Now research by the University of East Anglia (UEA) in the UK, and Complutense University of Madrid and Seville University in Spain, sheds light on the short-term consequences of workplace bullying on various indicators of sleep.

These include waking up too early (sleep severity), interference with daily life (sleep impact) and dissatisfaction with own sleep (sleep satisfaction).

Writing in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence, the researchers aimed to examine how bullying at work impacts insomnia and to test the mediating role of “anger rumination” — which involves repetitive, persistent thinking about distressing events, such as bullying.

They found the relationship between bullying and sleep increases over time, particularly in relation to sleep onset difficulties, staying asleep and early morning awakening, and is explained by work-related anger felt by the employee and this constant rumination.

They also found evidence of insomnia symptoms being “contagious” between employees and their partners, meaning that the sleep issues (both severity and impact) of one person can influence the other, highlighting how interconnected sleep health can be in relationships.

Lead UK author Professor Ana Sanz-Vergel, from UEA’s Norwich Business School, said: “Our results show that the effects of workplace bullying are time-dependent and accumulative, and go beyond the individual and the work setting, impacting the partner’s sleep as well.

“When individuals experience bullying at work, they may engage in rumination as a way to mentally process and attempt to cope with the negative events. However, this repeated thinking about distressing events can lead to the development of sleep problems such as difficulties in falling asleep, staying asleep, or sleep impact and satisfaction.

“Therefore, rumination can be seen as a maladaptive coping strategy to deal with workplace bullying, meaning that while this type of reflection may initially seem like a way to resolve issues or understand the situation, it can actually lead to more harm in the long run.”

Current knowledge is limited regarding the short-time impact of bullying processes on sleep and the association between workplace bullying and sleep. This is especially important considering that sleep problems are often immediate or short-term responses to stressful situations. There is also limited information about the effects of bullying beyond the individual experiencing it.

To help address this, the team conducted two studies. In the first, 147 employees were followed over five days, and in the second, 139 couples were followed for a period of two months. In both the participants, all from Spain, had to report on their exposure to workplace bullying, work-related anger rumination and different indicators of insomnia.

The first study showed bullying indirectly affected sleep severity through rumination and in the second,also sleep satisfaction and sleep impact, indicating that rumination is a key factor in how bullying affects various aspects of sleep quality.

“It is very interesting that insomnia is contagious,” said Prof Sanz Vergel. “Partners appear to influence each other’s sleep severity and sleep impact, which is not surprising, since one individual’s awakening could cause the other to wake up as well.

“If that’s the case, then both of them can feel that lack of sleep interferes with their daily life. Satisfaction with sleep, however, is less susceptible to this contagion, possibly because it involves more subjective elements.”

The authors recommend that interventions around workplace bullying should be designed both at the organizational and individual levels. From an organizational viewpoint, reducing stressors and fostering a healthy organizational culture become crucial.

At the individual level, interventions should be focused on developing skills to help individuals more effectively deal with stressors.

Prof Sanz Vergel added: “Training on how to disconnect from work has proven efficient and has been shown to minimize the effects of bullying. In addition, couple-oriented prevention programs in the context of the workplace are needed — this could help provide coping strategies to both members of the couple, which would in turn reduce rumination levels and insomnia.”

The research was supported by funding from the Spanish Department of Science and Innovation.

Fires on peatlands, which are carbon-rich, can almost double global fire-driven carbon emissions. Researchers found that despite accounting for only a quarter of the total UK land area that burns each year, dwarfed by moor and heathland, peatland fires have caused up to 90% of annual UK fire-driven carbon emissions since 2001 — with emissions spikes in particularly dry years.

Peat only burns when it’s hot and dry enough — conditions that are occurring more often with climate change. The peatlands of Saddleworth Moor in the Peak District, and Flow Country in northern Scotland, have both been affected by huge wildfires in recent years.

The researchers say land-managers can play an important role in helping to achieve Net Zero climate goals by keeping peatlands wet. This will reduce the likelihood of intense fires and their associated high carbon emissions.

Unlike heather moorland which takes up to twenty years to regrow after a fire, burnt peatland can take centuries to reaccumulate. The loss of this valuable carbon store makes the increasing wildfire frequency on peatlands a real cause for concern.

The researchers also calculated that carbon emissions from fires on UK peatland are likely to rise by at least 60% if the planet warms by 2^oC.

The findings, which are broadly relevant to peatlands in temperate climates, are published today in the journal Environmental Research Letters.

“We found that peatland fires are responsible for a disproportionately large amount of the carbon emissions caused by UK wildfires, which we project will increase even more with climate change,” said Dr Adam Pellegrini in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Plant Sciences, senior author of the study.

He added: “Peatland reaccumulates lost carbon so slowly as it recovers after a wildfire that this process is limited for climate change mitigation. We need to focus on preventing that peat from burning in the first place, by re-wetting peatlands.”

The researchers found that the UK’s ‘fire season’ — when fires occur on natural land — has lengthened dramatically since 2011, from between one and four months in the years 2011-2016 to between six and nine months in the years 2017-2021. The change is particularly marked in Scotland, where almost half of all UK fires occur.

Nine percent of the UK is covered by peatland, which in a healthy condition removes over three million tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere per year.

The researchers estimate 800,000 tonnes of carbon were emitted from fires on UK peatlands between 2001 and 2021. The 2018 Saddleworth Moor fire emitted 24,000 tonnes of carbon, and the 2019 Flow Country fire emitted 96,000 tonnes of carbon from burning peat.

To get their results, the researchers mapped all UK wildfires over a period of 20 years — assessing where they burn, how much carbon they emit, and how climate change is affecting fires. This involved combining data on fire locations, vegetation type and carbon content, soil moisture, and peat depth. Using UK Met Office data, the also team used simulated climate conditions to predict how wildfires in the UK will change in the future.

The study only considered land where wildfires have occurred in the past, and did not consider the future increases in burned area that are likely to occur with hotter, drier UK summers.

Rewetting peatlands to protecting the carbon they store will require land managers to be incentivised — the researchers say this won’t be easy, but the impact could be big.

“Buffering the UK’s peatlands against really hot, dry summers is a great way to reduce carbon emissions as part of our goal to reach net zero. Humans are capable of incredible things when we’re incentivised to do them,” said Pellegrini.

An average of 5,600 hectares of moor and heathland burns across the UK each year, compared to 2,500 hectares of peatland.

Two hypotheses have been proposed to explain how the brain perceives pain. One is the Estimate Hypothesis, where the brain estimates the intensity of pain based on predictions. The other is the Surprise Hypothesis, where the brain perceives pain as the difference between prediction and reality, otherwise known as the prediction error. In this study, the mechanism underlying the perception of pain were investigated. In the experiment, healthy participants received painful thermal stimuli and reported felt pain intensity while observing painful or non-painful visual stimuli in the virtual reality. The researchers found that the participants strongly perceived pain when the prediction error was large, demonstrating that the Surprise Hypothesis more adequately explains the pain perception mechanism in the brain. The study further confirmed that pain was amplified when unexpected events occurred.

People with chronic pain often experience vague pain-related fears and anxieties. Possibly, this uncertain gap between expectation and reality further increases the perceived intensity of pain. Therefore, reducing the gap between pain expectation and reality or “surprise” is important in reducing pain. A better understanding of pain perception would facilitate the development of new treatments that would enhance recovery from chronic pain and trauma.

This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI (grant numbers 19H05729 and 23KJ0261).