Social and personal determinants of workplace aggression: Evidence for the impact of perceived injustice and the Type A Behavior Pattern

Abstract

Four hundred fifty-two employed persons rated the frequency with which they had been the victims of a wide range of aggressive actions at work. In addition, they also rated the frequency with which they themselves had aggressed against others in their workplaces. Three hypotheses were investigated: (1) covert forms of aggression, in which aggressors seek to conceal their identity from target persons, are significantly more frequent in workplaces than overt forms of aggression; (2) the greater the perceived injustice reported by employees, the greater their tendency to engage in workplace aggression; and (3) the higher individuals' scores on a measure of the Type A Behavior Pattern, the greater their reported frequency of engaging in various forms of workplace aggression, Results offered support for all three hypotheses. In addition, several demographic variables (participants' age and gender; the physical location of their workplaces) were also found to play a role in the occurrence of workplace aggression. Together, these findings were interpreted as underscoring the importance of establishing close conceptual links between research on workplace aggression andbasic research on human aggression.