Research indicates that a sarcastic colleague may be helping (though unknowingly) to bring the best out in you
Research indicates that a sarcastic colleague may be helping (though unknowingly) to bring the best out in you. A new study has found that employees who have to put up with a sarcastic colleague or boss are more creative than those who don't, reports the Daily Mail.
An earful of barb every day makes you work harder and smarter than if your office was a more caring environment.
The inherent humour in the comments also defused the tension that comes with anger.
The study by researchers from the Bar-Ilan University in Israel asked 375 engineering students to imagine they were a customer service representative dealing with phone calls.
They were played three conversations between another customer service agent and a caller in which he was either angry, normal or sarcastic.
Those who had heard the angry conversation performed better than the neutral one when asked to perform a simple creative task.
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The researchers speculated that anger causes people to adopt a narrow focus on one's immediate concerns to avoid further suffering.
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"Observing anger communicated through sarcasm enhances complex thinking and solving of creative problems," lead author Ella Miron-Spektor wrote in the study.
The study has been published in the Journal of Applied Psychology.
Source-ANI