"Second-hand rudeness"

It seems being a jerk to your underlings or whomever affects their cognitive abilities -- and those of the people around them.

Here:

The psychologists gathered volunteers to perform cognitive tests (rearranging scrambled letters to form words) and a creative test (thinking of unusual uses for a brick).

The person supervising the test was rude to one volunteer who was secretly part of the plan.

"What are you, stupid? Get on with it!" he snapped, and called the volunteer unfit to hold a job in the "real world."

After this, the rest of the volunteers had trouble unscrambling words and thinking of creative uses for a brick.

Worse, their dark sides took over.

One of the scrambled words was "demure," but several volunteers rearranged the letters to spell "murder" -- even though the letters weren't quite right.

And the new ways to use brick? "Kill people," one suggested. Trip someone, said another. Throw it through a window, or beat people up, said others.

There's a message here for parents who berate their kids over schoolwork: You're actually lowering all your kids' marks. (And maybe, if you're loud enough, the neighbours' kids' marks.)

I have my own idea where the epidemic of incivility started -- 70s commercials. But that's another post.