Citation

May RW, Fincham FD, Sanchez-Gonzalez MA, Firulescu L. Stress 2020; ePub(ePub): ePub.

Affiliation

Larkin Community Hospital, Division of Clinical & Translational Research, Miami, USA.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2020, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/10253890.2020.1729733

PMID

32063074

Abstract

Bullying of medical residents is associated with numerous negative psychological and physiological outcomes. As bullying within this demographic grows, there is increased interest in identifying novel protective factors. Accordingly, the current research investigated whether interpersonal forgiveness buffers the relationship between two forms of workplace bullying and indices of well-being. Medical residents (N = 134, 62% Males) completed measures assessing person and work-related bullying victimization, dispositional forgiveness, and depressive symptoms and underwent a series of cardiovascular assessments during which cardiovascular reactivity was induced by a 3-minute serial subtraction math task. It was hypothesized that the tendency to forgive would be negatively related to bullying victimization and that forgiveness would reduce the association of bullying with psychological distress (i.e. depressive symptoms), cognition errors (i.e. incorrect serial subtraction computations), and exaggerated cardiovascular reactivity and recovery.

FINDINGS show that forgiveness reduced the harmful relationship between the two forms of workplace bullying and depressive symptoms, serial subtraction errors, and cardiovascular reactivity and recovery for systolic blood pressure. Study results suggest that forgiveness may serve as an effective means for reducing the outcomes of bullying for medical residents. Implications for forgiveness interventions are discussed.Lay Summary: This research demonstrated that forgiveness reduced the harmful relationship between bullying victimization and negative outcomes (i.e. depressive symptoms, subtraction errors, and exaggerated cardiovascular reactivity and recovery for systolic blood pressure) in medical residents. This study suggests that forgiveness may serve as a protective factor and provide an effective means for reducing the negative association between workplace bullying and negative outcomes.

Language: en

Keywords

bullying; cardiovascular; cognition; depression; forgiveness; medical