Hidden Brain - How Rude!

Episode Date: April 12, 2022

It’s not your imagination: rudeness appears to be on the rise. Witnessing rude behavior — whether it's coming from angry customers berating a store clerk or airline passengers getting into a fistfight — can have long-lasting effects on our minds. But behavioral scientist Christine Porath says there are ways to shield ourselves from the toxic effects of incivility. If you like this show, please check out our new podcast, My Unsung Hero! And if you'd like to support our work, you can do so at support.hiddenbrain.org.

This is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedantan. Parents, at least of a certain era, used to tell their kids, if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all. Such advice might seem quaint today. No matter where we look, it can feel as if we're living in a time of mounting incivility. Smart phones and social media amplify this feeling. It used to be that when two people got into an argument in a parking lot or on an airplane, only a few people heard it. But today, thousands of people witnessed rude interactions among people they'll never

meet. It's become the stuff of viral videos and memes. We're not talking to you. We're not talking to you. Why don't you mind your own business? We're not talking to you. We're not talking to you. We're not talking to you.

We're not talking to you. We're not talking to you. We're not talking to you. We're not talking to you. We're not easy to do and that rudeness has a long-lasting malevolent power. We're flooded with emotions and that's when this fight or flight gear kicks in. You know, one way that I think about this is like the storm inside your brain. The surprising effects of instability and how to protect yourself from its toxic influence. This week on Hidden Brain.

Rudeness and instability seem to be showing up everywhere these days, on airplanes, in supermarket aisles, in restaurants. What effect does this tide of nastiness have on all of us? According to the old adage, sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. But is this really true? At Georgetown University, behavioral scientist Christine Porath studies the effects of incivility on our communities, our careers, even our capacity for creativity. Christine Porath, welcome to Hidden Brain.

Thanks for having me. I want to start by having you tell me about a moment in your own life, Christine, where you saw the effects of incivility first hand. You were still a student in college when you received word that your dad was in the hospital. Can you describe the scene for me when you got there? Well, I remember vividly walking up to the hospital room and being in the doorway and seeing him lying there

in the hospital bed with electrodes strapped to his bare chest. And it was shocking for me to see him like that because he was an otherwise, you know, very strong, vivacious, athletic guy. And I had never envisioned something like that happening to him. Why was he in the hospital? Well, he had had a heart attack and this stemmed from working for a very toxic boss. He had actually worked for two toxic bosses for over the course of a decade. And it was really coming to a breaking point.

And it wasn't until I bought a decade later or more that he shared some of the particulars and really spoke openly about that. And the truth was, it was painful for him to relive that stuff. Christine's father was a salesman. His boss would insult staff members in meetings and blame them for things beyond their control. He even belittled clients. During a visit to a client store,

my dad heard his boss tell the owner, I see you're carrying on your father's tradition. The store looked like sh** then, During a visit to a client store, my dad heard his boss tell the owner, I see you're carrying on your father's tradition. The store looked like sh** then and it looks like sh** in your hands. The idea of people being put on the spot was something in a meeting, you know, you don't know what you're doing here.

Screaming certainly took place, which I would say like crosses the line of what I tend to study. So some years later you were working at your first job. It was at a sports academy in Florida. An incident took place early one morning before work at the company Jim. Can you paint me a picture of what happened, Christine? My friend who ran the Performance Institute, he would open it up early for us to work out before the gym was open to athletes. And, you know, he would have music playing in the background, kind of energetic, workout

music. And we'd all be doing our thing on the treadmills and somewhere lifting weights. And ironically, the person whose name was on the sports agency showed up. And oftentimes, he was out of town traveling the world. So this was unexpected. And he just started screaming at the performance manager, saying, you know that I love Barry White. Why isn't my music playing?

So my friend went in the back and changed the music to a very white. And then we all kind of put our heads down and people's minds were swirling a little bit in terms of what they had just witnessed and why that happened and what did that mean for them during the day. But the biggest thing I think was just the way that it affected people's emotions and moods and they weren't themselves. They didn't bring the same energy to the athletes or the customers or the people that they were dealing with that day.

