One morning, a highly competent professional walked into work with a knot in her stomach. Nothing overt had happened the previous day. No shouting. No public humiliation. No threatening email.
Just a few familiar moments.
Her suggestions had once again been ignored until someone else repeated them. A sarcastic smile followed her presentation. A passing remark questioned whether she was “really ready” for greater responsibility. The room laughed. She smiled too. What else could she do?
By the end of the day, she was no longer questioning her colleagues.
She was questioning herself.
The tragedy of harassment is that it often succeeds long before it becomes visible. Before reputations are damaged, confidence is quietly eroded. Before careers are affected, identities begin to fracture. The deepest wounds are rarely inflicted in a single dramatic event. They are created through countless psychological paper cuts that eventually make a person doubt their own worth.
Harassment is often mistaken for aggression. It is not.
Aggression can erupt in a moment of anger. Harassment is something else entirely. It is repetitive, deliberate, and psychological. It is less about hurting someone once and more about teaching someone where they “belong.” Its true currency is not violence but control.
That is why psychologists increasingly view harassment not as an expression of temperament but as an expression of power.
The uncomfortable truth is this: people rarely harass because they are emotionally strong. More often, harassment is the behavioural language of insecurity wearing the costume of authority.
Harassment is often mistaken for aggression. It is not.
Aggression can erupt in a moment of anger. Harassment is something else entirely. It is repetitive, deliberate, and psychological. It is less about hurting someone once and more about teaching someone where they “belong.” Its true currency is not violence but control.
That is why psychologists increasingly view harassment not as an expression of temperament but as an expression of power.
The uncomfortable truth is this: people rarely harass because they are emotionally strong. More often, harassment is the behavioural language of insecurity wearing the costume of authority.
One of the most consistent findings across decades of psychological research is that harassment flourishes where there are significant power differentials. Whether in schools, workplaces, academic institutions, families, or online communities, the harasser typically occupies or attempts to create a position from which another person becomes psychologically smaller.
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine argues that harassment is fundamentally intertwined with the misuse of power. Hierarchical environments, where authority is concentrated and accountability is weak, consistently show higher rates of harassment. The greater the imbalance of power, the greater the psychological harm experienced by those who are targeted.
This immediately shifts the conversation. Harassment is not merely interpersonal conflict. It is an attempt to regulate another person’s psychological space.
Social psychologist David McClelland described one of the fundamental human motives as the need for power. In psychologically healthy individuals, power is expressed through leadership, influence, mentoring, or responsibility.
In unhealthy forms, power becomes domination. The objective is no longer “to lead.” The objective becomes “to make someone feel smaller.”
French and Raven’s classic theory of social power reminds us that individuals can exercise power through authority, rewards, punishments, expertise, or control over information. Harassment often represents the abusive side of these power mechanisms, especially coercive power, where fear becomes the preferred method of influence.
Perhaps the greatest irony is that many chronic harassers do not possess exceptionally high self-esteem. They possess fragile self-esteem.
Research in personality psychology has repeatedly distinguished secure confidence from narcissistic vulnerability. Secure individuals rarely require constant demonstrations of superiority. Fragile egos, however, depend upon comparison.
Someone else’s competence becomes threatening. Someone else’s popularity becomes offensive. Someone else’s independence becomes intolerable.
Harassment therefore functions as an unconscious strategy to restore psychological equilibrium.
“If I cannot become taller, I shall reduce your height.”
The behaviour is cruel. The underlying psychology is surprisingly fragile.
Carl Jung suggested that what remains unintegrated within ourselves often appears intolerable when encountered in others.
Modern psychology describes a similar process through projection.
The colleague accused of arrogance may simply possess the confidence the harasser secretly wishes they had.
The outspoken employee may activate the harasser’s own fear of inadequacy. The creative thinker may expose intellectual insecurity. Instead of integrating these uncomfortable emotions, the psyche externalises them. The internal conflict becomes an interpersonal conflict. The victim becomes the screen upon which unresolved anxieties are projected.
Harassment becomes psychologically easier once empathy begins to disappear.
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Albert Bandura described this process as moral disengagement—the cognitive mechanisms through which people justify behaviours they would otherwise consider unethical.
Victims become “overly sensitive.” Complaints become “jokes.” Cruelty becomes “feedback.” Exclusion becomes “team culture.” Language gradually sanitises behaviour. Once empathy is replaced by justification, harassment no longer feels immoral to the perpetrator. It feels deserved.
One of the least discussed psychological aspects of harassment is not the harasser.
It is everyone else. Classic research by John Darley and Bibb Latané demonstrated the bystander effect: responsibility diffuses when many people witness wrongdoing. But organisational psychology adds another layer. People calculate consequences.
Will speaking up affect my promotion?
Will I become the next target?
Will anyone believe me?
Silence, therefore, is often not agreement. It is self-preservation. Unfortunately, every silence also communicates something to the harasser:
“No one will stop you.”
Physical injuries announce themselves. Psychological injuries often do not. Repeated harassment activates the body’s stress systems, increasing vigilance, anxiety, emotional exhaustion, sleep disturbances, impaired concentration, and, in some individuals, symptoms resembling trauma.
Martin Seligman’s work on learned helplessness offers another explanation. When repeated attempts to stop mistreatment fail, individuals may gradually stop trying—not because they lack courage, but because the mind begins to believe that nothing it does will change the outcome.
This is why harassment can continue for years. The victim is not passive. The nervous system has simply adapted to survive.
Research reviewed by the American Psychological Association similarly concludes that workplace harassment is not merely an interpersonal inconvenience but an occupational health issue with significant psychological consequences. Organisational climate, leadership behaviour, and perceived accountability strongly influence whether harassment flourishes or diminishes.
Many organisations invest heavily in compliance training. Far fewer invest in culture. Policies punish behaviour. Cultures shape behaviour before punishment becomes necessary.
Psychological safety; the belief that one can speak without fear of humiliation or retaliation, has emerged as one of the strongest protective factors against harassment. Where questioning authority is welcomed, harassment struggles to survive. Where fear governs communication, harassment becomes remarkably adaptive.
Perhaps the greatest misconception about harassment is that it reveals strength. Psychologically, it reveals dependence. A genuinely secure mind does not need smaller people in order to feel larger. It does not require humiliation to establish significance. It does not manufacture fear to maintain influence. Harassment is not confidence expressed loudly. It is insecurity seeking witnesses.
The healthiest societies, classrooms, families, and organisations are not those without differences in power. They are those in which power is exercised with accountability, empathy, and respect because the opposite of harassment is not punishment. The opposite of harassment is psychological maturity.
By – Dr Srabani Basu, Associate Professor, Department of Literature and Languages, SRM University AP
