Psychological Contract Violation or Basic Need Frustration? Psychological Mechanisms Behind the Effects of Workplace Bullying

Workplace bullying is a phenomenon that can have serious detrimental effects on health, work-related attitudes, and the behavior of target. Particularly, workplace exposure has been linked to lower level general well-being, job satisfaction, vigor, performance higher burnout, deviance, turnover intentions. However, psychological mechanisms behind these relations are still not well-understood. Drawing contract self-determination theory (SDT), we hypothesized perceptions violation frustration basic needs mediate relationship between attitudinal, behavioral outcomes. Self-reported data were collected among employees with different working backgrounds ( N = 1,257) via Amazon's Mechanical Turk in an online survey. Results showed feelings accounted for unique variation work intentions, pointing individual contributions both mechanisms. when controlled needs, no longer mediator performance. Helping deal effectively might buffer its negative reduce their experienced preserving and, eventually, prevent burnout. The present study first concurrently elucidate proposed context bullying.