The virtual reality of emotions in the workplace: how emotions impact workplace cyberbullying

Workplace bullying has already been proven to be a major work stressor (Baillien et al., 2011), having detrimental effects on both individual and organization well-being (Samnani & Singh, 2012). In the recent years, there has been an increase in the use of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) at the workplace (Eurostat, June 2015). This change in the way people work inevitably broadens the scope of bullying behavior to the online context. In that respect, there is already evidence of the presence of cyberbullying in the workplace (e.g. Brack & Caltabiano, 2014; D'Cruz & Noronha, 2013; Farley e.a., 2015). In order to understand this phenomenon, we have developed an Emotion Reaction model of workplace cyberbullying (Vranjes, Baillien, De Witte, Vandebosch, Erreygers, 2015). In this study, the main hypotheses of this model are tested. Following the stressor-strain model (Fox, Spector & Miles, 2001; Jex & Beehr, 1991; Spector, 1998) and previous findings regarding the antecedents of workplace bullying, we hypothesize that stressors at work will give rise to workplace cyberbullying, both for victims and perpetrators (hypothesis 1). In addition, building on the Affective Events Theory (Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996), we hypothesize that the experience of negative emotions will mediate this relationship (hypothesis 2). That is, sadness and fear will mediate the stressor-cyberbullying relationship for the victims (hypothesis 2a) and anger will mediate this relationship for the perpetrators (hypothesis 2b). Furthermore, we expect that applying emotion regulation strategies will modify this relationship, both for victims and perpetrators (hypothesis 3). That is, application of emotion regulation strategies will negatively reduce the feeling of emotions as a consequence of workplace stressors (hypothesis 3a) and their subsequent expression in the form of cyberbullying (hypothesis 3b). To test the different hypotheses, we collected data from a large sample of mainly governmental institutions (N=1501). On this sample, a conditional process analysis was applied using the 2.0 version of the MODMED macro for SPSS. The preliminary findings support all hypotheses for the perpetrators. Regarding victims, all but hypothesis 3a are confirmed. This findings suggest that emotions in the workplace can play an important role in the emergence of cyberbullying at work. The contributions are twofold. This study expands the literature on workplace bullying by investigating the underexplored phenomenon of workplace cyberbullying. Furthermore, as there is a paucity of knowledge regarding the perpetrators of workplace bullying, this study explores both (a) processes leading to cyberbullying victimization and (b) cyberbullying perpetration.status: publishe