I want to talk about one of the story that reveals what it feels like to be directly on the receiving end of Incivility. Some years after you left the Sports Academy in Florida, you became an academic, you were a junior professor at a school, and you had an encounter with a senior professor at a holiday party. Can you tell me what happened? We were talking just kind of over in the corner, and he said that he thought my book had a stupid thing title. And, you know, I didn't really know what to say in response to that. I just kind of took it, but I really just wanted to escape the situation. And I certainly didn't ask for his opinion about the title. So it really took me off track, because I remember, you know, days afterwards,

kind of sitting in my office, staring at the computer screen, and just thinking about that. And would it meant for the prospects of my career, because I was up for tenure? And our profession, that means like you're up or out, you either have a job or you're going to lose that job and need to uproot yourself and your whole life from that place.

So I felt like I had a lot riding on it, and given that he had a lot of power and status and everything else, I just wondered what that meant for me in my future. I'm wondering how you behaved around the senior professor. You must have bumped into him in the hallways or past him at meetings, or did it change your behavior and how you interact with him going forward? Yeah, definitely changed my behavior. I really tried to avoid him and work with my office or clothes. I really almost like timed when I would go to the bathroom to avoid people.

I think that I kind of became a shell of myself around him and other people. So that single moment of Incivility stayed with you for a long time. And it makes me think about the long term effects of all the rudeness we see around us. It does seem as though there has been an increase in Incivility, perhaps as the COVID pandemic has worn us all down. In January 2022, a customer at a smoothie shop in Fairfield, Connecticut received the wrong drink. He claimed it contained peanut butter and he said his son had had an allergic reaction and needed to be hospitalized.

The man confronted two young employees at the smoothie shop, calling one of them an immigrant loser. The exchange, which is really quite disturbing to hear when viral on social media. What? Shut up. Who are you? F**king immigrant loser. What are you? Get the f**k out. Get the f**k out.

Christine, it could be that we're hearing about incidents like this because of social media, but it does feel like almost every other week brings a new example of people simply losing it. Do you think there is more incivility around us these days? I do, unfortunately, and our and other research would suggest that the number one reason for incivility is that people feel stressed or overwhelmed. I think that, you know, unfortunately, that kind of negativity, even around, you know,

the pandemic, around politics, around uncertainty, leads us to feel more stressed and is a reason that at least people say caused their rudeness or responding negatively in moments like those. Healthcare systems in particular, it's just terrible these days and CEOs of hospitals, some of them have reached out to me and said, do you know how bad it is right now? And I think just like this clip eludes to, a lot of this is mixed with racism and politics. So they are on the front lines of getting this.

And it's just become really, really hard for them. When we come back, the surprisingly powerful effects that instability has on our brains and what we can do about it, you're listening to Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedanthan. If you recently had a stand in a long line at the airport, or waited for a bus that never showed up, or had to deal with an incompetent customer service rep in a call center, you may have felt a rising level of impatience. It may have taken all your effort to keep your frustrations under control.

Many of us can think of situations where we lost it, or where we saw others lose their cool. Social media is full of videos showing people screaming at each other in stores, in restaurants, and in workplaces. At Georgetown University, behavioral scientists Christine Porath studies the effects of this tide of incivility. Christine, when you were in high school, you played on a boy's soccer team, and I understand that at the time, you felt that the best way to deal with root-ness was just to shake it off? Yeah, well, I think just coming from that background,

it's the idea that you should be strong and rise above it and just power through. And so we're shaped by our background and our experiences. And so that's what I brought to the table. And especially when it came to me and those that I was close to, it was like, come on, suck it up, or just rise above it, get over it, but definitely playing boys high school soccer.

