“The Harm Caused By Witnessing Rudeness” is the title of a post at The Research Digest blog.

It describes the results of three studies that found harmful affects on people who saw acts of rudeness, but weren’t the actual victims. The blog post explains:

“Witnessing an act of rudeness, whether committed by a researcher or student, led the participants to solve fewer anagrams, come up with fewer uses for a brick (and to come up with more aggressive uses!), made them less likely to offer to participate in another study, and lowered their mood.”

Next year, when I lead a class discussion on the first day about creating a “community of learners, I’ll certainly add this information to the mix — everybody gets hurt just by one person being rude!