Attachment, Competitiveness, and Workplace Aggression: A Model of Aggressive Intent and Examination of the Competitive Orientation Scale

Abstract

Workplace aggression consists of harmful actions between co-workers, supervisors, and subordinates. In this series of studies, we draw from attachment theory and competitive personality to develop and test a mediated model of workplace aggression that incorporates relational working models (i.e., attachment style) with competitive orientation to predict aggressive intentions. Our results find that an avoidant attachment style caused by dissociative relational models promotes a preference for aggression through hypercompetitiveness, while other relational models fail to predict aggressive intentions. In addition, we test and incorporate a shortened scale of competitive orientation for greater accessibility in competitiveness studies.