I did stand out, even had the long ponytail on all. And so in some ways I felt tested that I definitely should be strong and hold my own within that environment. So we discussed how when a senior colleague disparaged your book title, you founded a heart lasted a very long time. And you yourself were studying the phenomenon of instability, along with your colleague Christine Pearson, you've asked people about their experiences with rudeness and instability. What do

people tell you about the effects that mistreatment has had on them? What we found is that it stuck and was much more painful than we would have anticipated. I remember incidents like there was one person who had worked in a little league baseball concession stand and you know he remembers being belittled afterwards he actually had to go to the owner of this team's house and explain you know a mistake and got screamed at and 17 years later he's writing about it and says he thinks about it and so those were the kind of things that stuck I think we had someone report something from 1988 when they were sitting around a table with 12 peers and got treated in a way that they felt dismissed and belittled. And so you had people that were

holding on to these experiences for not just months or years, but decades. I want to examine both the immediate effects of instability on the mind, as well as some of these long-term effects that you're talking about. You see that instability can hijack the amygdala. What do you mean by this, Christine? Well, I think it means that we're flooded with emotions, and that's when kind of this idea of fight or flight to gear kicks in, and it leads to us for many people being paralyzed almost in terms of not being able to respond to things or not being able to react or making changes that would help us in that moment.

Like it's almost as if we can't cope with the situation because we're struggling to process things. And so one way that I think about this is like the storm inside your brain. Christina's conducted many studies into the effects of instability. One of them builds on a famous psychological experiment. Volunteers are asked to watch a video of people rapidly passing a basketball.

Right in the middle of the game, a person wearing a gorilla's suit walks through the middle of the frame. Many volunteers fail to notice the gorilla because they are so focused on the ball being passed. In Christine's experiment, she exposed a subset of volunteers to incivility before they watched the video. And they were five times less likely to see the gorilla on the screen. And that really surprised us. But also with other studies, what we found is that it took people a lot longer to answer questions, to solve anagrams, were jumbles to create words. They had much more difficulty doing that kind of

thing, so cognitive performance went down significantly. Roughly about 30% across different studies, and even their physical moves to answer questions that was slower. So it seemed to be affecting people in all sorts of ways and what's interesting also is that people weren't aware of this. There's been some work that you and others have done looking at the effects of instability on memory. What do you find? We find that when people are witness rudeness they are far less likely to be able to remember things. So they make a lot more errors. We measured this with math errors, we measured this with performance errors on cognitive tests and the differences were really stunning

with just seeing this or being around it. You've even found that instability has effects on our creativity, which I found really surprising. What do you find Christine? Yeah, well, we find again, whether you experience instability, whether you witness it, it decreases your ability to come up with creative ideas. So in some of the tests, we give them this study where they come up with as many ideas for what to do with a brick as possible.

And we code it for dysfunctional ideas, as well as like how creative the ideas are. And what we find is the people that were exposed to rudeness, they come up with really dysfunctional responses for what you do with a brick. Like they will say things like break someone's nose, smash someone's fingers, beat a crush a person to death, sink a body in a river, throw it through a window,

place it on the floor to stub people's toe, or something like that. It almost seems as if people are coming up with creative use for the break that are somewhat aggressive. Yeah, scary aggressive. And it was just stunning to see the ideas that people came up with because really all that they were exposed to was just one quick incident. It was like a fleeting moment that they were exposed to. And somehow this is what they came up with.

Why do you think rudeness has these effects on creativity, both in some ways limiting how creative we can be, but also perhaps exacerbating this kind of aggressive creativity? I think it ties to the hijacking people's focus and attention and the lack of awareness around that. People become much more self-focused, much less other focused. And I think our mind is wrapped up on replaying the incident where they're not focusing on the task nearly as much.

