Harassment at work, also known as bullyingThis is a phenomenon that can occur at work. This happens when a stalker (or stalkers) repeatedly inflicts (usually psychological) violence on one or more victims.
The consequences for the person being harassed are devastating, because bullying is not just for them causes intense discomfort (Sadness, anxiety, insomnia, etc.), but also often destroys its reputation.
- If you want to know more about bullying and its characteristics, you can read this article: “Mobbing: psychological harassment at work”
Table of Contents
The profile of the job harasser according to Tim Field
Much has been said about what causes a person to become a bully. In the following lines you can find the personality profile of the professional bully taking into account the opinions of different researchers.
For starters, it should be noted that one of the first researchers to take an interest in this phenomenon was Tim Field, a British researcher who in 1996 described the job harasser as:
1. Liar
The bully is more likely to tell lies and change the truth accuse the victim of all evils. He is a person who is very comfortable lying and characterized by a personality in which he projects a false image of himself.
2. Charming
Being a liar, he easily deceives those around him. This is why it may seem charming at first glance, because he hides his real personality.
3. False appearance of security
Harassers at work can claim a certain security in themselves; But, they hide low self-esteem. This is why, in part, they carry out moral harassment, to compensate for the shortcomings in this regard.
4. Control and revenge
Harassers in the workplace usually control people and are vengeful as well. They tend to make life impossible for anyone who crosses their path.
5. Criticism
He usually criticizes others and attacks their weaknesses. These criticisms are never constructive, But harmful and aimed at causing discomfort.
6. Irritable
Always pretending to be a nice person, everything is facade. In fact, he is easily irritated, hiding a lot of anger inside.
7. Unable to self-criticize
While bullies often criticize others (always destructively), they are not self-critical. On the contrary, they project their failures onto others and use them as Turkish chefs.
8. Violent
These people are generally violent. Largely because they feel frustrated and hide a great rage in them.
More personality traits
Hirigoyen in 2001 is another of the first researchers to study this phenomenon and extract the profile of a professional bully. According to her, the professional bully is:
1. Pervert
The author calls him a perverse being, with narcissistic traits. He seeks to appropriate the image of the victim and to reflect his own in it.
2. Enjoy watching another suffer
The bully takes great pleasure in seeing the victim humiliated and enjoys the suffering of the other.
3. He has no remorse
He is cruel and does not care about the pain of the victim. He doesn’t feel guilty because he likes to act like that.
4. Low self-esteem
AT a large inferiority complex which is a consequence of their low self-esteem. Try to increase your own worth by attacking the victim.
5. Lack of empathy
Empathy is the ability to put yourself in other people’s shoes. The job harasser tends to do not put yourself in other people’s shoes.
6. Deny reality
Hirigoyen claims that the stalker he uses defense mechanisms as a denial of reality.
7. Project the victim’s mistakes
Another defense mechanism used by the bully is projection, as he projects his mistakes onto the victim.
8. Attractive
The bullies of work usually show up a personality with narcissistic roots, characterized by a superficial charm.
The pathological side of the stalker
According to Iñaki Piñuel i Zabala, the job harasser has a number of characteristics. They are as follows.
1. Repeated harassment
According to this researcher, the harasser in the workplace is a “serial killer” because of harassing behavior at work they are not isolated, but repeated. In addition, he usually harasses different people over the years,
2. Inferiority complex
The inferiority complex of harassment makes that he tries to increase his self-esteem at the expense of othersIn other words, trying to feel superior to them.
3. Pathological personality
It is relatively common for the bully to have a medical condition, such as a narcissistic disorder, dissocial disorder, psychopathy, or paranoid disorder.
compensate for the gaps
Psychiatrist José Luis González de Rivera describes the bully’s personality as follows:
1. Narcissistic traits
Work harassers exhibit narcissistic traits. In other words, they feel an excessive sense of greatness, think that they are special and try to have their status recognized.
You can delve into the characteristics of narcissistic people with this article: “Narcissistic Personality Disorder: What Are Narcissistic People Like?”
2. Paranoid traits
The author also believes that the harassment of workers exhibits paranoid features. In other words, these are people who they feel great mistrust of others and an intense, unfounded anticipation that other people want to harm them, are self-centered, and contemplative, cold, and demanding.
3. Envy
Stalkers are envious people and they have no problem taking away from others what they consider valuable.
4. Need for control
They have a great need for control, they don’t tolerate frustration and they are afraid of uncertainty
5. Mediocrity
He considers these people to be mediocre, in that they are empty and bad. They have a great desire for notoriety and to influence others.
And how does mobbing affect the victims?
Mobbing, like any other form of harassment, this causes serious problems for the victim both in their morale and in their performance at work. Harassment at work causes:
- Loss of confidence and low self-esteem (Both in the person and in the context of his work).
- Personality and behavior changes.
- Difficulty sleeping and nightmares.
- Anxiety disorders.
- Feelings of failure and guilt.
- Extreme worry and hypervigilance.
- Depression and sadness.
- Irritability, fatigue and difficulty concentrating.
- Excellent demotivation for work.
- Emotional silence and a feeling of disaffection with others.
Bibliographical references:
- Field, T. (1996): Bully in sight, Wessex Press, Wantage.
- Hirigoyen, M. (2001). Moral harassment at work: distinguishing the truth from the lie. Pujol i Valls, Núria.
- Piñuel, I. (2001): Mobbing: how to survive psychological harassment at work. Ed. Sal Terrae. Santander.
