Science Says Rude Behavior Can Ruin Your Day — But Only If You Let It

Unsplash/Hai Phung

Your roommate knowingly hogged the bathroom for an extra 30 minutes this morning. A stranger knocked square into you on your commute and didn’t even apologize. And now two of your colleagues are having a screamingly loud argument right across from your desk. Your day is effectively ruined, right?

According to a new study published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, maybe. Researchers from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington found that even when rude behavior isn’t directly aimed at us as individuals, we subconsciously pick up on the negativity surrounding us to the point where it can impact our moods for the worst for the rest of the day. In other words, toxic behavior really is contagious.

In the 10-day study, 81 professional and managerial employees enrolled in a business course were tasked with completing a survey both in the morning and in the evening documenting their workdays. The group also watched a video in the morning that they were told was intended for a critical thinking task. In reality, it was to see how peripheral rudeness would affect them in the moment and over time.

On half of the study days, the videos included a rude workplace interaction, which was as subtle as someone responding to a request without making eye contact or by using unfriendly language. The other half used neutral videos. And from the participants’ survey responses at the end of each day, it was clear that they internalized the rude moments, felt like their work was impacted by them and even reported noticing more episodes of rudeness throughout the rest of those days after watching the videos.

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The researchers believe that seeing rudeness like that sparks a natural instinct inside of each of us to perceive each subsequent episode as a threat to some degree. So when it first happens earlier in the day, we withdraw from others as a result of this reaction, and our work performance, goal achievement and overall disposition tend to suffer.

On the flip side of this situation, though, the more aware we become of the forces impacting how we feel, the better our chances become of balancing them out and taking control of our own emotions again. While our perception of rudeness may at first occur subconsciously, moving more mindfully through life can help us directly connect with this reaction and be better about doing something proactive about it.

So when others choose to behave like mean little schoolchildren, just know that you can choose to be above it all and just shake it off.