They're overwhelmed by other thoughts. And so it's very hard to think about anything else. Yeah. We've looked at several effects of instability at the level of our personal psychology, but you found that instability also affects organizational functioning. Can you tell me how rudeness affects loyalty and commitment in the workplace? When people are around cultures where rudeness is prevalent, they're much less likely to want to stick around. So 12% of people who experience sensibility

say that they change jobs as a result of that experience. But also, I think that what we saw is customers that witnessed this kind of behavior, even among, you know, an employee acting rudely to another employee. They were far less likely to want to use that restaurant or that bank, and they were far less loyal to the brand moving forward. When when instability is present, people who work together are also less likely to trust one another. Can you talk about this idea, the effects of rudeness on trust? When you see rudeness, we tend to think, you know, really negative thoughts about that person, I think, and many cases we question their character and their integrity.

We generalize to a lot of different negative traits because of that one incident. And so that really hurts that person. Then I think we also tend to become less trusting in our own environment. Like for example, we're less likely to speak up in a meeting. Maybe even when that person is in present, because it kind of has shut us down, and we operate much more from a place of fear, we don't offer up ideas. We don't speak up about errors or potential mistakes because we're afraid of the pushback on us.

Now, Rootness doesn't just have consequences for us, it can have downstream consequences as well on other people. The psychologist Amir Arreas has found that incivility can affect the performance of medical professionals. Can you describe what he's found? Yeah, well, one of the studies that I love that they did was surgical teams in Israel that were exposed to rudeness, meaning they overheard that they were not doing a procedure

well enough. Those medical teams performed worse on all of their diagnostics and all of the procedures they did. And they found that this was mainly because they stopped sharing information as much and they stopped seeking help from these people on their teams performing the surgery. And I understand that these researchers have found that even watching someone else get treated

badly reduced the ability of some of these medical professionals to think flexibly about a patient's condition. Yeah. And so that's some of these medical professionals to think flexibly about a patient's condition. Yeah, and so that's some of their recent research that shows that they get anchored almost on an idea. And when they've been exposed to rudeness, they have a really hard time pivoting to consider anything else. So it almost is this idea of lack of creativity, you know, they can't even be open to any new information because they're stuck. And so moving forward and performing well, considering

other ideas, they're just not capable of. I mean, what strikes me from the example you're giving about the study here in Israel, you know, suggests that there are downstream effects of instability and rootiness. So it's not just the people within the workplace who are affected, but the people now who are coming in contact with the workplace, the consumers, the patients at a hospital,

it seems as if rootiness can have these spiraling effects on larger and larger numbers of people. One of the reasons I went into studying this is because I felt like it not only colored people's work lives, but they took it home with them. It affected their personal lives as well. People just, they became a smaller version of themselves.

They became probably more frustrated, more angry, more depressed. It affected their personal relationships in really important ways. It definitely does flow through social networks and spreads in very powerful ways. You know, Christine, we've seen YouTube and Twitter and Facebook a full of examples of moments that have gone viral where people have behaved rudely and their, you know, their behaviors, their actions, their words are basically spread far and wide on the internet. But I think what you're saying is that there's a different kind of virality that rudeness and instability can have. It can have downstream effects on the people who witnessed that instability and then further downstream effects on other people whom they come in contact with.

Yeah, that's what we find in our research is both within the workplace as well as outside of it. When you witness in civility, you pass it forward. And so if you're seeing it anywhere online on the media, you will likely become a carrier of this virus and pass it forward with whoever you come in contact with. And a lot of that is unintentional. When we come back, is there a way to put the genie back in the bottle? You're listening to Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedantam. This is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedanta.

Behavioral scientist Christine Porat studies Incivility. She's found it has powerful and long lasting effects on our thinking, on our emotions, and on our well-being. Although it's difficult to get precise numbers on this, it's hard to escape the feeling that Incivility is on the rise. What can we do about it? When people treat us rudely, our first impulse might be to respond in kind. But Christine says it's a good idea to reflect that at least sometimes, rudeness can be unintentional.

When we ask why people are rude, only 4% said because it's fun and they can get away with it. I think the vast majority of people have no idea that what they're doing is hurting people or making them feel small in some way. And so I believe it stems from a lack of self-awareness. In her work with groups and organizations, Christine sometimes draws on an old idea from psychology, the Johari window. The psychologist Joseph Lought and Harrington Ingram divided a square into quadrants, like a four-pained window. One paying represents things we know about ourselves that others know as well.

