You would imagine that performing an act of kindness by helping out someone in need – like an office colleague for example – would make you feel good, but a new experiment suggests otherwise.
Psychologists at the Michigan State University (MSU) say that if you arrive at work in the morning feeling tired, helping your co-workers with their problems could lead to mental exhaustion later in the day and, consequently, create a toxic environment.
Led by Russell Johnson, an associate professor of management at MSU, the researchers studied 91 full-time employees over 10 consecutive workdays.
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The participants were asked to complete two surveys a day – morning and afternoon – on their workplace experiences.
The team found that helping others not only harms the person in question, his or her self-serving behaviour can cause stress to other people in the office.
“The increase in mental fatigue from helping co-workers in the morning led employees to reduce their helping behaviours in the afternoon and, perhaps more interestingly, they engaged in more self-serving political behaviours in the afternoon as well,” Johnson said.
“They switched from being other-oriented in the morning to being selfish in the afternoon.
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“Although we did not identify the consequences of these political behaviours, research has established that political acts from employees can culminate into a toxic work environment with negative well-being and performance consequences.”
Although this may possibly justify your early morning grumpiness, the experiment was conducted on a small group of people so don’t stop withdrawing your helping hand just yet.
The research is published in Personnel Psychology.
