The Negative Effects Of Bullying

If bullying has negative effects on a person, then questions need to be answered about this growing phenomenon. Bullying is defined as “direct behaviours such as teasing, taunting, threatening, hitting and stealing that are initiated by one or more” (Banks, 1997, p.1). Bullying has been ever present, however, due to the extensive work of many scholars, such as Olweus (1993), the problem has been scrutinised and explored worldwide making it a concern on a global scale. Other scholars define bullying as a conscious, wilful, and intentionally hostile activity that is intended to harm (Coloroso, 2003). Pepler (2008) states that bullying is a repeated aggression in which a position of power exists between the person doing the bullying and the person

Generally if a person is in a positon of power or status they feel they need to protect them and often they become threatened by another person’s abilities in their job performance (Lutgen- Sandvik & McDermott, 2008). Another reason why people bully can be due to employee competition such as, sale targets being achieved. This can lead to verbal abuse as employees may try to discredit a fellow colleague by spreading rumours to sabotage their competitor (Lutgen- Sandvik & McDermott, 2008). Also, those working within the health and social care professions are working in extremely stressful environments, therefore competition between colleagues may lead to increasing demands on job performance. Similarly, Einarsen and Zapf (2003) highlight the reasons why people become victims or targets of bullying within the workplace environment. These individuals often have low self-confidence and self-worth. However, they are often very high achievers within their work and this can be threatening for a person who may be in a positon of hierarchy but lacks the skills to do so. In addition to this, race, age and ethnicity can all contribute to bullying due to discrimination. This occurs as often individuals are ignorance and cannot comprehend why someone may be different to them (Baron & Neuman, 1998, Harvey et al., 2006, Keashly, 1998, Zapf & Einarsen, 2003). Another reason people become targets of bullying is due to the recent down turn in the economy. The recent recession has shown that unemployment rates are 9.5% in the US (Cohren, 2010, p.2). Therefore the bully is aware that the target most likely will not be able to leave their job, in turn giving the bully economic power over the target (Cohen, 2010). This puts more stress on an individual as they may fear their employment situation is on the