Christine Porath has been studying the costs of incivility in the workplace for the last 20 years and the news isn't good. Her recent article in the New York Times posits that "how we treat one another at work matters. Insensitive interactions have a way of whittling away at people’s health, performance and souls."
She believes that mean bosses could have killed her father.
Robert M. Sapolsky, a Stanford professor and the author of “Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers,” argues that when people experience intermittent stressors like incivility for too long or too often, their immune systems pay the price. We also may experience major health problems, including cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes and ulcers.
This also hurts productivity and the bottom line. Employees subjected to this kind of behavior are much less productive and the turnover rates for businesses run by tyrants are much higher.
But it is also just possible that the rush of abusing others is just too great for the perpetrator to stop doing it.
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