The “evil pleasure”: Abusive supervision and coworker observers’ malicious reactions to victims

Abusive supervision does not take place in vacuum, but in a social environment: the workplace. It involves not only abusive supervisors and abused subordinates but also third parties, such as coworkers of the abused subordinates. Studies of abusive supervision, however, tend to focus primarily on the direct and destructive impact of abusive supervision on abused subordinates and ignore the broader workplace context. Drawing on theory of rivalry and literature on social emotions, we theorize that abusive supervision tends to activate coworker observers’ feelings of “schadenfreude” and their incivility to the abused victims, especially for the observers who perceive a high level of rivalry toward the victims. Observers’ malicious reactions to the victims are likely to be curbed in groups with a high level of cooperative goals. Data from one experimental study and one time-lagged field study largely support our theoretical propositions.