New research tells us what we already knew

[TheLastMohican]

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17984-its-official-your-bullying-boss-really-is-an-idiot.html

Fast and his colleague Serena Chen, who is at the University of California, Berkeley, asked 90 men and women who had jobs to complete online questionnaires about their aggressive tendencies and perceived competence. The most aggressive of the lot tended to have both high-power jobs and a chip on their shoulder, Fast and Chen found. To see if a bruised ego can actually cause aggression, the researchers manipulated people's sense of power and self-worth by asking them to write about occasions when they felt either empowered or impotent and then either competent or incompetent. Previous research has suggested that such essays cause a short-term bump or drop in feelings of power and capability, Fast says.

Next, Fast and Chen asked their volunteers to select a punishment to be given to university students for wrong answers in a hypothetical test of learning. Volunteers chose between horn sounds that ranged from 10 decibels to a deafening 130 decibels.
The volunteers who felt the most incompetent and empowered picked the loudest punishments

 

[gloomy-optimist]

Somehow, I'm not surprised :B

 

[Shai Gar]

I'm competent and I was definitely up to my job.

 

[enfp can be shy]

I don't believe in evaluation of competency. I think it's a simplistic approach to human abilities, that ends up corrupt.

I consider this a major flaw of the way people in administrative positions are forced to reason. They need to do such human resource management, but it's still wrong, and it doesn't truly work.

In general, I'd say I'm incompetent, and I'm not hiding it. If I ever feel "too competent" about what I do, I change the area.

 

[Billy]

I make myself useful, then i make them think they cant get along with out me.

 

[TheLastMohican]

I'm competent and I was definitely up to my job.

Right, the conclusion is not that all blowhards are incompetent, only that people are made more likely to bully by their incompetence (or their perceptions thereof).
Other studies have shown that incompetent people tend to be more confident of their abilities. The overall pattern here appears to be of nominally competent people being more aggressive to compensate when they are made to feel incompetent.

 

[Blind Bandit]

I do know that aggrestive people tend succeed because they are seemly "driven" and so on. its a good thing to many people.

Now that I think about it. Competence doesn't matter really I'm often incompetent on certain tasks but I don't go to great lengths over over compensate for it. I admit it. But some people who truly afraid of being incompetent or proven wrong ever go nuts and acts like asses because of it. They can't take the chance that they are wrong or myabe not the people they want to appear as.

 

[Shai Gar]

I'm competent and I was definitely up to my job.

Right, the conclusion is not that all blowhards are incompetent

 

[flux]

I didn't just pick my current signature off of TV. At my last job, people really wanted me to believe it, and it didn't take much.