A second looks at secrets, things that we know about ourselves that others do not know. Another looks at elements of ourselves that are unknown both to us and to others. Christine focuses on a final pain. Things that others know about us, that we don't know about ourselves. The jahari window is really this idea of what we know about ourselves, what we do not know about ourselves, what others know about us, and what others do not know about us. And so we're really trying

to uncover our blind spots around what's known to others but is not known to ourselves because these blind spots are really what's affecting how we're behaving in ways that are often hurtful to others. in ways that are often hurtful to others. You've collaborated with the organizational psychologist, Tasha Eurek, and she studies how self-aware people are. So how self-aware are people? I mean, relative to how self-aware they think there. Yeah, not very self-aware. So she has not at all, there's a huge gap.

So she has found that 95% of people believe that they're self-aware. We have a good sense of our strengths and how we're perceived. However, she has found that only 10 to 15% of people actually are self-aware. And so 80% of us are fooling ourselves on any given day about what people think of us. And we tend to bias at all in the positive direction. Marshall Goldsmith who coaches a lot of leaders and he talks about this idea of we like to play a highlight reel of our successes in our minds. And so we kind of anchor in on the positives and how we affect others. And we, our blind spots are usually

on the negatives and how we're affecting people in harmful ways or ways that may even hurt us. I understand, Christine, that you once had an encounter with a friend who revealed to you something about your own behavior that you were not aware of. What did he tell you about your conversational style? So he told me that I had a tendency to interrupt or to jump in when someone else was speaking. And that was something that I didn't realize that I did. So if there was a pregnant pause in our conversation, I was happy to help him along, finish his thoughts or insert my question. And so when I got this feedback, I was really surprised.

And did it feel like there was any truth to it? It did. And in fact, I think the funny thing was as he was telling me this, I was ready to jump in with the Y or the defensiveness, which had him laughing and me laughing. And, you know, if there was any doubt that was cleared up right away in the moment. Christine talked earlier about the educator and coach, Marshall Goldsmith. He was a pioneer in what's called 360-degree feedback. It's a structured system some leaders have used to solicit the opinions of a wide range of colleagues and subordinates. As it turns out, even people who teach others to overcome their blind spots have blind spots of their own. So he actually collected 360 degree feedback at the consulting firm he ran and he has a reputation for being a great guy and a giver. And so he was really upset by the fact that the feedback he

got was he had a tendency to talk badly about people behind their backs. And he felt terrible, but he also couldn't think of any times where he had done this. And so he challenged his employees. He said $10 anytime you call me out on this. On day one, he said he was down $50 by lunchtime. And he locked himself in his office and decided, that's enough. No more for today.

And then he said he improved, you know, it was $30 and then $10. And so his point was not that we have to put a tax on our own behavior, but even the leading coaching guru that came up with 360 feedback and everything, you know, he wasn't aware of behaviors that he certainly wasn't proud of. I mean, it was the opposite of the effect that he wanted to have. Yet, he was completely unaware. He couldn't think

of a time where he had done it. It even showed that we need the help of others to try to uncover some of this awareness for us so that we can improve. The research at Josh Misner at North Idaho College has another idea on how you can increase the amount of feedback that you get. And his idea has now been taken and is being used by organizational psychologists. Tell me about the dinner of truth. So the dinner of truth is that you ask a friend or a colleague out for dinner and you ask them, you know, what's one of the most annoying habits that I have? Or what is something that I do that, you know, hurts me or you or it leads to my ineffectiveness?

And ideally you sit there and you take the feedback and you use it to move you forward. And although people like Tasha Yerke have told me that they thought, I'm not gonna get real feedback from this friend, that in fact they get super valuable feedback and it's a way to move them forward. But you know, it's not easy to do in the sense of a lot of people

are fearful of what they might hear. I want to spend a little time talking about how we might respond to incivility that's directed at us, how we can keep it from hijacking our bodies and our minds. As we've seen, confronting rudeness with rudeness doesn't seem like a very good solution, avoiding the perpetrator of rudeness often doesn't work very well.

