ESCALATION OF
BULLYING BEHAVIORS
Master thesis, Msc Human Resource Management
University of Groningen, Faculty of Economics and Business
Escalation Of Bullying Behaviors Introduction ... 3 Theoretical Framework ... 5 Escalation ... 5 Moral Rationalizations ... 7 Method ... 10 Design ... 10 Participants... 11 Procedure ... 12 Measures ... 13
Previous Bullying Behavior ... 13
Moral rationalizations ... 13
Future Bullying Behavior ... 14
ESCALATION OF BULLYING BEHAVIORS
ABSTRACT
Workplace bullying is very common and has got detrimental effects. Small unethical acts have been shown to escalate into large atrocities, when the individual engages in more and more severe activities. This research investigates if one bullying event escalates into another bullying event such that workplace bullying develops, and to how this happens. One explanation, explored in this research, is the making of moral rationalizations. The first hypothesis is that previous bullying behavior positively influences future bullying behavior, but more so when moral rationalizations takes place. The second hypothesis is that previous bullying will positively influence future bullying but that this relation is stronger when more moral rationalizations are made. These questions were researched by an online-survey, in which it was manipulated whether moral rationalizations were made, and the number of moral rationalizations people used was measured. Both hypothesis were rejected. Moral rationalizations, nor the number of moral rationalizations made, seem to influence the influence of previous bullying behavior on future bullying behavior. Implications and limitations of the research are discussed.
INTRODUCTION
(Privitera & Campbell, 2009) at work, which can lead to severe stress reactions (Balducci, Fraccaroli, & Schaufeli, 2011).
turnover, legal costs and negative publicity (Duffy, 2009; Privitera & Campbell, 2009), all of which brings costs with it.
All in all, bullying has detrimental effects for everyone who comes into contact with bullying and for the organizations in which it occurs. Occasional maltreatment of colleagues happens to everyone. This may come down to teasing a colleague, spreading gossip about a colleague or the exclusion of a colleague within a particular conservation. This behavior becomes problematic as soon as it occurs repeatedly. Zyglidopoulos, Fleming and Rothenberg, (2009) stated that small unethical acts can escalate into large atrocities, when the individual engages in more and more severe activities. Since workplace bullying is not a single event but prolonged exposure to hostile behaviors, it is important to prevent initial bullying behaviors to escalate into full workplace bullying. Current research does not indicate how and if bullying behaviors escalate in organizations (Balducci et al., 2011). Knowing how bullying escalates should provide insights in how bullying can be handled, to prevent this escalation in the future, thus preventing the detrimental effects. The question addressed in this thesis is therefore: does one bullying event escalate into another bullying event as such that workplace bullying develops? And if yes, how does this escalation of immoral behavior take place?
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
Escalation
hire or were never seen by the supervisor. Another example of escalation is one for individuals who made decisions (often with respect to financial resources) that have negative consequences. These individuals tend to escalate their dedication to these decisions, instead of abandoning them (Slaughter & Greguras, 2008).
As behavior can escalate, immoral behavior can also escalate and lead to even more immoral behavior. There are different explanations as to why immoral behavior escalates. One possible explanation for the phenomenon of escalating immoral behavior is commitment. Martens, Kosloff and Jackson (2010) showed how commitment to previous behavior led to escalation of that behavior. They researched the cause of subsequent killing of bugs after initial killing of bugs. The outcome of their experiment was that the mere act of killing bugs promotes subsequent bug killing, as repeated killing of bugs in trial one, led to more bugs being killed in the second trial. This effect only appeared when participants believed they were killing, and did not appear when participants thought their actions did not kill bugs. When they thought they were killing (acting immorally) the behavior escalated. This suggests that the subsequent killing of bugs is not merely due to practice, but that it has a motivational component. Participants who believed they were acting immorally, were motivated to keep acting immorally.
(Tenbrunsel & Messick, 2004). A person can deceive him or herself in such a matter that he or she thinks he or she is teasing a colleague instead of bullying them. Mazar, Amir and Ariely (2008) give another explanation for the phenomenon of escalating behavior. They showed that people reconstruct detrimental conduct as moral conduct. Because detrimental conduct is now seen as moral conduct, this behavior contributes to the continuing of damaging activities. Since these detrimental activities are now linked to worthy purposes and are thus seen as moral. Lowell (2012) gives yet another explanation for the process of escalation of immoral behavior. He states that it may be so that self justification, in which immoral behaviors are internalized and reframed as moral actions, is institutionalized in corporations. This in turn triggers more extreme immoral behavior (amplification), and subconsciously adopts a consistent mode of immoral behavior, which form a reiterative cycle. All these explanations for the phenomenon of escalating behaviors, come down to the individual’s ability to reinterpret his or her immoral actions as moral ones. As shown, these explanations are very similar to one another. All of them can in fact also be seen as moral rationalizations.
