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The Science of Incivility
An anonymous reader writes: Stress causes health issues — we've known this for years. But what's harder to figure out is what exactly qualifies as stress. It's easy to understand that working as an EMT or police officer can be stressful. But as medical researchers are beginning to learn, minor stress events common to all workplaces eventually add up — the cumulative stress from workplace incivility can have huge consequences for both health and performance. "A study published in 2012 that tracked women for 10 years concluded that stressful jobs increased the risk of a cardiovascular event by 38 percent. ... In [another] study, the experimenter belittled the peer group of the participants, who then performed 33 percent worse on anagram word puzzles and came up with 39 percent fewer creative ideas during a brainstorming task focused on how they might use a brick." Many people brush off efforts to be civil, saying they have too little time, or too much on their mind. But further studies have shown it takes very little — a smile here and there, or the occasional "thank you" — to have surprisingly strong effects on how people are perceived. The article argues that it's worth the effort, given the costs for failure.
And one might want to look at how the nastiness of Internet forums contributes to this as well. What happens when an entire society is constantly bombarded with the kind of crap we see every day?
So next time you decide to post some trolling bullcrap, remember that your behavior does, indeed, have a real effect on the other people involved.
Don't be a dick. It's not that hard and we're all better off.
Love sees no species.
The reasons for being people incivil seem rather petty. The most common reason I find myself getting short with people in working life is when they aren't listening or are otherwise ignoring reasonable questions and requests. Unfortunately a lot of people feel that if they blow someone off politely and then that person repeats the request or question in a more direct manner, that person has some kind of personality defect or "communication issue".
Typical conversation that is sure to end in problems:
I can't be the only one who has experienced this. Workplaces seem to be full of delicate snowflakes who either ignore any criticism of their work, and when they can't ignore it interpret it as 'incivility'. The article alludes to this though: it says there's often an inverse correlation between perceived politeness and competence. Perhaps people understand at some deeper level that people who are polite often don't get results, or don't tell it like it is.
Something that has been in the news a few times is how some places are better to live than others.
I regularly see people from the USA strongly disputing this. How can anywhere possibly be better to live than the US? You have your Constitution, various amendments and some of you have a lot of money.
If this is right, perhaps it is to do with manners. So often your countryfolk seem brusque at best and just plain rude a lot of the time. This is definitely not all of you and not everyone in Denmark and Bhutan are amazingly polite at all times. What is evident though is that rudeness can be taken as a badge of honour in some places. In others politeness is seen as the target.
Example: A couple of years ago, I was taking part in a discussion about the treatment of transgender people. My attitude is that if someone has gone through all "that process", it is just good manners to call them what they want to be. This was taken by some that I am somewhere in the LGBTIQ... spectrum. I'm not. I'm straight white Northern European but also a (usually) polite Brit.
It would be interesting to compare where is supposed to be good and bad places to live with their local norms of politeness.
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
"Words like 'please' and 'thank-you' are like the air in your bicycle tyres -- they cost nothing but make your journey through life much smoother"
I recall being singled out by the leader on a training course many years ago where we had to role play asking someone to do extra work when there was no direct management chain of command -- i.e. persuasion rather than authority. In a room of about 30 people I was the only one who said 'please' during the request and 'thank-you' at the end. I don't think the others were necessarily rude or lacking civility - but that, at the time, 'macho demanding' was all the rage when it came to management.
Honestly - how hard is it to be polite?