In an organisational psychology class, we were learning about workplace bullying. The lecturer showed us a compilation of clips from The Office (US) where Michael Scott bullied Toby Flenderson. This was demonstrated as an example of workplace bullying. In this particular instance, there was domineering and submissive bullying dynamic. A domineering bully wants to exert power and force someone to submit to them. A submissive victim on the other hand is someone who avoids conflict and is therefore likely to fall victim to a domineering bully.
In The Office, Michael is a domineering workplace bully and Toby is his submissive victim. Michael wants to exert his power and control over someone and Toby is submissive enough to become a target. Toby doesn’t provoke Michael, he’s simply conflict-avoidant and this is enough of a trigger for Michael to bully him.
Now, the domineering and submissive dynamic wasn’t the only type of bullying. There’s also reactive bullies and provocative victims. Reactive bullies don’t particularly target anyone but rather they react to people breaking norms in a group. They then react in a bullying manner to restore normative behaviour. Provocative victims on the other hand are people who act in counter-normative or provocative ways – some would say they’re being “annoying”. Provocative victims often fall victim to reactive bullies because their behaviour acts as a trigger for the bully.
Coincidentally in The Office, we see an example of these two types as well. Jim is a reactive bully and Dwight is his provocative victim. Dwight acts in strange, provocative, and norm-breaking ways, which provokes Jim to bully him to put him in his place. Jim constantly pranks Dwight or ridicules him in order to punish him for his behaviour. This type of bullying can be harder to detect and harder to sympathise with – after all, some could say that Dwight deserves it. Nonetheless, it is still a type of bullying in the workplace.
It’s interesting to see how The Office does such a great job in portraying textbook workplace dynamics. Seeing as psychological research on workplace bullying is rather recent, with some studies that I used as the basis of this post being published in 2004, it’s likely that the writers weren’t aware of the psychological research behind the dynamics but instead were using their everyday experiences as a basis for them.