Moral Rationalizations
Another possible explanation for the phenomenon of escalating immoral behavior is moral rationalizations. This is an individual’s ability to reinterpret his or her immoral actions as moral ones (Tsang, 2002; Zyglidopoulos et al., 2009), which allows them to still see the self as moral, while single-handedly engaging in immoral behavior. Moral rationalizations are justifications of unethical behavior. They are reasons an immoral actor gives, to justify the unethical behavior.
act is compared to something even more inhuman or harmful. The bully in this matter might morally rationalize: ‘bullying a colleague isn’t as bad as physically hurting a colleague’. A second form of moral rationalization is through euphemistic labeling (Pornari & Wood, 2010). The act is given a different label, the bully might morally rationalize that he or she is not bullying but is teasing the colleague. A third form is one in which the consequences of the harmful behavior are disregarded (Pornari & Wood, 2010). The bully might make the moral rationalization like the saying: ‘sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me’. A fourth form is fragmentation of the own identity. A bully in this manner separates its bad (bullying) identity from the good identity (like: I help some colleagues). This way the bully can morally rationalize that he or she is in fact a good person. Another group of moral rationalizations focuses on the actions of others (Tsang, 2002). A fifth form of moral rationalizations (in this manner) is through the displacement or diffusion of responsibility (Pornari & Wood, 2010). The personal responsibility for the act is minimized in this form. A bully might for example rationalize that he or she is not the only one bullying, so he or she is not to blame for the bullying behavior. Another example of a moral rationalization that bullies could make is that they tell themselves that it is the responsibility of others to say something to the bully about their behavior. A last form is through blaming or denial of the victim (Pornari & Wood, 2010). The victim is thought of as a person who has him- or herself to blame for the bullying or is not even a victim but deserves the behavior.
person, he may argue that being bullied makes people though. This way the behavior is not only justified for one particular victim, but would also apply to other possible victims. When Dutch reporter Rutger Castricum justified his behavior of asking annoying, harassing questions, towards politician Job Cohen, by stating that a politician should be able to cope with this type of behavior, he paved the way for further bullying behavior towards all politicians. This is because his comment created a gap between the action that was the target of the rationalization (his behavior towards politician Job Cohen) and the given rationalization for this action (politicians should be able to cope). This gap may facilitate more severe forms of immoral behavior, since a justification for the immoral behavior is already available (Zyglidopoulos et al., 2009). So, one can expect that over-rationalizations pave the way for further, and possibly more serious acts of immoral behavior. Overcompensation can then be seen as part of a dynamic relationship between the immoral act and the rationalization, which may lead to escalation.
A confirmation of hypothesis one will lead us to believe that moral rationalizations is a moderating variable in the explanation of the influence of previous bullying behavior on future bullying behavior. In that the making of moral rationalizations leads to a stronger relation between previous and future bullying behavior, than when no moral rationalizations are made. A confirmation of hypothesis two, will lead us to believe that overcompensation does play a role in the explanation of the phenomenon of escalating bullying behaviors. It is an indication that overcompensation might explain how moral rationalizations influence the influence of previous bullying behavior on future bullying behavior. Given that the more rationalizations are given, the more the behavior is justified excessively. If only hypothesis 1 is confirmed this will lead us to believe that moral rationalizations do play a role in the explanation of escalating bullying behaviors, but that the number of justifications does not play a role. We therefore, in that case, do not know how moral rationalizations influence the influence of previous bullying on future bullying.
FIGURE 1 Conceptual Framework
METHOD
Design
condition participants were asked to make moral rationalizations, while in the other condition participants were asked to make counter moral rationalizations. Besides this, the number of moral rationalizations participants gave, was also measured.
