So is rudeness a problem in the workplace?
Well, according to Park and Martinez, it seems to be on the rise. Lack of interpersonal face-to-face relationships and interactions seems to be making people ruder, or incivil, as they call it.
So, a bit like social media threads that spiral out of control really quickly?
Precisely!
And how did they research this — by being rude to people in the office?
No, this was a meta analysis of 76 different studies into incivility including 35,344 workers.
And what did they find?
Lots of things, but some of the interesting findings are that if a person experiences incivility, or even just observes it, they are more likely to engage in incivl behaviour!
Uh oh! You can see the negative spiral…
Yes, they did also note factors that are more likely to instigate incivility which include some obvious personality traits such as disagreeableness but also, interestingly, negative correlations to psychological wellbeing and physical wellbeing.
That suggests that people who don’t feel good with themselves take it out on others!
To a degree. But what is also interesting is what breaks the cycle.
