Naughty or Nice?

Here’s an interesting capture from a recent USA Today article (December 15, 2009) about cyberbullying being regarded as the right to free speech.

“Some parents and free-speech advocates are challenging cyberbullying cases, saying kids have a First Amendment right to be mean in cyberspace, the Los Angeles Times (latimes.com) reported.”

Even the courts agreed that free-speech rights had been violated and stated, “The court cannot uphold school discipline of student speech because...teenagers are emotionally fragile and may fight over hurtful comments,” wrote Judge Stephen Wilson.

And a UCLA law professor told the newspaper, “If all teasing led to suicide, the human race would be extinct.”

Contrast this reaction and support for being disrespectful with some more adult and scientific perspective that counters the supposed non-effect of cyberbullying.

Highlighted in the Harvard Business Review (March 2008) on “Rudeness and its Noxious Effects”, research by Christine Porath of the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business and Amir Erez of the Warrington College of Business Administration at the University of Florida shows even the thought of receiving verbal abuse affects people’s ability to perform complex tasks that require creativity, flexibility and memory recall.

They referred to these negative and abusive words simply as “rudeness”. Whether the source was direct, professor giving harsh words to a university student participant; indirect, a professor not a part of the study but who gave cutting remarks when interrupted; or imagined, where students were told of the previous experiences and told to imagine if they had been the recipients of the abuse.

When students then performed problem solving tasks such as anagrams and suggesting uses for a brick no matter what type of rudeness they received – direct, indirect, or imagined – all three forms of exposure generated impaired performance.

Why is their performance affected? Findings suggest that after any degree of exposure to rudeness, people think hard about the incident—whether just ruminating or formulating a response—and those thought processes take cognitive resources away from other tasks. From their study Porath and Emirez show abuse or rudeness can affect innocent bystanders as well.

So to the law professor – not all teasing will lead to suicide, agreed. But all teasing, abuse and rudeness will lead to impaired thinking and performance.

Now imagine what praise, respect and appreciation can do!! Let’s all plan to be nice today and everyday.