University of Calgary researchers have been looking at the concept of gaslighting as it applies to the workplace. And their work’s now been published in the Journal of Management. Tunde Ogunfowora and Josh Bourdage ran studies establishing what gaslighting can be beyond its more common romantic relationship connotation. The pair also demonstrated through the studies the damage gaslighting can cause in an employer-employee scenario. In their research, workplace gaslighting is understood as the “sustained attempts by a party to control another party in a power-imbalanced work relationship.” These acts have “express aim of inducing a sense of surreality and doubt by altering their perceptions of self, their work environment and their lived history at work.” The experience is understood as “a persistent psychological state characterized by a sense of surreality, self-doubt, uncertainty, unease, dread and confusion about their perceptions and interactions at work.” Ogunfowora said the percentage of people affected by workplace gaslighting is relatively small but not actually small. “If you’re finding only five per cent—as an example—of your sample is experiencing gaslighting, when you generalize that to billions of people around the world, that’s millions of people,” he said. “It’s a low-base-rate event, but even a low-base-rate event can affect millions of people across the planet.” Bourdage said workplace gaslighting “uniquely predicts outcomes for people in the workplace.” “People who are experiencing more gaslighting are more likely to turn over; they have lower job performance; they’re less committed to the organization; (they have) lower self-esteem,” he said. “There are some real negative consequences here that are explained by gaslighting specifically.” Among the studies, research subjects wrote narratives of encounters. Ogunfowora and Bourdage found a “fair bit of variability” in people’s use of the term gaslighting to describe their own experiences. They found the same even in people’s awareness of the concept of gaslighting. They also found employees with informal power were somewhat protected from gaslighting. “If you have, essentially, a social form of power—you know more people, you’re liked by other people and you have competence—that gives you a bit of a buffer,” Ogunfowora said. Publication in the Journal of Management is a first step. One of Ogunfowora’s grad students is currently looking at workplace gaslighting involving more of a power balance, such as between co-workers. And Bourdage said he now wants to take the research and figure out interventions to reduce the effects or likelihood of workplace gaslighting. The research can be found online here.
