasø et al, 2009), the results show that systematic exposure to negative acts seems to be a main predictor of targets’ subjective appraisal of being bullied at work. However, despite the strong correlation found between exposure to negative acts and self-labelling (r = .60; p < .01) in the current study, the result still leaves the question open regarding other factors per- taining to this relationship. The results from the present study demonstrated that neither trait anxiety nor trait anger moderated the relationship between exposure to bullying behavior and self-labelling reports, thus rejecting our hypothesis one and hypothesis two.

However, it should be kept in mind that moderator effects are in general dif- ficult to detect (see McClelland & Judd, 1993). Yet, although moderating effects of the personality traits were not found, the results showed that both trait anxiety and trait anger predicted self-labelling in their own right. Hence, personality should not be neglected as being an important factor in understanding the bul- lying phenomenon. This notion is supported by Glasø et al. (2007) who showed that a small cluster of victims tended to be less extrovert, less agreeable, less conscientious, and less open to experience but more emotionally unstable than other victims and a control group.

The reason why trait anxiety is associated with exposure to bullying behavior may have several explanations. For example, anxious persons tend to focus on the negative aspects of themselves, their jobs, and the world in general (Watson, Clark & Tellegen, 1988). Thus, they may be more likely to interpret ambiguous social information as threatening, which in turn may cause them to respond with hostil- ity towards those who display only mildly threatening behaviors. Alternatively,

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76 Tina Løkke Vie, Lars Glasø & Ståle Einarsen

since anxious employees experience frequent emotional distress, they may per- form less competently both when dealing with work-related tasks and in social interactions, resulting in behaviors that others may perceive as inappropriate, disrespectful, or even hostile. The findings from the present study indicate that bullied victims, similar to anxious people, perceive themselves and their work situation negatively, which in turn may make them behave inappropriately and hence are perceived unfavorably by others.

The results of the present study also show that trait anger is related to bullying. As previously mentioned, trait anger refers to a personal disposition that predis- pose some persons to experience and respond to environmental stimuli with “angry feelings”, such as irritation or frustration, and more readily so than do oth- ers (Spielberger, 1996). An explanation for the current finding can be that people high on trait anger are likely to experience a great deal of frustration and tend to be highly sensitive to criticism and negative evaluation by others. Therefore, their behaviour may be perceived as provocative or inappropriate by others, which may escalate into a destructive social encounter such as harassment. However, due to the correlation design of the present study, we must also point to the fact that both trait anger and trait anxiety may be a result of the victimization process as such. According to Watson et al. (1988) a persons’ degree of anxiety is also affected by exposure to life events, and measures of trait anxiety to some extent also capture external and situational influences. Furthermore, Leymann (1996) strongly claimed that personality traits, such as anxiety or rigidity found among targets were a result of, and not a cause of, exposure to bullying behavior.

The data in the present study did not support hypothesis three, i.e., that posi- tion would moderate the relationship between exposure to negative acts and self-labelling of victimization. These results were somewhat surprising given the existing literature on the relationships between workplace bullying, leadership and exposure to negative acts at work. For instance, Skogstad et al. (2008) have shown that leaders, compared to followers, less frequently label their exposure to negative acts as bullying experiences. In contrast, the results of the present study indicate the all employees in the organisation, regardless of hierarchical position, are potential targets of workplace bullying.

From an applied perspective, one important message of the present study is that managers should get trained in recognising bullying, dealing with it as well as delivering a bullying policy (Richards & Daley, 2003), and not dismiss claims of bullying as a “personality issue”. As bullying can be part of the whole culture of an organization, management should prevent bullying by creating an anti- bullying culture both formally (e.g., by developing and implementing policies) and informally (e.g., by acting as a role model), which conveys clearly to all employees that bullying behaviours will not be tolerated. Importantly, research

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has shown that also those who do not label their experiences as bullying may experience adverse health effects (Einarsen et al., 2007). Furthermore, from a clinical perspective, naming one’s experiences as bullying may be important for becoming aware of potential tendencies to create self-destructive stories about one’s experiences rather than a story that helps one to grow and accept oneself (see Tehrani, 2003).

The present study only considered two aspects or traits of personality. Personality, however, is a multi faceted construct and future research would ben- efit from including other personality factors (e.g., Extraversion, Conscientiousness) as well as other situational factors (e.g., social support), although trait anger and trait anxiety theoretically seem to be good candidates to influence when an employee would label exposure to negative acts as bullying or not.

Concluding remarks The present study showed that exposure to negative acts or behavior identified as bullying acts as a strong predictor of labelling oneself as a victim of workplace bullying, a relationship which was not, however, moderated by the investigated personal or situational factors. The non-moderating roles of trait anxiety, trait anger and organizational position emphasize that bullying is not an experience exclusive to some individuals, but may in principle happen to anyone at work. Hence, self-perceived bullying at work should not be regarded as a personality issue or something that is simply explained by contextual factors alone. Rather, employees’ labelling their experiences as workplace bullying should be under- stood as a serious warning signal that someone has been exposed to systematic and prolonged psychological harm at work. However, since both trait anxiety and trait anger acted as independent predictors of self-labelling, personality seems to influence the self-labelling process in some way, although further research is needed in order to understand this process more thoroughly.

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78 Tina Løkke Vie, Lars Glasø & Ståle Einarsen

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Acknowledgments We thank two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments. We also thank Professor Stig Berge Matthiesen and Professor Anders Skogstad for their valuable contribution in the collection of the data employed in the present study.

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