As the Law states, workplace harassment is any conduct that constitutes repeated aggression or harassment, exercised by the employer or by one or more workers, against another or other workers, by any means, and that results in detriment, mistreatment, or humiliation for the affected party or parties, or that threatens or harms their employment situation or opportunities.
How to detect a false case of mobbing
Cases have been detected of simulators or people with mental pathologies who assume they are suffering mobbing when in reality they do not meet the necessary requirements to allege such type of harassment. Training as a forensic psychologist is essential to detect these cases and prepare the relevant reports when judicially required.
Real example of a false case of workplace harassment
P.L., 42 years old, files a complaint against his workplace, superiors, and colleagues for workplace harassment. The alleged harassment began many years ago (approx. 10 years). An extensive file is attached detailing the previous complaints to the company. The form of harassment would be certain insinuations or facts that he claims allude to his homosexual condition, rumors behind his back in this regard, and obscene actions by colleagues.
With this whole situation, P.L. has been undergoing psychiatric treatment for anxiety-depression for several years. The psychiatric reports are connected to the alleged workplace harassment situation. Thus, it is judicially requested that a forensic psychology specialist proceed to assess P.L.’s mental state as an “injured party.” In this case, it is observed that P.L. does not present psychiatric or psychological history prior to the current episode.
P.L. comes from a large middle-class family. There are no family or personal antecedents related to the present complaint except paranoid schizophrenia in one of his siblings and a paternal uncle. The methodology used in this procedure was the following:
Methodology applied to a false case of mobbing
Exhaustive review of all information presented ex officio, individual evaluative interview, and administration of various psychodiagnostic tests. In this way, the results obtained throughout the expert procedure were the following:
P.L. is being subjectively “harassed” in the workplace, which leads him to undergo psychiatric and psychological treatment.
This would be an alleged victim who, currently, 10 years after the alleged harassment began, continues to work in the same workplace where the problem would have started. Observing the current experiences surrounding the outbreak of the conflict, its development, and final link (complaint), it was observed that the account is partially confused, poorly systematized, as is indeed stated in the report of the psychotherapist who treats him. This slight confusion is based on P.L. himself reporting that his suspicions, limited to the scope of alleged homosexuality, are not based on perceptions, therefore, there cannot be a sensory-perceptual disorder. The initial suspicions are based on “feeling” or “intuiting,” in any case, “looks” that are interpreted with sexual intentionality.
From a clinical point of view, the intentional, recurrent experience, not initially based on real perceptions, which then becomes complicated over time, places us squarely in the realm of the possible interpretation of stimuli that can be neutral and that, in the case of the existence of a primary delusion, is accompanied by great anguish, confusion due to the experiences of what is happening, lack of an initially well-systematized delusion, and progressive involvement of people and facts that basically give meaning to the persecutory experiences.
Therefore, in this specific case, the following conclusions were drawn:
P.L. presents a paranoid personality and has developed a primary delusion, a delusional disorder, on a premorbid personality, without a basis in alterations in sensory perception, but rather based on paranoid ideas of harm. Furthermore, he presents a lack of insight into his illness, having developed around these ideas a delusion that is irreducible to logical argumentation and has been maintained over the last ten years.
The type of problem referred could provoke, as a reaction to the environment in which he feels persecuted, some effectively disparaging, humiliating manifestations, tending to isolate him, which generates a feedback loop of his own experiences of persecution.
P.L., who has a family history of paranoid schizophrenia, is a person vulnerable to presenting the type of disorder he exhibits in the face of stress, and therefore should be treated psychiatrically.
It is suggested to take into account the following indicators to detect a false victim of harassment or false mobbing:
Characteristics of a false case of mobbing or workplace harassment
– The false victim of harassment will use paradoxical communication, deception, and manipulation.
– The false victim of harassment usually presents a mental disorder such as paranoia, a paranoid personality (Parés Soliva, 2005), delusional disorder, or an antisocial personality disorder.
– The false victim of harassment feels secure and convinced, is not concerned about the resolution of the conflict, will not seek agreement, and will report prematurely. In contrast, someone suffering true mobbing feels insecure, will try to reach agreements, and desires a quick resolution of the conflict (González Rodríguez and González Correales, 2004).
– The false victim of harassment usually has poor reports of their work history from colleagues and superiors.
– The false victim of harassment tries to conceal their poor capacity and personal resources for work.
– The false victim of harassment will attempt to report mobbing anonymously.
– The false victim of harassment uses projection (attributes their failures to others) and rationalization (seeks arguments to justify their disruptive behavior) as defense mechanisms.
The Master’s in Forensic Psychology provides you with the necessary tools and knowledge for preparing forensic reports in different jurisdictions (civil, criminal, labor, minors…) and presenting (ratifying) them before Courts and Tribunals, as in the cited case.