Workplace bullying and personality change: evidence from a 4-year Swiss panel study

Abstract

Bullying is amongst the most extreme and unpleasant working experiences one can face, with well-documented negative consequences for well-being. However, theoretical claims that the harmful consequences of workplace bullying extend beyond short-term effects to changes in victims’ personality traits have only been tentatively explored. Using longitudinal panel data collected by the Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research Lives project (N = 2,469), we investigated the relationship between perceived workplace bullying and changes in the Big Five personality traits, over 4-years. We hypothesised that experiences of bullying would be related to decreased agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion, and openness, and increased neuroticism. Latent change score analyses revealed that changes in, and the total amount, of workplace bullying, were related to increased neuroticism and decreased extraversion, with changes in bullying status also related to decreased conscientiousness. This study provides the strongest evidence to-date that experiencing workplace bullying can manifest in undesirable personality trait changes.

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Item Type:	Article
Authors/Creators:	Farley, S. https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0782-4750 Niven, K. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6675-5532 Hughes, D.J. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3807-3809 Booth, T. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4235-1381
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information:	© 2025 The Authors. Except as otherwise noted, this author-accepted version of a journal article published in Work & Stress is made available via the University of Sheffield Research Publications and Copyright Policy under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ © 2025 The Author(s). This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.
Keywords:	Workplace bullying; personality change; neuroticism; extraversion; TESSERA framework
Dates:	Submitted: 9 May 2024 Accepted: 3 July 2025 Published (online): 29 August 2025 Published: 29 August 2025
Institution:	The University of Sheffield
Academic Units:	The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Management School (Sheffield)
Depositing User:	Symplectic Sheffield
Date Deposited:	29 Aug 2025 13:31
Last Modified:	29 Aug 2025 13:31
Status:	Published online
Publisher:	Informa UK Limited
Refereed:	Yes
Identification Number:	10.1080/02678373.2025.2551489
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID):	oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:230941

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Workplace bullying and personality change: evidence from a 4-year Swiss panel study

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