Whether you’ve been in the workforce for a few years or a few decades, odds are you’ve tolerated a toxic boss; 71% of U.S. workers have had at least one such supervisor in their career, a 2023 Harris Poll showed. As with other ruinous relationships, toxic bosses are difficult to escape and any number of reasons, such as being unable to afford quitting your job, may keep you putting up with them. New research, however, offers an underlying reason for some employees’ willingness to work under an abusive leader.

Do you view your toxic boss as successful? This perspective makes you more likely to label their abuse as “tough love,” according to a study published last year in the journal Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. Researchers at the Ohio State University Fisher College of Business also found that employees tended to think a high-performing boss could boost their own career—reproachful behavior notwithstanding.

“If someone is a good performer, we almost have this halo effect, or you assume that they have all these other positive traits particularly associated with leadership, which goes directly in the face of an abusive leader,” lead study author Robert Lount, PhD, an Ohio State professor of management and human resources, tells Fortune. “We were trying to reconcile these issues and how that might help understand when abusive behavior might not necessarily be encoded as abusive.”

In one part of the study, Lount and his colleagues surveyed nearly 600 full-time U.S. workers spanning an array of industries and positions, who had worked for their current supervisor for an average of five years. They used a pair of established scales—a 15-point measure of abusive supervision and a four-point measure of leader performance—that asked participants to evaluate statements such as “My boss ridicules me” and “My boss is superior to other bosses that I have worked with before.” Two weeks later, respondents further evaluated supervisors’ abusive or tough-love behaviors, reacting to language such as “I think my boss abuses team members” and “I would describe my boss as stern but caring.” Another two weeks after that, participants answered questions about their career expectations and hostility toward superiors.

While the workers polled projected their supervisors’ perceived success onto their own career ambitions, there’s no evidence those things are actually linked, Lount stresses.

“Just because sometimes people look at [abusive bosses] as tough-love bosses doesn’t suggest that being an abuser is going to be good or beneficial,” Lount says. “There are all sorts of other leader behaviors that are far more developmental and far more valuable than working under an abusive boss, which has been found time and time again to have really negative psychological consequences for employees.”

Such impudent workplace behavior spells trouble for employers, according to Donald Sull, DBA, a professor of the practice at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He also directs the MIT Sloan Management Review’s Culture 500, a database created in partnership with Glassdoor that ranks corporations on cultural values including integrity and respect. 

“People often think that high performance is an excuse for abusive behavior—they confuse disrespectful and bullying behavior for maintaining high standards,” Sull tells Fortune via email. “But it’s possible to set the bar for performance high without berating or bullying people. And to the extent these toxic managerial behaviors drive high performers out of the organization, the abusive behavior undermines performance.”

Sull adds, “The sharpest test of whether a corporate culture truly respects employees is how senior leaders deal with managers who hit their numbers but abuse their teams.”

It’s not you, it’s your boss—especially if they’re a psychopath

A leader’s top priority should be understanding and developing the people they manage—that’s what Bill Becker, PhD, a professor of management at the Virginia Tech Pamplin College of Business, teaches his MBA students. Yet not enough people in charge are equipped with the emotional and psychological skills to be in high-pressure positions and shepherd subordinates, he tells Fortune.

“Most bosses don’t come to work and say, ‘How can I be the biggest jerk today?’” Becker says, noting that when overwhelm is the probable cause of your supervisor’s unpleasant behavior, there’s opportunity for both of you to grow. “If you can be the bigger person and manage it and actually make things better, they’ll recognize that oftentimes [and] you’ll stand out.”

Anyone can succeed under a great boss, Becker says, but if you can find a way to flourish under a challenging one, you’ll be ahead of the curve. Even so, a fine line separates a thorny supervisor from a psychologically dangerous one.

“If you have a difficult boss, it’s more about them and it’s not about you,” Becker says. “Don’t see their behavior as a reflection of you and your worth and your value.”

It’s also well within the realm of possibility that your abusive boss could be a psychopath. No, that doesn’t mean they’re a serial killer; psychopathy is a common spectrum disorder that, in its most severe form, manifests in 1 in 100 people, according to the nonprofit PsychopathyIs. Adult psychopathic behaviors include frequent bragging, skilful lying, superficial charm, and trouble maintaining relationships.

In a 2021 Fortune commentary, Simon Croom, PhD, a professor of supply chain management at the University of San Diego Knauss School of Business, discussed the prevalence of corporate psychopathy: “My colleagues and I found in our research that 12% of corporate senior leadership displays a range of psychopathic traits, which means psychopathy is up to 12 times more common among senior management than among the general population.” 

