The Psychology of Abusive Supervision

Abstract

Abusive supervision, defined as employees’ perceptions of leaders’ sustained hostile behaviors, has a wide range of negative outcomes for individuals and their workplaces. In understanding the psychology of abusive supervision, both employee perceptions and leader behaviors are relevant to employee reports of abuse, and various factors can lead to abusive supervision. Supervisors may enact hostile behaviors for a variety of reasons, including their past experiences, personality traits, employee characteristics and behaviors, and a failure of supervisors to self-regulate their behavior due to stressors in their environment. As a consequence of abusive supervision, employees often experience a number of negative effects, including adverse mental health outcomes. Additionally, due to the negative psychological effects of abusive supervision, employees are more likely to engage in destructive behaviors both at work and at home. However, these chains of events are not inevitable: There are various interventions that organizations and individuals can undertake to prevent the harmful outcomes of abusive supervision.