As originally understood in the Swedish research carried out since 1982, mobbing should be viewed as an exaggerated conflict. Mobbing evolves after a certain time from a conflict, sometimes very quickly, sometimes after weeks or months, leading to characteristics described in other files in this homepage. In social psychology, research on aggression and conflicts is voluminous. Nevertheless, the mobbing phenomenon was not detected by these efforts, the reason probably being that the social context in which it develops and is carried out, changes (see ãMobbing - its course over timeÒ). Another reason is probably that conflict researchers have investigated many things but have never focused on the outcomes in terms of the health of the persons involved in the conflict. Therefore, experiences from "conflict-solving" may not necessarily be helpful (Zapf et al., 1996).

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