Mobbing

Mobbing, in the context of human beings, means bullying of an individual by a group, in any context, such as a family, peer group, school, workplace, neighborhood, community, or online.

When it occurs as emotional abuse in the workplace, such as "ganging up" by co-workers, subordinates or superiors, to force someone out of the workplace through rumor, innuendo, intimidation, humiliation, discrediting, and isolation, it is also referred to as malicious, nonsexual, nonracial / racial, general harassment.

The earliest known usage of formal mobbing techniques began in East Germany in the 1950s and 1960s. East German secret police (Stasi) used mobbing extensively, in the specific formally-named Zersetzung, which was strengthened substantially by the Honecker era in 1971.

Konrad Lorenz, in his book entitled On Aggression (1966), first described mobbing among birds and animals, attributing it to instincts rooted in the Darwinian struggle to survive (see animal mobbing behavior). In his view, humans are subject to similar innate impulses but capable of bringing them under rational control.

In the 1970s, the Swedish physician Peter-Paul Heinemann^[] applied Lorenz's conceptualization to the collective aggression of children against a targeted child.

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