From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Mobbing is:
- a type of antipredatory animal behaviour
- a term relating to human bullying behaviour
- a criminal offence in Scots law.
Mobbing as
antipredatory animal behaviour
A long-established technical use of the word mobbing is
in the study of animal
behaviour, especially in ornithology, where it refers to the antipredatory mobbing behaviour harassing something that
represents a threat to them.
From the Royal Society for Protection of Birds, RSPB, website [1]:
- Mobbing is a noisy, obvious form of behaviour that birds
engage in to defend themselves or their offspring from predators.
When a predator is discovered, the birds start to emit alarm calls
and fly at the predator, diverting its attention and harassing it.
Sometimes they make physical contact. Mobbing usually starts with
just one or two birds, but may attract a large number of birds,
often of many species. For example, a chorus of different alarm
calls coming from the same tree is often a good sign of a roosting
owl or a cat.
- Mobbing behaviour has been recorded in a wide range of
species, but it is particularly well developed in gulls and terns,
while crows are amongst the most frequent mobbers. In addition to
flying at the predator and emitting alarm calls, some birds, such
as fieldfares and gulls, add to the effectiveness by defaecating or
even vomiting on the predator with amazing accuracy...
From the book "Mobbing, Emotional Abuse in the American
Workplace, 2005, page 21"[2]:
"In the sixties, the eminent Austrian ethologist Konrad Lorenz used
the English term mobbing to describe the behavior that animals use
to scare away a stronger, preying enemy. A number of weaker
individuals crowd together and display attacking behavior, such as
geese scaring away a fox."
Mobbing as human bullying
behaviour
Mobbing in the context of human beings either means bullying of an individual by
a group in any context, or specifically any workplace bullying.
Though the English word mob
denotes a crowd, often in a destructive or hostile mood, German,
Polish, Italian and several other European languages have adopted
mobbing as a loanword to describe all forms of bullying
including that by single persons. The resultant German verb
mobben can also be used for physical attacks, calumny
against teachers on the
internet and intimidation by superiors, with an emphasis on the
victims' continuous fear rather than the perpetrators' will to
exclude them. The word may thus be a false friend in translation back into
English, where mobbing in its primary sense denotes a disorderly
gathering by a crowd and in workplace psychology narrowly refers to
"ganging up" by others to harass and intimidate an
individual.
Research into the phenomenon was pioneered in the 1980s by German-born Swedish scientist Heinz Leymann, who borrowed the term from
animal behaviour due to it describing perfectly how a group can
attack an individual based only on the negative covert
communications from the group".[3]
Mobbing is also found in school systems and this too was
discovered by Dr. Heinz Leymann. Although he preferred the term
bullying in the context of school children, some have come to
regard mobbing as a form of group bullying. As professor and
practising psychologist, Dr. Leymann also noted one of the
side-effects of Mobbing is Post
Traumatic Stress Disorder and is frequently misdiagnosed. After
making this discovery he successfully treated thousands of mobbing
victims at his clinic in Sweden.
In the book MOBBING: Emotional Abuse in the American
Workplace, the authors say that mobbing is typically found in
work environments that have poorly organized production and/or
working methods and incapable or inattentive management and that
mobbing victims are usually "exceptional individuals who
demonstrated intelligence, competence, creativity, integrity,
accomplishment and dedication".[4]
UK Anti-bully pioneers Andrea Adams and Tim Field used the expression workplace
bullying instead of what Leymann called "mobbing" although
workplace bullying nearly always involves mobbing in its other
meaning of group bullying.
Mobbing in
Scots law
Under the law of
Scotland, mobbing, also known as
mobbing and rioting, is the formation of a mob engaged in disorderly and
criminal behaviour. The crime occurs when a group combines to the
alarm of the public "for an illegal purpose, or in order to carry
out a legal purpose by illegal means, e.g. violence or
intimidation".[5] This
common purpose distinguishes it from a breach of
the peace.
References
- ^ Mobbing Royal Society for
Protection of Birds, UK, website
- ^ Davenport, Noa, Distler
Schwartz, Ruth, Pursell Elliott, Gail, Mobbing, Emotional Abuse in the American
Workplace, 3rd Edition 2005, Civil Society Publishing. Ames,
IA, Page 21
- ^ [1] Heinz Leyman's
personal website kept live since his death
- ^ Davenport, Noa, Distler
Schwartz, Ruth, Pursell Elliott, Gail, Mobbing, Emotional Abuse in the American
Workplace, 3rd Edition 2005, Civil Society Publishing. Ames,
IA,
- ^
Index of legal terms and
offences libelled - The National Archives of Scotland
See also
External
links
| Bullying |
|
| Types |
|
|
| Elements |
|
|
| Organisations |
|
|
| Campaigners |
|
|
| Other |
|
|
| Suicides |
|
|
Related
topics |
|
|
Wikis
Quiz
Facts
Map
Search
