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.

Comments

The Internet Community

[KermodeBear]

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.