Participants
Prospective participants were requested to participate in the research through an email. In this email general information of the study like duration was given, so participants could decide to enroll or not. When asked what the research was about, the general answer given was, that it was a study about workplace behavior. In this research a ‘snowball’ method was used, in which the researcher contacted acquaintances, who then in turn contacted acquaintances. Participants could win a surprise gift if they entered and finished the research, to motivate them to participate. A lottery took place among those who left their email address. Overall 159 participants entered the research, 55 of them failed to answer the questions concerning the dependent variable, and thus failed to finish the research. They were excluded from the research because this failure to finish the research rendered there results useless. Three participants were excluded because they needed a lot of time to fill in the questionnaire. This was done, because one can assume that the manipulation of conditions was unsuccessful for these participants, since there could be a lot of time between the answering of the manipulation question and the dependent variable questions. On average, participants needed 30.01 minutes to complete the questionnaire. Three participants did not fill in the questionnaire within two hours (or three standard deviations (SD=30.41) of the normal distribution of time), they were excluded from further analysis. Participants, after these exclusions, were 101 acquaintances of the researcher (56 female, 45 male; Mage = 44 years,
SDage = 11.62). Of the participants 38.6% had a HBO level of education, 27.7% had a MBO
education. The vast majority of participants were employed (77.2%), a minority of participants was categorized as either independent contractor (9.9%), students (6.9%) or unemployed (6.0%).
Procedure
Participants engaged in an online survey, using the program “Qualtrics”. Once participants entered the research, a series of questions were asked. First of all, participants were asked to fill out some demographic data (age, gender, educational background), after this a series of questions were asked that measured their bullying behavior in the past. Following this the manipulation took place, in which participants were asked to write a short essay. After writing this, participants were asked some questions to measure their intentions of future bullying behavior. Finally some control questions were asked and a manipulation check took place. At the end of the research participants were thanked and debriefed. Participants were debriefed, because asking people to justify bullying could have an effect on people’s frame of reference. It is not intended in the research that participants leave the research in a different state than that in which they entered the research. Room for comments about the research was given. Participants could leave their email address if they wanted to participate in the lottery.
Measures
Previous bullying behavior.
with person-related bullying, work-related bullying and physically intimidating bullying, respectively. Yet, the NAQ-R may also be used as a one-factor or even as a two-factor measurement of work-related and person-related bullying (Einarsen et al., 2009). In this questionnaire the bullied and exposure to workplace bullying stands central. The current research however was interested in the bully, bullying behaviors and future bullying intentions. The NAQ-R questionnaire was therefore revised to make the bully and his or her behavior the focal point. Questions of this revised questionnaire used in this research are for example: ‘I have at one time spread rumors about a colleague’ and ‘I have at one time shouted to my colleague’ (answers were on a 7-point Likert scale, 1= Strongly Disagree, 7 = Strongly Agree). These questions were very negative, and probably made people see themselves negatively if they answered affirmative to multiple questions, which would sway them to respond socially desirable. To solve this problem 18 filler questions were added to the questionnaire. These questions consisted of socially desirable acts and were meant as distracters so that people would also answer honestly on the negative questions. Such a filler question is: ‘I have often complimented a colleague’ (answers were on a 7-point Likert scale, 1 = Strongly Disagree, 7 = Strongly Agree). The questions given to the participants were thus 22 questions derived from the NAQ-R corresponding to work-related, person-related and physically intimidating bullying and 18 filler questions. The 22 derivates of the NAQ-R were again combined in an overall scale of previous bullying behavior, rendering a Cronbach’s α of .87 which indicates a good internal consistency of the scale.
Moral rationalizations.
gossip, teasing) and participants were asked to give reasons why this type of behavior is justifiable. Even if they did not agree with this type of behavior themselves, it was asked of them to write about why it is justifiable, or why others would find it justifiable. Participants in the counter moral rationalizations condition got exactly the same text, only they were asked to write about why this type of behavior is not justifiable. The moral rationalization condition was coded 1, while the counter moral rationalization condition was coded -1.
Besides this, the number of moral rationalizations was also measured. This was done by counting the relative number of moral rationalizations made. Every moral rationalization that was given by participants was counted. So when three moral rationalizations were given, participants scored a three, while participants that gave no moral rationalizations scored a zero. When three moral rationalizations were given, and they all elaborated on the same issue, consisted the same moral rationalization only stated differently, participants got a score of one.
Future bullying behavior.
The questions concerning future bullying behavior were exactly the same as the questions about previous bullying behavior, with the only difference that participants were now asked about their future bullying intensions. Example questions are ‘In the future it will happen that I: often compliment a colleague; once in a while spread rumors about a colleague; occasionally shout to my colleague’ (answers were again on a 7-point Likert scale, 1 = Strongly Disagree, 7 = Strongly Agree). The questions were again combined in an overall scale of future bullying behavior, rendering a Cronbach’s α of .92.
