Does bullying increase compliance?

Małgorzata Gamian-Wilk

Social ostracism can be a form of bullying at the workplace (a process of frequent and repeated acts of hostile communication and humiliation of an employee). Previous findings suggest that experimentally evoked ostracism leads to compliance. The aim of the present studies was to examine willingness to comply among bullying targets. It was found that being subjected to bullying is connected with lower proneness to comply with various requests of coworkers (the first study, N = 197). A drop in the self-reported compliance rate occurred among those bullied participants who were presented with a description of various types of social exclusion at the workplace (second study, N = 309). It is argued that long-term rejection and maltreatment diminishes victims’ self-regulation and tendency to fortify threatened needs.