There's this gal at work who is so rude.
She hates people's complicated orders, calls security all the time…
Once, I ordered a shake and she was all like, "You're havin' a coke."
Rude!
Greetings drones, peons and empty suits, this is Trace here for DNews, and your rudeness
is really making it hard to work here.
A new study in the Journal of Applied Psychology found workplace rudeness is a contagious behavior.
With only a single incident, rudeness can spread through a workplace like a virus.
Anyone can be a carrier and anyone can start the cycle.
Humans are social beings, and since we're used to living in social groups, emotions
and behaviors can be contagious; we've discussed this before.
In a publication from the Association for Psychological Science a preeminent expert
on emotional contagions Dr. Elaine Hatfield wrote, "If we feel irritated at a client,
the client is irritated at us or something else."
This rabbit-hole goes deep.
Doctors are affected by the emotions of their patients, laughing people cause others to
laugh…
it's almost in a "monkey-see monkey-do kind of way," Dr. Hatfield said.
Our emotions then bleed into our actions too.
When sitting in a sports bar you'll likely pick up the emotion of excited fans and unconsciously
mimic it!
Even if you couldn't care less.
Which is how a tiny bit of rudeness can go a long way.
Participants of the rudeness study were shown a video of people being rude, then asked to
assess a neutral email.
Those who'd experienced rudeness, projected rudeness onto their response.
Separately, in interviews, if people felt they'd been treated rudely, they were rated
as rude in future interviews with others.
And it doesn't stop there, the researchers found, “contagious rudeness” can last
a week growing in complexity and creating first and second order consequences.
Second-order consequences are supremely complicated mathematical equations, but here's a simple
example: David fells Goliath, and that has an affect on Goliath's army.
Cause and effect.
His army will then either retreat, or attack with a vengeance!
That decision starts another round of cause-and-effect or in other words, a second-order consequence.
To apply this to workplace rudeness, a person being rude causes someone else to be rude,
which then is the cause for another round of rudeness, and a ripple of rudeness spreads
throughout the workplace.
That single incident, "changes how you interpret the world," says the lead author of the study!
And that interpretation affects everything about the workplace.
According to a study in BioMed Research International 75 percent of people have been subjected to
workplace rudeness 1-2 times a year.
They found, workplace incivility can negatively affect sleep, job-satisfaction, well-being,
and turnover, but for some reason they also found "those who behave rudely in the workplace
experience stronger social support," reinforcing bad behavior and keeping the cycle going!
Luckily, there's a solution.
Awareness.
By being mindful of our interactions with others, and, calling out rudeness when it
happens, we can stop the rudeness cycle before it spreads, and though it might seem harmless,
it can actually be pretty harmful.
The rude stops HERE.
We should all endeavor to stop the cycle of rudeness, but if you haven't watched Amy and
I on Science Channel…
Rude!
Every weeknight at 9pm Science Channel shows the DNews Minute, an original story from science
news just for Science Channel.
I'm super excited about this, so if you like the show here online, PLZ watch it on tv too.
And tell your friends.
Do you have strategies on how to be mindful in the workplace?
I have a lamp that reminds me not to screw anything up.
Some people use sticky notes…
What do you do?