Why Are So Many People Mean?

If you haven’t noticed the meanness and violence against one another, perhaps it’s because you’ve been living in a cave without human contact. Here’s a message posted by r/Adulting o reddit.com by someone who has noticed: “This world scares me. Why is everyone so mean and awful to each other all the time? I really don't understand. I can't be mean if I want to, it's just not in me. It makes me sad for the future and sad for my son. Why do you think the world is how it is?” (qtd. in https://www.reddit.com/r/Adulting/comments/1303ald/why_is_everyone_so_mean/?rdt=41071).

r/Adulting’s post got these responses: [copied exactly as posted including misspelling]

“ * Political situation, Rising prices of everything, generally is all that getting out of covid, mash of all that. Especially when they're in their cars or on the internet

• Everyone feels angry, anxious, and desperate. It makes them short and more likely to overreact to perceived threats.

• We don't spend enough time in community together

• Also, people can hide behind their online personas. They can rant and rave anonymously all day with no repercussions. Makes people bolder and it starts to leak into their real lives.

• Mental illness went through the roof during COVID due to stress, isolation, medical care issues, moving, relationships issues (apparently domestic abuse increased), financial issues and other stuff. Some of the top reasons people end up with depression and anxiety with multiple happening at once and typical stress relief outlets reduced.

• Getting appropriate care is also harder since the medical community is losing staff and prices are higher.

• A lot of people lost their veneer of friendliness and also are more socially challenged after being out of touch. Life is harder for a lot of people in a lot of places.

• I try to look for people and places that try to be positive and mute the negativity. Then I try to be kind to everyone else, since I don’t know what they’re going through and it’s none of my buisness. I don’t always do well, but I try!” (qtd. in https://www.reddit.com/r/Adulting/comments/1303ald/why_is_everyone_so_mean/?rdt=41071).

In her article, “Why Are People Mean?,” Dr. Martha Beck points out, “The first time I saw a T-shirt that said ‘mean people suck,’ I thought, Now, there is a heartfelt sentiment, succinctly expressed. I only wished I'd been the author. I mention this because recently I've encountered several mean people, and I've had to remind myself that the concept of authorship is key to surviving these experiences…every living person has the power of authorship when it comes to composing our lives. Meanness emerges when we believe that we have no such power, that we're passive receptors of life's vagaries. Inner peace follows when we begin responding to cruelty—our own and other people's—with the authority we've possessed all along.  Why are people mean? Here's the short answer: They're hurt. Here's the long answer: They're really hurt. At some point, somebody—their parents, their lovers, Lady Luck—did them dirty. They were crushed. And they're still afraid the pain will never stop, or that it will happen again.  There. I've just described every single person living on planet Earth. The fact is that we've all been hurt, and we're all wounded, but not all of us are mean. Why not? Because some people realize that their history of suffering can be a hero's saga rather than a victim's whine, depending on how they ‘write’ it. The moment we begin tolerating meanness, in ourselves or others, we are using our authorial power in the service of wrongdoing. We have both the capacity and the obligation to do better…We'll stay on this sickening merry-go-round until we decide to get off—and please note that I did not say ‘when others stop being mean to us.’ We can ride the wheel of suffering when no one else is even present (telling ourselves the same old sad story again and again), and we can leave it even in the midst of violent persecution. The way out is not found in changing our circumstances but in the power of authorship” (qtd. in https://www.oprah.com/omagazine/martha-beck-why-people-are-mean#:~:text=Meanness%20emerges%20when%20we%20believe,answer%3A%20They%27re%20hurt ).

The Harvard Business Review published a study focused on “Incivility on the Front Lines of Business” in which the author, Christine Porath, “…professor of management at Georgetown University and a consultant who helps leading organizations create thriving workplaces” (https://hbr.org/2022/11/frontline-work-when-everyone-is-angry?), shares the results of her study: “ Editor’s note: This article mentions threats of violence and sexual assault.  I’ve studied incivility — defined as rudeness, disrespect, or insensitive behavior — in workplaces for more than 20 years, polling hundreds of thousands of people worldwide about their experiences. But after that conversation with Dr. Boissy, who is now the chief medical officer at Qualtrics and a neurologist at Cleveland Clinic, I wondered whether incivility is getting worse over time, particularly for frontline workers, who labor in person and often interact directly with customers and patients. These workers’ industries include health care, protective services (think police officers), retail, food production and processing, maintenance, agriculture, transportation (including airlines), hospitality, and education.  My research has found that reports of incivility are indeed on the rise — as evidenced not just by viral videos of airline passengers refusing to wear masks or café patrons hurling racial epithets but also by my recent survey that asked more than 2,000 people around the world how they have experienced rudeness lately. Even amid a global health crisis in which frontline workers were heralded as essential and heroic, these employees still became punching bags on whom weary, stressed-out, often irrational customers (and sometimes fellow employees) took out their anxieties and frustrations.

