Rudeness and Incivility Psychology Essay Human Factors
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Course
Human Factors
Institution
The University Of Aberdeen (Aberd)
This essay explores the impact of rudeness / incivility on individual and teamwork performance and what factors can mitigate this. It was created for a Human Factors course for fourth year psychology
Discuss the potential impact of rudeness / incivility on individual and teamwork
performance and consider how this impact could be mitigated.
Introduction
Rudeness and incivility are growing all too common in the workplace. More and more
researchers are becoming interested in this important field of psychology. This is potentially
due to the fact rude and uncivil events can cause individuals psychological distress and has an
effect on team performance. It can even have a negative influence concerning loss of profit in
a business. This has resulted in increased interest from businesses and researchers combined
to attempt to find different ways to mitigate the impact of rude and uncivil events in the
workplace. An uncivil incident in the work environment could be described as a low-intensity
behaviour, such as a demeaning comment, that has ambiguous intent to harm the victim and
is in violation of workplace or societal norms (Lim, Cortina & Magley, 2008). A rude
behaviour could be defined as a workplace behaviour that is insensitive or disrespectful
(McCarthy, 2016). For the purposes of this paper, incivility and rudeness will be used
interchangeably. This essay will firstly define some theory then investigate the impact of
incivility on individuals themselves and then how it impacts teamwork performance. Then, it
will deal with how the impact of these events can be lessened. A section will be dedicated to
the application of these findings, Finally, a conclusion regarding the impact of uncivil acts
and their potential solutions will be reached.
Theoretical Framework
To understand the impact of rudeness and incivility, firstly, understanding some
theory behind it is necessary. There are different factors that can influence the impact of
incivility like personality. Dhanani, Main and Pueschel (2020) explore the effect Big Five
personality traits have on incivility outcomes. Personality of targets can be described as the
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, victim traits (Dhanani et al., 2020). They explore antecedents in the misunderstanding and
reaction when exposed to incivility. The researchers suggest that employees who score highly
in the neuroticism section are more likely to misunderstand and read an ambiguous situation
more negatively (Dhanani et al., 2020). They also highlighted that those who scored low in
agreeableness are more likely to be targeted with a rude or uncivil act or comment. The
researchers also suggested that situational predictors can influence incivility. They highlight
that a high stress work environment can result in an uncivil act as a result (Dhanani et al.,
2020). Another theory is discrimination as incivility. Researchers Welbourne, Gangadharan,
Sariol (2015) investigated different ethnic groups in the workplace and how they react to
uncivil acts. They recruited 262 employees as participants and had Hispanic, White and non-
Hispanic (other) ethnicities. They measured self-reports of burn out, job satisfaction and
experienced incivility. They found that Hispanic females experienced less incivility than non-
Hispanic (Black, Asian and others) female workers (Welbourne et al., 2015). They also
concluded that Hispanic workers experienced more resilience when faced with uncivil acts
(Welbourne et al., 2015). This highlights the fact that personality, ethnicity, and workplace
environment can all have an effect on the impact of rudeness and incivility. There are a few
gaps in the literature, most of the current papers look at incivility across industries such as
healthcare but there is a gap in the literature concerning the retail, hospitality, and hotel
industries. It may be worthwhile to investigate these different industries as they may produce
different results. However, the literature that is published all seems to generally agree about
the impacts and the potential solutions. Individual impact will now be discussed.
Impact of Rudeness and Incivility on Individual Performance
If someone experiences a rude or uncivil incident, it is most likely it will affect them
in some way or another. In recent years, researchers have started to investigate, more and
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