"Most people work to live, not live to work. But considering the amount of time most people spend in the workplace, over time, many employees come to value morale over money. Not surprisingly, job satisfaction is often directly tied to workplace culture: Employees survive and thrive when they feel supported, leave when they feel devalued. A main complaint from employees who have traded salary for satisfaction is not overt discrimination or harassment; it is incivility."
"Incivility Invites Reciprocity Juseob Lee at al. (2024) describe an "incivility spiral" kicked off by uncivil behavior in the workplace.[ii] Although workplace incivility may present as a low-intensity behavior, it can escalate into more serious aggression through reciprocity. In a study of 296 employees in the United States, they found that the more an individual perceived a coworker's behavior as uncivil, the more likely they were to reciprocate. One positive finding, however, was that people with high levels of agreeableness were less likely to reciprocate incivility."
Workplace incivility undermines morale and drives employees to prioritize supportive culture over salary. Incivility produces emotional exhaustion that links to insomnia and rumination, as shown in a 2025 study of healthcare workers in Pakistan. Low-intensity uncivil acts can prompt reciprocity and escalate into more serious aggression, as observed in a 2024 study of 296 U.S. employees; high agreeableness reduces the likelihood of reciprocation. Employee attrition driven by incivility imposes recruitment, onboarding, and training costs and reduces productivity and profits when experienced staff leave.
Read at Psychology Today
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]