The Victim Precipitation Theory states that people may exhibit certain characteristics or behaviors that may act as vulnerability factors for either being picked as a target or for provoking others, hence contributing to escalate an underlying conflict and then increase the risk of victimization from others. In line with this, previous research indicates that certain target personality characteristics may be risk factors for exposure to workplace bullying, particularly so trait-anxiety and trait-anger. The evidence is, however, mainly cross-sectional, and longitudinal studies are needed. In addition, previous research studied exposure to bullying behaviors rather than the development of workplace bullying. The aim of the present study was to investigate the role of personality in the development of workplace bullying, by looking at latent transitions across latent states of bullying exposure as a function of target trait-anxiety and target trait-anger. Data were collected in 2015-2016 among Romanian workers, at eight different measurement points over 6 months. Altogether, 300 respondents were included. Data were analyzed using a three-step latent Markov model. In the first step the statistical optimal number of latent classes or states were estimated, being "Not bullied," "Limited negative encounters," "Occasionally bullied," and "Severely bullied". In the second step, we modeled a latent class Markov model. In the third step, we added personality traits to the Markov chain and found that employees with trait-anxiety and trait-anger reported higher levels of bullying exposure at baseline, as hypothesized. Moreover, these personality traits were related to the subsequent development of bullying over time. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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目标人格对职场欺凌发展的影响.

受害者沉淀理论指出，人们可能会表现出某些特征或行为，这些特征或行为可能会成为被选为目标或挑衅他人的脆弱因素，从而导致潜在冲突升级，进而增加受害他人的风险。与此一致，先前的研究表明，某些目标人格特征可能是暴露于工作场所欺凌的风险因素，尤其是特质焦虑和特质愤怒。然而，证据主要是横断面的，需要纵向研究。此外，之前的研究研究了欺凌行为的暴露，而不是工作场所欺凌的发展。本研究的目的是调查人格在职场欺凌发展中的作用，通过观察欺凌暴露的潜在状态之间的潜在转变，作为目标特质焦虑和目标特质愤怒的函数。2015-2016 年在罗马尼亚工人中收集了 6 个月内八个不同测量点的数据。总共包括 300 名受访者。使用三步潜在马尔可夫模型分析数据。在第一步中，估计潜在类别或状态的统计最佳数量，即“未受欺负”、“有限的负面遭遇”、“偶尔受欺负”和“严重受欺负”。在第二步中，我们对潜在类马尔可夫模型进行建模。在第三步中，我们将人格特质添加到马尔可夫链中，发现具有特质焦虑和特质愤怒的员工在基线时报告了更高水平的欺凌暴露，正如假设的那样。而且，随着时间的推移，这些个性特征与欺凌的后续发展有关。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2021 APA，保留所有权利）。