Bystander Helping Behavior in Response to Workplace Bullying

Hellemans, Catherine [ULB] Dal Cason, Davide [UCL] Casini, Annalisa [UCL]

This research examines the role of colleagues in workplace bullying. While colleagues could often intervene to support the victim or stop the situation, passive behaviors and non-intervention are more frequent. The bystander effect highlighted by Latané and Darley (1970) has been studied in the context of school bullying and sexual harassment, but only rarely in the context of workplace bullying. We tested the impact of the belief in a just world for others, self-efficacy, perceived severity, and causal attribution as determinants of three types of bystander helping behaviors. We used a vignette describing a vertically descending workplace bullying case in an online questionnaire survey, completed by 194 workers. The results showed that low selfefficacy was associated with non-intervention, perceived severity mainly determined public helping behaviors, and both internal and external causal attributions contributed to explain both emotional and public support for the harassed colleague. The results highlight the importance of training to increase awareness and recognition of bullying phenomena among colleagues.