You say that one alternative is to change your own frame and to focus on the future. What do you mean by this? Well, I think it's important that you control what you can control. And usually that means just yourself. And the research shows we found that the one antidote to instability is a sense of thriving, like a sense of feeling like you're moving forward. And so it's about getting unstuck. And

for a lot of people it's focusing on taking care of themselves, like for example exercising or something like that. What you want to do is you want to do something that builds hope that helps you focus on moving forward in a positive way, not getting dragged down about your past. The other aspect is a sense of vitality or energy and so there are lots of ways to potentially achieve this. It could be activities like getting involved in your community, coaching, volunteering, choosing something that makes you feel smarter, stronger, or more interesting, that really clears your mind or feeds your soul.

And we talked a lot about instability as a virus. And your defense really depends to a large extent on your ability to manage your soul. And we talked a lot about insability as a virus. And your defense really depends to a large extent on your ability to manage your energy. And my research suggests that many of the factors that help prevent illness, like good nutrition, sleep, stress management, can also help ward off insabilities, noxious effects. So in some ways, to stick with disease and energy, what I think I hear you say is if you're in noxious effects. So in some ways to stick with disease and energy, what I think I hear you say is if you're confronted by a virus, yes, you can go looking for the antidote to the virus, but perhaps the better solution

is just to have a stronger immune system. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. And there are ways that we can do that, including even building positive relationships inside or outside of work. Or if this happens to work, we encourage people to focus on thriving outside of work, because by doing things that make you feel good outside of the workplace, you actually bring a stronger, more resilient self inside the workplace. So I think that's helpful.

I understand that you're working with nurses to teach them strategies to thrive. Many, many nurses report, you know, dealing with a significant amount of instability and rudeness in the workplace, especially perhaps during the COVID-19 pandemic. There have been Asian American nurses who've been attacked by patients about, you know, quote, bringing the virus from China and nurses report being regularly in the receiving end of bad treatment from physicians, describe for me the work that you're doing with nurses and the effects that you're finding it has.

So one of the things that we're coaching them on that we've seen evidence and experiments that by what they call self-distancing. So this idea of kind of pulling back out of the moment and it's almost like, you know, asking someone to step out and watch the scene as a movie unfolding. And so trying to take a step back from the event and trying to get a better and bigger picture perspective on it. So for example, one way you can do this is ask, okay, in five years, what kind of effect

is this gonna have on you? So we found that self-distancing makes people more objective and less emotionally involved in the encounter and this can help individuals find better solutions in the moment and moving forward. So if they have the capability to distance themselves from the stressor, let's say this rude encounter, they're able to, let's say, serve the patient better in the moment, or come back to the patient more quickly

without kind of taking it out on them or just being really wrapped up in what to make of the situation. We talked earlier about how when you've experienced in civility, you've often found it hard to set it aside and to basically focus on other things. In some ways, in civility and rudeness can hijack the mind and make it very difficult

to focus on other things. And so, one surprisingly, peopleity and rudeness can hijack the mind and make it very difficult to focus on other things. And so, one surprisingly, people who experience rudeness end up persevering on the thing that happened, on the root thing that happened, on the, you know, the root thing that was set to them. And partly, I think what you're suggesting is actually so hard, because what you're saying is that that kind of perseveration, in fact, is not useful. In fact, it's not helpful. that kind of perseveration in fact is not useful. In fact, it's not helpful. Yeah, I think it is extremely challenging

to get that advice, but it leads to a lot better results and in the case of nurses, you know, when patient safety is at risk, I think it's imperative that they find coping strategies so that they can attend to people, you know, in a way that doesn't take them off track, especially for long periods of time. So we're trying to find interventions or things that help them, not only cope with it, but recover quickly and move them forward.

