Does rudeness really matter in the workplace?

Studies have established that rudeness in the workplace can lead to retaliatory and counterproductive behavior. However, there has been little research on how rude behaviors influence a victim's task performance. Such a study was conducted and the results published in the Academy of Management Journal (October 2007). College students enrolled in a management course were randomly assigned to one of two experimental conditions: rudeness condition (45 students) and control group (53 students). Each student was asked to write down as many uses for a brick as possible in 5 minutes.

For those students in the rudeness condition, the facilitator displayed rudeness by berating the students in general for being irresponsible and unprofessional (due to a late-arriving confederate). No comments were made about the late-arriving confederate for students in the control group. The number of different uses for a brick was recorded for each of the 98 students and the data saved in the RUDE file, shown below. Conduct a statistical analysis (at α = .01) to determine if the true mean performance level for students in the rudeness condition is lower than the true mean performance level for students in the control group.