Imagine spending the workday being humiliated by your boss. A manager mocks you in front of colleagues, takes credit for your work, unfairly blames you or repeatedly treats you with contempt. You leave the office angry, but there is an obvious problem: you cannot simply retaliate against the person who controls your performance review or career prospects. So what happens to that anger when there is nowhere safe to put it?
In 2018, researchers came up with an unusually creative way to investigate the question. Instead of allowing employees to confront their real supervisors, they gave participants a voodoo doll representing an abusive boss. Participants could symbolically retaliate against the doll, while researchers examined whether the act changed how they felt about the mistreatment.