I mean, I also think that that idea of thriving is really crucial for them because they've been under such challenging circumstances and strain for a long time that it's really important that they take care of themselves. Just coming in is physically ready as possible because it's going to help them be able to regulate and respond best to anything that they may deal with that day. I'm wondering if people push back on you when you give them this advice, because I suspect that many people who have experienced incivility seek justice more than anything else. They actually want the wrong door to make a man's. And you're telling them the best way to deal with

this really is to not pay attention to it, to move on with your day to try and find other things in your life that you're engaged with that make you happy. Do people respond to that advice well, Christine? You know, generally I think they do. The nice thing is you're betting on yourself and not betting on someone else changing and it's the vast majority of these situations at work, even if they told the organization, the organization acted on that, which is rare. You know, it still isn't likely

that that person's gonna change completely. And so really what you're asking them is to focus on themselves and bet on themselves in their future. And at least for myself, like I like that message because that gives me some power and and otherwise really disempowering situation. I want to look at some complexities when it comes to incivility. You've written what matters is not whether people actually were disrespected or treated insensitively, but whether they felt

disrespected. Incivility is in the eyes of the recipient. Now, I can see the virtue of taking people's concerns about incivility seriously, but I can also see some people saying, hang on a minute, if each person can decide for themselves what is rude and what is not rude, how do we come to a shared understanding of instability? I mean, so someone who's from a very polite culture, let's say from the US South, could come to a place like New York City and say, everyone in this town is really rude. Yeah, it's what makes it really tricky. And that's why providing information to people about how things are affecting you, at least if that's

someone you work with regularly, is helpful. But I mean the US is such a big place and there are such differences behind how we communicate. And then certainly if you think about globally. So I think that's what makes it so challenging. Having worked with some firms like the UN or International Monetary Fund where they have employees from 183 countries, I mean, that makes it really tough to come up with norms for communicating

or how we treat each other. So sometime ago I came by this clip of an incident that took place on a Delta Airlines flight between Tampa and Atlanta, a man and a woman got into a fight. It started when the woman was told she'd have to wait for the beverage cart to move before she could take her seat. And then it quickly escalated into a fight about whether to wear face masks. Soon insults were flying back and forth and eventually the woman threw a punch. What I find striking about this clip Christine is that both parties seem to feel like they have victims of incivility. So if I think that wearing a mask saves lives during a pandemic, I can see your refusal

to wear a mask as the height of rudeness. And if you think wearing a mask is not necessary, you can see me as being an obnoxious, busy body. Is it possible that in many confrontations both parties feel like they have victims of instability? Yes, because we may lack self-awareness or simply disagree with whatever we did that they thought was rude. There's definitely a likelihood of misperceptions. And I think a lot of times, this happens even more so over email, because over email you don't have a person's tone or their non-verbals. And so I think that there's a lot of misunderstandings where

you assume that someone may be me rude and may then respond with a rude email or an accusatory tone. And so then it kind of gets you in a negative spiral when in fact some of it could have stemmed from a misunderstanding. I'm wondering if there's a bit of a contradiction here, because on the one hand, I think we want to take people seriously when they say, I'm really feeling like I have been treated badly. You don't want to dismiss that. On the other hand, we're also saying that people are not very self-aware and not quite aware of what's happening in situations. There seems to be a disconnect between those two things. How do we simultaneously accept people at face value when they say,

I believe that I have been treated rudely and also taken to account that perhaps they are not self-aware about the role that they have brought to the conversation like this incident that took place on the plane. I think feedback is crucial, meaning if you're in a workplace, let's say, providing people feedback around how they're perceived and what their role is in an incident. Radical candor, I think if you can create cultures where people are radically candid with each other, the saying is clear but kind. I think that that's a good thing to shoot for. It doesn't solve the problem in the plane.

