Relationship Between Changes in Workplace Bullying Status and the Reporting of Personality Characteristics

To examine whether a shift in work-related bullying status, from being non-bullied to being bullied or vice versa, was associated with changes in reporting of personality characteristics.

Data on bullying and personality (neuroticism, extraversion, and sense of coherence) were collected in three waves approximately 2 years apart (N = 4947). Using a within-subjects design, personality change scores that followed altered bullying status were evaluated with one-sample t tests. Sensitivity analyses targeted depressive symptoms.

Shifts from non-bullied to frequently bullied were associated with increased neuroticism or decreased sense of coherence manageability scores. Shifts from bullied to non-bullied were associated with decreasing neuroticism and increasing extraversion scores, or increasing sense of coherence meaningfulness and comprehensibility scores. Excluding depressive cases had minor effects.

Bullying seems to some extent to affect personality scale scores, which thus seem sensitive to environmental and social circumstances.