Oct 08, 2014 11:53 AM EDT By J Baulkman, UniversityHerald Reporter

Employees who are verbally abused by their supervisors are more likely to behave poorly at work, according to a recent study.

Researchers from San Francisco State University found that abused employees "act out" by doing everything from taking a too-long lunch break to sealing. Even if the abuse is meant to be motivational -- like when a football coach berates his team or a drill sergeant shames her cadets -- the abused employees are still more likely to engage in counter-productive work behaviors.

The fallout from this abuse can affect an entire company if it leads to lost work time or theft.

"We didn't just focus on how these workers felt or whether they started to dislike their jobs more," said Kevin Eschleman, assistant professor of psychology at SF State. "We looked at consequences that actually affect the bottom line of an organization."

For the study, researchers collected data from 268 employees full-time selected from an online survey of more than 80,000 people. The employees held a variety of jobs and had an average of nine years at their positions. In the first wave of the survey, workers were asked how often their supervisors "put them down" or ridiculed them. The researchers also asked the employees whether they thought the abuse happened because the supervisors were trying to harm them or hurt their feelings, or because the supervisors meant the abuse as motivational or a way to "light a fire" under people.

A month later, Eschleman and his colleagues asked the employees whether they had participated in any counterproductive behaviors at work, like making fun of a supervisor or slacking off on the job. The researchers were somewhat surprised that even motivational abuse caused the same behavioral backlash in employees. Workers may see any kind of abuse as "a violation of how they expect to be treated," Eschleman said.

Their findings suggest abuse will not lead to a more productive workplace.

They found that employees aim these counterproductive behaviors both at the supervisors and at the organization as a whole.

"Supervisors are often the face of a company, and so their behavior really kind of implies the company's values," Eschleman explained. "So it's not just that they would target the person who's treating them poorly or abusively, but that they're going to target the organization that's allowing that to happen."

Although abused employees were more likely to engage in such behaviors, researchers said it is not clear why the workers act out.

The findings were published in the journal Work & Stress. 

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