New Study: Rudeness Impairs Performance and Willingness to Help Co-Workers

The University of Florida just put out a press release about an article published by Amir  Erez and Christine Porath in the Academy of Management Journal in October.  Erez reports that "We found that even when the rude behavior is pretty mild, it impairs a person’s cognitive functioning and has spillover effects in how they treat their co-workers.”  The press release goes on to say:

'[T}he students who were treated rudely, or even imagined they had been, solved fewer anagrams, recalled less information and found fewer and less creative uses for a brick. They might suggest it be “used as a door stop,” for example, instead of “selling it on e-Bay” or “hanging it from a wall in the museum and calling it abstract art.”

The study also tested participants’ willingness to help by having the experimenter drop some books or pencils. Whether the rude behavior was directed at them by the experimenter or delivered by a third party assumingly unrelated to the study or the experimenter, they picked up fewer books and pencils, if they chipped in to help at all.'

This controlled experiment compliments qualitative and quantitative research, which provide an ever growing pile of evidence that assholes aren't just annoying, they undermine workplace effectiveness. The list of items to add to the Total Cost of Assholes seems to grow each day.

Comments

[Wally Bock]

Rudeness, of course, isn't the only thing that impairs performance. Just about anything that people react to by feeling less valued or that they react to by feeling threatened will do that. I agree with what the study found, but I'm skeptical of "studies" done on limited numbers of students doing artificial tasks and then extrapolating findings to the workplace.