Why witnessing mistreatment at work can cause emotional harm even if you are not directly involved

By Jason Colquitt, Professor of Management, Mendoza College of Business, University of Notre Dame

On your way out of the office, you notice a manager berating an employee. You assume the worker made some sort of mistake, but the manager’s behavior seems unprofessional.

Later, as you are preparing dinner, is the scene still weighing on you, or is it out of sight, out of mind? If you think you would still be bothered, you are not alone.

It turns out that simply observing mistreatment at work can have a surprisingly strong impact on people, even for those not directly involved. That’s according to new research led by Edwyna Hill, co-authored by Rachel Burgess, Manuela Priesemuth, Jefferson McClain, and me, published in the “Journal of Applied Psychology.”

Using a method called meta-analy