Unrecognized psychopathy in senior management, Croom wrote, could have disastrous financial and ethical consequences for businesses, employees, and customers—not to mention society at large.

“It’s just their modus operandi to manipulate people and abuse people, and do whatever it takes to gain power over them or get them to do what they think needs to be done,” Becker tells Fortune. If that sounds like your boss, “there’s just no changing a psychopath, there’s no managing a psychopath. All you can do is insulate yourself as best as possible, and that might be the time when you really want to look to at least move out from underneath that leadership.”

How do I recognize workplace abuse?

Abuse takes many forms and can morph across employment environments. It’s also subjective.

“People bandy about terms like ‘toxic’ and ‘abusive’ to cover a lot of behavior that they don’t like,” Sull says. “What one person might view as abusive, another might see as candid.”

Sull’s own research, based on more than a million Glassdoor reviews, suggests egregious behavior such as outright harassment is rare. Nevertheless, a supervisor’s abuse doesn’t have to be overt to evoke negative reactions in employees, he says.

“Managers who are disrespectful, noninclusive, or undermine others qualify as toxic even if they don’t exhibit the extremes of abusive behavior,” Sull says.

The antibullying advocacy group End Workplace Abuse breaks up such mistreatment into verbal abuse, sabotage, and mobbing. The following are just a few of the organization’s examples of each:

• Verbal abuse
  • Blaming or guilt
  • Discounting and minimizing
  • Excessively harsh criticism or reprimands
  • Jumping to conclusions about what you think
  • Unwillingness to engage in a dialogue
• Sabotage
  • Blocking requests for training, leave, or promotion
  • Exclusion from meetings, social events, and conversations you should be involved with
  • Micromanaging
  • Vague unsatisfactory work performance reviews or accusations without factual backup
• Mobbing
  • An escalation of bullying that happens when you report abusive behavior, only to discover higher-ups are prioritizing avoiding liability over your well-being
  • Your employer doesn’t remove the bully or change your work environment

What can I do if I have a toxic boss?

If you have the means to do so, leaving your job is the best way to free yourself from an abusive supervisor, according to Ben Tepper, PhD, coauthor of the study and professor of management and human resources at Ohio State. If you can’t, notify HR as soon as possible so they can begin to ameliorate the situation on their end while you get to work on coping strategies, he tells Fortune. This includes documenting negative interactions with your boss. In addition, behave like a formidable opponent, so to speak.

“People who engage in abusive boss behavior, they pick their targets very strategically. They don’t do it to everybody,” Tepper says. “They go after people who come across as weak and vulnerable, and so it’s in the interest of the individual who has been targeted to present themselves as a bad target. And you do that by being good at your job, by being confident, by activating your social network—surrounding yourself with other individuals who are competent and capable.”

Tepper also recommends reading a pair of books by Robert Sutton, PhD, a professor emeritus of management science and engineering at Stanford University: The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t and its successor, The Asshole Survival Guide: How to Deal with People Who Treat You Like Dirt. 

Becker advises journaling about abusive incidents with your boss and returning to your entries with a fresh perspective. Once the heat of the moment has passed, you’ll be able to more objectively assess whether you and your supervisor have butted heads here and there or recognize a clear pattern of toxic behavior.

When in doubt, “I’m a big fan of therapy,” Becker says.

A version of this story originally published on Fortune.com on July 12, 2024.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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X Corp., the social media platform owned by Trump adviser Elon Musk, is challenging the constitutionality of a Minnesota ban on using deepfakes to influence elections and harm candidates, saying it violates First Amendment speech protections.

The company's federal lawsuit filed this week also contends that the 2023 state law is preempted by a 1996 federal statute that shields social media from being held responsible for material posted on their platforms.

“While the law's reference to banning ‘deep fakes’ might sound benign, in reality it would criminalize innocuous, election-related speech, including humor, and make social-media platforms criminally liable for censoring such speech," the company said in a statement. “Instead of defending democracy, this law would erode it.”

Minnesota's law imposes criminal penalties — including jail time — for disseminating a deepfake video, image or audio if a person knows it's fake, or acts with reckless disregard to its authenticity, either within 90 days before a party nominating convention, or after the start of early voting in a primary or general election.

It says the intent must be to injure a candidate or influence an election result. And it defines deepfakes as material so realistic that a reasonable person would believe it's real, and generated by artificial intelligence or other technical means.

“Elon Musk funneled hundreds of millions of dollars into the 2024 presidential election and tried to buy a Wisconsin Supreme Court seat," said the law's author, Democratic state Sen. Erin Maye Quade.

