Does Rudeness Really Matter?: The Effects of Rudeness on Task Performance and Helpfulness

Abstract

In three experimental studies, we provide an empirical test of how rudeness affects task performance and helpfulness. Different forms of rudeness (rudeness instigated by a direct authority figure, rudeness delivered by a third-party offender, and imagining a situation in which a perpetrator was rude) converged to produce the same effects. Results from these studies showed that rudeness reduced performance on routine tasks as well as creative tasks. We also found that rude behavior decreased helpfulness. We examined the processes that mediated the rudeness-performance relationship and found evidence that disruption to cognitive processes fully mediated the rudeness-performance relationship.