Rude Behavior at Office May Have Negative Impact on Employees Performance

Rudeness at office is as contagious as a virus that vitiates not only the atmosphere but also has a negative impact on overall performance. When you encounter rude behavior from seniors at work, employees tend to retaliate in the same way says a study. "When you experience rudeness, it makes rudeness more noticeable. You will see more rudeness even if it is not there. We are generally tolerant of these behaviors but these are actually really harmful. Rudeness has an incredibly powerful negative effect on the workplace," said lead researcher Trevor Foulk, University of Florida.

The team tracked 90 graduate students practicing negotiation with classmates. Those who rated their initial negotiation partner as rude were more likely to be rated as rude by a subsequent partner, showing that they passed along the first partner's rudeness. The effect continued even when a week elapsed between the first and second negotiations.

Foulk and his co-authors also tested how quickly 47 undergraduate students could identify which words in a list were real and which were nonsense words. Before the exercise began, participants observed one of two staged interactions between an apologetic late-arriving participant and the study leader. When the leader was rude to the latecomer, the participants identified rude words on the list as real words significantly faster than participants who had observed the neutral interaction, said the results published in the Journal of Applied Psychology.

The impact of second-hand rudeness did not stop there. Just like those who experience rudeness in the first place, people who witness it were more likely to be rude to others. Foulk hopes the study will encourage employers to take incivility more seriously.



Source-IANS