Not all workplace bullying perpetrators are alike: health, personality, and occupational profiles of perpetrator-only and target-perpetrator employees.

BACKGROUND

Research on workplace bullying (WB) has primarily focused on targets, whereas those who engage in bullying have often been treated as a homogeneous group. It remains unclear whether employees who only enact bullying (perpetrator-only) and those who both enact and experience bullying (target-perpetrator) represent distinct forms of perpetration-related involvement.

OBJECTIVE

The present study examined whether perpetrator-only and target-perpetrator groups could be differentiated based on their health-related, personality, and occupational profiles.

METHODS

Cross-sectional Wave 1 data from a three-wave longitudinal study were analyzed. A total of 2,359 employees were classified into four WB identity groups based on behavioral reports of exposure to and enactment of negative acts: perpetrator-only (n = 51), target-perpetrator (n = 149), target-only (n = 576), and not-involved (n = 1,583). Group comparisons and adjusted binary logistic regression models were used to examine differences across the four groups, with particular emphasis on the perpetrator-only and target-perpetrator groups.

RESULTS

The target-perpetrator group showed the most adverse overall descriptive profile. Psychological distress and chronic psychological conditions were disproportionately concentrated in this group. In adjusted models, psychological distress was robustly associated with greater odds of membership in the target-perpetrator group rather than the perpetrator-only group. Neuroticism showed a positive association in the conventional adjusted model, but the adjusted bootstrap estimate was not significant. No other health-related or personality variables independently differentiated the two groups.

CONCLUSION

This study addresses a major gap in WB research by demonstrating that employees involved in perpetration are heterogeneous and that perpetrator-only and target-perpetrator groups show meaningfully different profiles. Distress-related vulnerability was particularly concentrated among employees occupying the dual role. These findings support more theoretically informed and role-sensitive approaches to WB prevention, assessment, and intervention.