"There’s a new ailment in the over-extended workplace: rudeness, according to a recent study in the Journal of Applied Psychology that found such behaviors as condescending talk and being snappy in the workplace to be contagious.

The study found that, over time, these negative repetitive behaviors in the workplace wore employees down and affected performance. This can drain a person’s “internal resources for dealing with their own behavior,” wrote syndicated psychology newspaper columnist Linda Arnold of the study.

On the flip side, Ms. Arnold pointed out that kindness is also contagious — so pass compassion along!"