Abstract
Rude behaviors engulf societies across the world on a daily basis. Witnessing rudeness toward others increases negative affect and decreases performance in various tasks requiring behavioral and cognitive efforts, such as solving word puzzles or creative and flexible thinking. In this pilot study, we examined whether different levels of emotional empathy that may influence susceptibility to others’ distress, moderated the declined performance in several such tasks. The study was conducted online as a naturalistic setting for witnessing movie-clips portraying rudeness. We hypothesized that all participants will demonstrate decreased task performance following a rude compared to a neutral condition, but more so for those higher on emotional empathy. Results confirmed each of these hypotheses in one of two different cognitive tasks. Findings suggest that after witnessing rudeness, those higher on emotional empathy perform worse in cognitive tasks. While requiring replication in a larger sample size, empathic processing seems to be a potential moderator of the effect of rudeness on task performance.
Highlights
IntroductionIt seems such rude behaviors have engulfed all levels of society, on a daily basis, and across the entire globe (Pearson and Porath, 2005; Truss, 2005; Schilpzand et al, 2016; Cortina et al, 2017)
Have you ever gone to the movies and had that person a couple of seats from you start talking loudly on the phone? It seems such rude behaviors have engulfed all levels of society, on a daily basis, and across the entire globe (Pearson and Porath, 2005; Truss, 2005; Schilpzand et al, 2016; Cortina et al, 2017)
To control for the potential bias related to the gender distribution across conditions, we performed regression analyses with the Emotional Empathy, Manipulation, as well as Gender as between-subject factors
Summary
It seems such rude behaviors have engulfed all levels of society, on a daily basis, and across the entire globe (Pearson and Porath, 2005; Truss, 2005; Schilpzand et al, 2016; Cortina et al, 2017). Rudeness can decrease productivity and performance in various tasks (Schilpzand et al, 2016) leading employers to incur substantial direct and indirect costs (Porath, 2015). In this context, regardless of whether a performance of interest is cognitive or behavioral, it refers to how well a person completes that certain task (Campbell, 1990).
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