At the moment I will not give my opinion so as not to contaminate the discussion. I will just say that, as a scientific term, "mobbing" is understood in ornithology and ethology as a mechanism of protection and conservation of the species, whereas in psychology and social sciences in general it is understood as a form of violence exercised to exclude and / or destroy selected individuals. So far, in the specialized literature on workplace mobbing I have not known the opinion of any ornithologist or ethologist regarding the change in the purpose when applied to humans, but apparently the similarity of observable behaviors has fostered the belief that is the same phenomenon. I believe that their views may lead to an interesting analysis and of course enrich the understanding of the phenomenon, both among animals and among humans.
Hi Sergio, that is a very interesting discussion. The term "Mobbing" was "forged" in psychology and borrowed by ethologists. It is important to clarify some definitions first. The word "mobbing" came from the latim "mobile vulgus" (or vulgaris, not so sure about that) wich means (roughly) "inconsistent crowd". In English, the word "mob" also give the numerical connotation, since there is no crowd of one. Another important definition is the regarding the concept in ethology. Mobbing is the deliberately approach and harassment of a potential prey, towards a non-hunting potential predator. It is an anti-predator behavior in essence, but can also be used for other purposes. In ethology mobbing is also an act of "aggression". So, answering your question, I would say that the term "mobbing" is perhaps more appropriate to humans. And we should come up with a new term for non-human animals. In birds and non-human primates, for example, mobbing can be misleading in some cases. Portuguese and Spanish have better words for the human behavior in the workplace, for example.
Dear Filipe Cristovão Ribeiro da Cunha
I appreciate your comments very much. I decided to wait for some more opinions, but months passed and there was no success. I appreciate and respect your stance, but I differ from it and here I submit my arguments:
a) The vast majority of the texts I have found, both from the ornithological and the ethological perspectives, coincide in registering and understanding mobbing as a mechanism whose fundamental purpose is to protect and conserve individuals and the species. Therefore, I assume that this fact is, in general, hardly questionable (a simple search on the internet allows to locate a large number of specialized texts).
b) So far I have not found any argumentation / explanation in the specialized literature on workplace mobbing that strongly justifies the change of the purpose of this collective behavior in the scientific disciplines that have studied it (from being a defensive, protective and conservation mechanism in ornithology and ethology, to being a form of violence that seeks the exclusion and / or destruction of a particular individual in disciplines such as psychology, medicine, sociology, anthropology, etc.). If you know any, I'll thank you very much for telling me which one it is.
c) I must mention that, so far, among ornithologists and ethologists, the only author I have found who apparently came to think that the term was applicable to human beings is Konrad Lorenz, but he does not support that idea! In both On Agression (Chapter 5, pp. 76 / 92 in Spanish book - something that I learned recently thanks to a book that I am translating) and Civilized Man's Eight Deadly Sins (Chapter 8, pp. 83-84 / 48 in Spanish PDF) he only affirms. He does not develop, he does not argue, he does not explain this idea, he only poses it as a fact, in a few lines.
d) It seems to me that an essential part of the problem is due to the fact that the observable behavior in both animals and humans is similar: a group against an individual. Apparently it was very simple to take the term as is. But beyond that, if we observe and analyze each phenomenon more closely, there are multiple differences regarding how and why they occur, which is largely due to its purpose (see my essay Mobbing: ¿debemos seguir llamándolo así? Lorenz y Leymann revisitados, available in Spanish here in RG).
e) Therefore, particularly in science, using the same term to refer to two different phenomena is a conceptual error, or at least an important confusion that requires attention. We are building knowledge and I believe, respectfully, that we must be more careful.
Due to the above, I am very surprised that in all these years (almost 50 years, since physician Peter Paul Heinemann introduced the term in Sweden, in 1969) apparently no ornithologist or ethologist has commented on it. And that brings me to the simplest question: why?
In view of the above I came to RG, in order to discuss and find answers. I think it is necessary to find an appropriate name for the phenomenon of violence that occurs between human beings (which is not easy, since it is a complex phenomenon), and to leave unchanged the one destined for birds and other animals.
Thank you very much for your time, Filipe. And if you want to continue the discussion, what you want to contribute is welcome.
Greetings, good end of the year and better 2018. See you soon.
Sincerely,
Psych. Sergio Navarrete Vázquez
December 27th 2017
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