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

TLDR

The study empirically tests how rudeness affects task performance and helpfulness. Across three experiments, the authors examined the mediation of rudeness on performance and found that disruption to cognitive processes fully mediated the effect. Rudeness—whether from an authority, a third party, or imagined—consistently reduced routine and creative task performance and lowered helpfulness.

Abstract

In three experimental studies, we provided 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, and imagined rudeness—converged to produce the same effects. Results from these studies showed that rudeness reduced performance on routine tasks as well as on 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 that relationship.