December 3, 2015

Rudeness Can Spread Like a Disease, Says Science

By Hannah Ongley
November 27, 2015

If you wake up feeling not quite yourself the morning after enjoying a nice turkey dinner with the nearest and dearest people who feel most comfortable berating and outright insulting you, it's (hopefully) not E. coli: It's probably just a crippling case of rudeness.

Applying the logic behind the spread of diseases to the science of rude behavior, Professors Trevor Foulk, Andrew Woolum, and Amir Erez at the University of Florida have made some interesting observations regarding douchey behavior. What they found is that even simply watching a rude exchange can induce rudeness in the witness, reports Scientific American. Those exposed to rude behavior have concepts associated with rudeness activated in their minds, making them not just more likely to read ambiguous but benign behaviors as rude, but also to respond in a negative or hostile way in their own interactions.

Previous studies have focused on unambiguously terrible behaviors like physical violence rather than low-key douchebaggery. But Foulk claims the latter behavior is no less susceptible to the contagion effect. If anything the domino effect is worse in these kinds of everyday situations, given that the chance of marking a snarky comment about your mom's modern twist on the Thanksgiving stuffing is (hopefully) less likely than violently lashing out someone.

Foulk and his colleagues tested the contagion theory through a range of different role play exercises with their participants. One involved watching a video of rude behavior before reading and responding to benign, neutral, and rude emails. Other required subjects to negotiate with a rude partner before making subsequent negotiation with a different partner. In both cases, the people who had just witnessed rude behavior play out were more likely to replicate that behavior in their subsequent interactions. Most surprisingly, these effects of negative contagion were evident up to an entire week after the initial exposure.

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