But I think if in communities or families, if we can come at it with that perspective, I hope that that's helpful. Otherwise, it just seems like we're stuck in a negative cycle. You know, some people might say, you know, perhaps we're setting the bar too high. And if we are worrying so much about how the things we're going to be saying are going to be misinterpreted or overinterpreted by other people, it'll cause people to walk on eggshells. So they'll be hesitant to say what's on their mind,

to speak there, to actually offer feedback in a candidate fashion, to tell people what's going on, to make jokes, to be casual. How do you respond to this? Because I feel like there is a delicate balance here between essentially suppressing how people talk and walk in the world, and basically giving people carte blanche to basically say and do whatever they feel like doing. Yeah, I think it is a tough balance to strike in reality. I think that if you can create this culture where there is care and concern for others,

that that idea of radical candor is so much easier and you don't get caught up worrying about or processing the intentions behind something. You just let it kind of roll off someone's back. You just move forward. And so I think the sweet spot is this idea of you care personally and you feel comfortable challenging directly.

Because I think we want that feedback. I don't think we want to sugarcoat things. I don't think we want a situation where we're afraid to tell the truth or to speak up about potential issues. I think we've got to create these environments where people feel a sense of trust and respect, you know, where they feel what's called psychologically safe. And that's where the magic can really happen

that people can be their most productive, creative, helpful, healthy selves. We've looked at a lot of downsides of instability, but as I was reading your work, I was wondering, do you ever think we should make exceptions for instability in some cases? I'm reminded of the famous line, well-behaved women seldom make history. And the truth is that there are many activists in many causes

who have behaved in ways that their opponents might describe as rude, but in fact would argue that they were on the right side of history. Yeah, I'm sure that there are examples of that. I think that if you're strong in your convictions, then that is something that you have to weigh the potential costs of how you're going to be perceived and move forward in the best way possible. I also think that some of this comes

back to leading authentically. And so some people are considered rude when they definitely don't mean to be. So again, improving yourself awareness around that could lead to you being most effective. But it's hard for me to kind of think about specific behaviors that I would say, oh, definitely never rude or always worth doing it that way. I think that probably you're best served by weighing it

in the moment and trying to explain yourself. I think some of the research that has struck me is if you preface negative feedback with something along the lines of, I care about you and I think you can do better. And people are far less defensive. They respond, I think it's 40% better to that. And I think that if you have planted the seeds

and shown people that you care about them and that you tend to be respectful, then you're much less likely to be really hurt if they slip up from time to time or really hold it against them. And they're famous leaders that have apologized hurt if they slip up from time to time or really hold it against them. And they're famous leaders that have apologized for such incidents and, you know, been forgiven by people because they feel like they have a pattern of treating people respectfully.

And the truth is, we all slip up from time to time. But if we've invested in our relationships, usually these are things that we can recover from hopefully quickly and without too much effort. It seems like very few people would argue with the idea that we'd all be better off if we could have more positive, affirmative experiences and relationships, but I was struck by one idea

that you've advanced. You've reached back to the work of an early 20th century scholar named Charles Horton Kooley. You find that he had an idea that is especially useful to think about as we're thinking about in civility. What was his argument? So he talked about the looking glass self. And the idea is that it explains that we use others' expressions like smiles or behaviors

like acknowledging us and reactions like listening to us or insulting us to define ourselves. So how we believe others see us shapes who we are. We ride a wave of pride or get swallowed in a sea of embarrassment based on brief interactions that signal, respect, or disrespect. Individuals feel valued and powerful when respected. So I believe that civility lifts people. Whereas in civility holds people down. It makes people feel small. And so we will be healthier, more productive, lead more fulfilling lives when we are civil

that our communities will be healthier, more productive, and more creative, and you'll allow members to achieve their potential much more if they live and work in more respectful cultures where people can really thrive. Christine Porath is a behavioral scientist at Georgetown University. She's the author of the book's Mastering Civility, a manifesto for the workplace, and with Christine Pearson, the cost of bad behavior. Christine Porath, thank you for joining me today on Hidden Brain. Thank you. Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media.

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