"Of course he is upset that Minnesota law prevents him from spreading deepfakes that meant to harm candidates and influence elections. Minnesota’s law is clear and precise, while this lawsuit is petty, misguided and a waste of the Attorney General Office’s time and resources,” her statement said.

Democratic Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison's office, which is legally obligated to defend the constitutionality of state laws in court, said in a statement that it's “reviewing the lawsuit and will respond in the appropriate time and manner.”

The Minnesota law was already the subject of a constitutional challenge by Christopher Kohls, a content creator, and GOP state Rep. Mary Franson, who likes to post AI-generated parodies of politicians. That case is on hold while they appeal to overturn a judge's denial of their request to suspend the law.

The attorney general's office argues in that case that deepfakes are a real and growing threat to free elections and democratic institutions, that the law is a legitimate and constitutional response to the problem, and that it contains important limitations on its scope that protect satire and parody.

X, formerly known as Twitter, said it's the only social media platform challenging the Minnesota law, and that it has also challenged other laws it considers infringements of free speech, such as a 2024 California political deepfakes law that a judge has blocked.

X said in its statement that its “Community Notes” feature allows users to flag content they consider problematic, and that it's been adopted by Facebook, YouTube and TikTok. The company's lawsuit said its “Authenticity Policy” and “Grok AI” tool provide additional safeguards.

Alan Rozenshtein, a University of Minnesota law professor and expert on technology law, said in an interview Friday that it's important to separate the free-speech issues from whatever one thinks about the controversial Musk.

“I'm almost positive that this will be struck down,” Rozenshtein said.

There's no exception under the First Amendment for false or misleading political speech, even lies, he said. And the potential for criminal penalties gives social media companies like X and Facebook “an incentive to take down anything that might be a deepfake. ... You're going to censor a massive amount to comply with this law.”

Deepfakes aren't good, but it would be nice to get evidence that they're causing actual problems before imposing such limits on free speech, the professor said. And while it's easy to focus on the supply of misinformation, the large demand for it is the problem.

“People want to be fooled, and it's very bad for our democracy, but it’s not something I think can be solved with a deepfakes ban," he said.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© AP Photo/Alex Brandon

• Stock markets rose for the fourth consecutive day as tech companies saw gains and investors interpreted President Donald Trump's Friday comments on tariff negotiations.

Stock markets rose slightly Friday on the back of gains in tech stocks like Alphabet and Nvidia as well as conflicting messages from President Donald Trump on tariffs. The S&P 500 was up 0.75%, the Dow Jones was flat, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq jumped 1.25%.

Alphabet, the parent company of the search giant Google, beat analysts’ predictions for its first quarter and grew its topline year-over-year in Q1 by 12% to $90.2 billion. From market close Thursday to Friday afternoon, its stock rose 1.5%. AI chip manufacturer Nvidia saw an even bigger jump of 4.3% after an executive said Thursday that the tech giant hasn’t seen a pullback in demand for its chips.

Meanwhile, in a wide-ranging interview with Time published on Friday, Trump promised potential relief to investors when he said he’s made “200 deals” on tariffs. He declined to say which countries and promised that initial negotiations would end in three to four weeks.

Conversely, in what could be a bearish signal for global markets, he stated that he would consider it “total victory” if tariffs on foreign imports were anywhere between 20% and 50% in one year.

The small Friday surge in the stock market follows three days of positive jumps as markets look to regain their losses after Trump’s “Liberation Day.” On April 2, the president unveiled a base 10% tax on all countries' exports and targeted China through a crescendo of tariffs, which culminated in a 145% tax on Chinese exports. Trump’s tariff plan prompted markets to tank amid investor fears of an all-out trade war.

Xi Jinping, the president of China, retaliated against the U.S. with reciprocal tariffs, and Trump has since broadcast that taxes against the People’s Republic will “come down substantially.” In his interview with Time, Trump said that he’s been in touch with Jinping. Chinese officials, however, have repeatedly denied that they’ve been in negotiations with the Trump administration and have recently exempted some U.S. imports from its own retaliatory tariffs.

Markets have also closely tracked Trump’s comments on the Federal Reserve, the U.S. central bank. The president has repeatedly criticized Jerome Powell, the Chair of the Fed, for not cutting interest rates quickly enough. Trump’s criticisms reached a boiling point when he suggested last week that he had considered firing Powell, undercutting the Fed’s longstanding independence from the executive branch. The 47th president has since walked back his rhetoric and said he had “no intention” of firing the Fed chair.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© TIMOTHY A. CLARY—AFP/Getty Images

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