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?