Control questions.
bullying (I think bullying is: acceptable, alright, not objectionable, wrong, morally unjust and inexcusable; answers were again on a 7-point Likert scale, 1 = Strongly Disagree, 7 = Strongly Agree). After recoding, this rendered an overall scale with a Cronbach’s α of .83. In addition they were asked six questions about the organizations stand towards bullying (Bullying in your organization is: tolerated, permitted, seen as normal, condoned, discouraged, prohibited; answers were again on a 7-point Likert scale, 1 = Strongly Disagree, 7 = Strongly Agree). Again this resulted in one overall scale (after recoding) with a Cronbach’s α of .86. Participants were asked to indicate in two questions to which degree on a 7-point Likert scale (1 = Strongly Disagree, 7 = Strongly Agree) they agreed with the statements: ‘I was asked to write about why bullying is justifiable’ and ‘I was asked to write about why bullying is not justifiable’, to check the manipulation. This resulted in one overall scale (after recoding) with a Cronbach’s α of .93. As an additional manipulation check about moral rationalizations, participants were asked to which degree on a 7 point Likert scale they agreed with fourteen statements. These statements included ‘everyone teases a colleague every once in a while’; ‘bullying is always inexcusable’; ‘calling names is hurtful’. These questions could be grouped in one variable. Cronbach’s α was .73.
RESULTS
Manipulation Check
Hypothesis 1
For hypothesis 1 a slightly different data set was used. Several respondents who failed to comply with the manipulation were excluded from analysis. These firstly consisted of people who reported that they were in the moral rationalization condition while intended was that they were in the counter moral rationalization condition and vice versa. This was measured using a question at the end of the survey which stated ‘in this research I was asked to write about why bullying behaviors were justifiable’. If they were unsure or reported that they did not agree with this statement while they should agree with this statement, they were excluded. Secondly there were people who failed to comply with the manipulation because they did not make moral rationalizations for bullying behavior while in the moral rationalization condition and vice versa. When participants were in the moral rationalizations category, they should have scored at least a one on the number of moral rationalizations made, when they in fact scored a zero, they were excluded from further analysis. For this reason twenty-five people were excluded from the analysis. Therefore, the sample analyzed in this hypothesis consisted of 76 respondents (43 female, 33 male; Mage = 43,4 years, SDage = 11.83; EducationHBO =
36.8%, EducationMBO = 28.9%, EducationWO = 15.8%; Employmentemployed = 77.6,
Employmentindependent contractor = 9.2, Employmentstudent = 7.9, Employmentunemployed = 5.2).
TABLE 1
Results of Hierarchical Regression on future bullying behavior as a function of moral rationalizations and previous bullying behavior
Variables
Step 1 Step 2
B B SE
Previous bullying behavior .63* .62* .07
Moral rationalizations .04** .04+ .07
Moral rationalizations × Previous bullying behavior .06- .07 R2 .59* .60 -Δ R2 .004- * p < .001 ** p = 0.52 + p = 0.59 -p = 0.39
bullying behavior together explain 59.5% of the variance in the dependent variable future bullying behavior (F(2,73) = 53.58, p < .001). The interaction between those two explains another 0,4%, which in itself is not significant. These findings reject Hypothesis 1. Moral rationalizations do not seem to influence the influence of previous bullying behaviors on future bullying behaviors.
Hypothesis 2
TABLE 2
Results of Hierarchical Regression on future bullying behavior as a function of the number of moral rationalizations and previous bullying behavior
Variables
Step 1 Step 2
B B SE
Previous bullying behavior .67* .67* .05
Number of moral rationalizations -.05** -0.05+ .06
Number of moral rationalizations × Previous bullying behavior .06- .06 R2 .61* .62 -Δ R2 .006- * p < .001 ** p = 0.41 + p = 0.34 -p = 0.22
Table 2 shows that, in step 1, there was a main effect of previous bullying behavior (B = .67,
p < .001). When the interaction was entered in step 2, this main effect stayed significant (B =
dependent variable future bullying behavior (F(2,98) = 78.26, p < .001). The interaction between those two explains another 0,6%, which in itself is not significant. These findings reject Hypothesis 2. The number of moral rationalizations given does not seem to influence the influence of previous bullying behaviors on future bullying behaviors. There seems to be no moderating effect of the number of moral rationalizations.
