An estimated 34 percent of employees have experienced mistreatment at work and 44 percent have observed it happening to others, according to a recent study. Hundreds of studies have documented the consequences of experiencing mistreatment. However, until recently, the consequences of witnessing it have escaped attention.

New research from the University of Notre Dame shows that observers of workplace mistreatment react as strongly as those who experience it, and some observers show a surprising amount of schadenfreude, or pleasure at another’s pain.

“Third-Party Perceptions of Mistreatment: A Meta-Analysis and Integrative Model of Reactions to Perpetrators and Victims,” published in January in the Journal of Applied Psychology, shows that observers of mistreatment respond in both functional ways — e.g., anger at the perpetrator, empathy for the victim — and dysfunctional ways such as blaming the victim or experiencing schadenfreude from the event.

Co-authors of the study include Jason Colquitt, the Franklin D. Schurz Professor of Management, and Jefferson McClain, a doctoral student in Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business, along with lead author Edwyna Hill from the University of South Carolina, Rachel Burgess from Arizona State University and Manuela Priesemuth from Villanova University.

Observers have increasingly become the focus of research on mistreatment in organizations. Much of that work is grounded in deonance theory, which argues that people view appropriate treatment as a duty owed to one another and that observers should react to the perpetrators of mistreatment with anger. Deonance theory is less explicit as to how observers should react to the victims, though empirical work has pointed to empathy as a potential reaction.

The study provides the largest examination of the observer mistreatment literature and shows counterintuitive findings.

The intuitive assumption is that witnessing the mistreatment of others will only have minor consequences for third parties. After all, these people were not involved and it may appear to be none of their business. Any emotions or thoughts they have might dissipate once they’re away from the situation, making it “out of sight, out of mind.”

The team looked at the relationships between third-party perceptions of mistreatment and reactions to both perpetrators and victims.

“Surprisingly, our results showed that observing mistreatment has consequences that are about as strong as experiencing it,” said Colquitt, who specializes in justice, trust, work meaning, personality and identity. “Despite not being directly involved, observing mistreatment was impactful for third parties.”

Third parties witnessed the event, heard about it or read about it. According to the team, these people are worthy of attention because there could be multiple observers. In fact, third parties may significantly outnumber first and second parties in many circumstances.

The team examined 158 studies published in 105 journal articles on observing mistreatment at work. They explored different forms of mistreatment, including abusive supervision, injustice, incivility and sexual harassment. And they included a number of different consequences, including anger toward the perpetrator, empathy toward the victim, schadenfreude from the event, evaluations of the perpetrator and victim and behaviors toward the perpetrator and victim.

“Some consequences of observing mistreatment seem functional or beneficial in the workplace,” Colquitt explained. “For example, observing mistreatment triggers anger toward the perpetrator along with negative evaluations of and behaviors toward that perpetrator. It also triggers empathy toward the victim. As a whole, such reactions should serve to discourage mistreatment and help employees recover from it.”

“Unfortunately,” he continued, “other consequences of observing mistreatment seem dysfunctional or detrimental in the workplace, and here is where our findings deviate from deonance theory. We find that observing mistreatment triggers schadenfreude from the event, alongside negative evaluations of the victim and negative behaviors toward them — a cognitive and behavioral ‘blame the victim’ response. Those sorts of reactions can harm the emotional tenor of the workplace while discouraging the reporting of mistreatment.”

The findings have important implications for practitioners. Most human resource programs address the perpetrator and victim of mistreatment through an investigation that may result in punishment for the perpetrator and support for the victim.

However, such systems give little attention to observers, despite the fact that these third parties often outnumber the main players.

“This is why observer reactions should be considered and managed,” Colquitt said. “And we need to foster an ‘emotional culture’ in the workplace where empathy is more encouraged.”

Contact: Jason Colquitt, jason.colquitt@nd.edu