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Experienced Aggression and Target-Perpetrated Deviance: Is the Relationship Linear or Non-linear?

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Abstract

When workers are treated badly, they often respond by behaving badly. Research has found, for instance, that the extent to which workers experience various forms of workplace aggression is positively related to the extent to which they engage in deviant behavior. We extend this research, which has largely focused on linear effects, by examining the acceleration hypothesis. According to the acceleration hypothesis, experienced aggression’s relationship with target-perpetrated deviance is relatively weak at low levels of experienced aggression; however, the relationship becomes gradually stronger at increasing levels of experienced aggression. We tested the acceleration hypothesis within two studies. Study 1 (N = 726) used a sample of English-speaking workers and assessed experienced aggression with a measure of interpersonal conflict; Study 2 (N = 183) used a sample of Chinese workers and assessed experienced aggression with a measure of abusive supervision. Because of these differences between Studies 1 and 2, we were able to examine the generalizability of the acceleration hypothesis across diverse work settings and across different forms of experienced aggression. We found support for the acceleration hypothesis within both samples. As a result, our findings call into question the assumption that the relationship between experienced workplace aggression and target-perpetrated deviance is purely linear.

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Notes

  1. In light of the potential conceptual and empirical overlap among the five target-perpetrated deviance constructs included in Study 2, we conducted additional regression analysis similar to those used to test Hypotheses 1 and 2. For these analysis we created a composite target-perpetrated deviance score. To do this, we averaged the five target-perpetrated deviance constructs to produce an overall deviance score. The results (see Table 5) revealed a significant curvilinear relationship between abusive supervision and overall deviance. For brevity, we did not include the plot for the curvilinear effect here. The pattern, however, is similar to that found in Fig. 3. Interested readers may request this plot from the first author.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Wright State University, 3640 Colonel Glenn Highway, Dayton, OH, 45435-0001, USA

    Nathan A. Bowling

  2. Department of Management, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, 32611-7165, USA

    Mo Wang

  3. Department of Management, University of Alabama, 361 Stadium Drive, Box 870225, Tuscaloosa, AL, 35487, USA

    Russell A. Matthews

  4. Lingnan College, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China

    Junqi Shi

  5. School of Business, Shanghai, China

    Qiang Wang

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  1. Nathan A. Bowling
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Correspondence to Nathan A. Bowling.

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Appendix

Appendix

Table 5 The Non-Linear Relationship between Abusive Supervision and Total Deviance (Study 2)
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Bowling, N.A., Wang, M., Matthews, R.A. et al. Experienced Aggression and Target-Perpetrated Deviance: Is the Relationship Linear or Non-linear?. Occup Health Sci 4, 287–304 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41542-020-00060-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41542-020-00060-7

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