DISCUSSION
Previous research showed that the phenomenon of reinterpreting immoral actions as moral ones, may be an explanation for the phenomenon of escalating bullying behavior. It was argued that the extent to which moral rationalizations overcompensate for the previous behavior, may be a factor adding to the escalation of workplace bullying. The first hypothesis stated that previous bullying behavior will positively influences future bullying behavior, but more so when moral rationalizations take place, than when moral rationalizations do not take place. The second hypothesis was that previous bullying behavior influences future bullying behavior and that this relation is stronger the more moral rationalizations are made.
While literature suggest that moral rationalizations are an explanation for the escalation of immoral behavior, this research shows that this is probably not true for bullying behavior. It shows, that while theory suggest effects of moral rationalizations, these effects may actually not exist in practice. This research and its experimental setting, could not confirm the existing theory. It could be that moral rationalizations explain escalation of other immoral behavior (so theory is true for these behaviors) or it could be that moral rationalizations serve no such a purpose at all (theory is false). It could be that they only serve as a means for an individual to see him- or herself as moral again, without this renewed self morality leading to escalation of immoral behavior. Future research should investigate the possibilities of moral rationalizations as an explanatory variable in the escalation process of other immoral behaviors. Also other explanations for the escalation of bullying behaviors should be researched. The influence of previous bullying behavior on future bullying behavior might be influenced by another variable. One such explanatory variable, commitment, is given by Marten et al. (2010). It could also be that individual characteristics (like meanness or anger) is another explanatory variable. It could be that previous bullying behavior influences future bullying behavior, because people that are mean just like to bully. So they will bully in the future as well as they bullied in the past. The research shows, as a practical implication, that the prevention of moral rationalizations of bullying behavior does not influence the decision of people to bully in the future. Managers therefore should probably not investigate time, effort and money in the prevention of moral rationalizations, because this does not lead to positive results.
report why bullying behaviors are justifiable. This may have influenced the results, in that these participants were excluded from the research. It may be that these persons did not answer in the requested way, not because of the manipulation, but because they differ on some personality trait (for example morality). It may then be that the decision of exclusion of these persons was on a false assumption and they actually should be in the dataset. This may have caused a shift in results compared to when they were included in the research. Since not all participants in the moral rationalizations condition gave moral rationalizations, this group was relatively small. This had especially effects on the group sizes of the number of moral rationalizations given. Whereas the group of zero moral rationalizations contained enough people, the group of, for example, three and four moral rationalizations contained not nearly enough people. Due to these small group sizes in the higher number of moral rationalizations groups, it is harder to get a significant effect. Future research into this subject should take this into account, by making the manipulation even more clear or by making the manipulation less intrusive. The former might be done by giving an example of a moral rationalization, the latter might be done by emphasizing normality of making moral rationalizations.
Bullying is a very sensitive subject. In this research participants were asked about their own bullying behaviors, which may be an even more delicate issue. Although anonymity was promised, participants were mostly acquaintances of the researcher which may have influenced their responses, in that they were biased to respond socially desirable. In this research a derivate of the NAQ-R was used. Even though the internal consistency of this scale was high, the use of these derived questions may have had consequences for the validity of the scale used.
is measured. Social desirability might play a role in the answers given by respondents, especially due to the sensitive nature of the subject of the research. No one likes to admit that he or she shows a lot of bullying behaviors, since bullying behaviors are not generally accepted in society. Therefore self reports are less reliable than actual observations of behavior. The use of ratings of people close to the participant may also be useful in getting more reliable results. This way common source bias is also limited. Future research should take this into account. The respondents were furthermore acquaintances of the researcher which may have led to a non representative sample. It might be that the sample, of mostly people of the East of the Netherlands, differs from the Dutch population. It might be that people in the East of the Netherlands are more down to earth than for example people in the West of the Netherlands. It might be that people who are less down to earth make more moral rationalizations, and that this in fact does have an influence on the influence of previous bullying behaviors on future bullying behaviors. Because respondents were acquaintances, social desirability was probably even more heightened. Future research should therefore use an independent, more anonymous sample.
All in all there is plenty of research left to be done in the field of escalation of immoral behaviors. Especially the reason behind escalation of bullying behaviors remains an important field to be researched.
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APPENDIX A