This kind of incivility leads to negative outcomes not only for the workers who experience it directly but also those who witness it — all of which harms businesses and society. In this article, we’ll explore those consequences and discuss how leaders can help to improve things. Note that incivility takes many forms, from ignoring people to intentionally undermining them to mocking, teasing, and belittling them. For this article, it does not refer to physical aggression or violence, although incivility can spiral into aggressive behaviors…[Porath identified several causes of the rise in meanness:]

• Stress. Over the years, I’ve found that stress is the number one driver of incivility. In my most recent data, 73% of respondents who had been rude to a coworker blamed it on stress, and 61% pointed to being overloaded with work. The pandemic, the economy, war, divisive politics, the changing nature of work, and continued uncertainty are all taking a toll. Any (or all) of these factors may contribute to our stress and burnout, which have risen to unprecedented levels recently. And considering our reduced levels of self-care, exercise, and sleep, it’s no surprise that we have a tougher time regulating our emotions.

•  Negative emotions. In October 2020 my brother Mike Porath and I reported data from The Mighty, a supportive community Mike founded for people facing health challenges and those who care for them. A survey of over 70,000 readers and community members found that the number of respondents who chose anger as one of their top emotions more than doubled from March to September — rising from 20% to 45%. Naturally, as negative emotions swell in us, we may lash out or take them out on others, often without realizing it. Even if we muster restraint, when we’re not feeling well we’re less mindful and less capable of interacting positively and respectfully.

• Weakened ties. We can also attribute the epidemic of rudeness to a general fraying of community and workplace relationships. I define “community” as a group of individuals who share a mutual concern for one another’s welfare. In a 2014 study of 20,000 people for my book Mastering Community, I found that 65% didn’t feel any sense of community. In July of this year a colleague and I surveyed more than 1,500 Conference for Women participants, finding that their sense of community has decreased 37% since the beginning of the pandemic.The feeling of lacking community is exacerbated when people don’t feel valued, appreciated, or heard — which applies to the vast majority of employees. Sometimes subtle (or not-so-subtle) behaviors are what sting.

• Technology. For all its benefits, technology can lead to greater disconnection and rudeness. It can also distract us from the humans in front of us, as countless frontline employees and cashiers have reported. Often we’re too busy scrolling through Instagram or listening to music on our headphones to interact with those serving us or ringing up our groceries — much less to utter a simple ‘Hello,’ ‘Please,’ or 'Thank you.’  This heavy use of technology, and of social media in particular, may come with a price: We’re taking in a whole lot of negativity (consciously or unconsciously) on a daily basis. The content we consume affects not only us but others too. What we ingest from online sources can harm our mood and mental health, and we can pass our anxiety, depression, and stress on to others. Finally, in the digital age messages are often subject to communication gaps and misunderstanding — and, unfortunately, putdowns are more easily delivered when it doesn’t happen face-to-face. While electronic communication can bring us together in remarkable ways, it also liberates us to voice our frustrations, hurl insults, and take people down a notch from a safe distance.

• Lack of self-awareness. One of the biggest takeaways from my decades of research is that incivility usually arises from ignorance — not malice. People lack self-awareness. According to research by Tasha Eurich, an organizational psychologist and a collaborator of mine, a whopping 95% of people think they’re self-aware but only 10%–15% actually are. That means 80%–85% of people misunderstand how they’re perceived and how they affect others. We may have good intentions and work hard to be patient and tolerant, but our tones, nonverbal signals, or actions may come across differently to the people we interact with and those who witness the interactions”  (https://hbr.org/2022/11/frontline-work-when-everyone-is-angry? ).  I encourage you to read the entire article because it shows specific examples of incivility, reports on the statistics of her research findings, and shares how people can address the problem in the workplace.

You may be thinking, “Oh, the COVID 19 pandemic was 3-4 years ago, so, how is that still relevant?”  Ask many business owners if their business has completely bounced back, recovered from the pandemic.  Ask school teachers if their students are on track after the disruption of the pandemic.  Look at your own financial, mental, emotional, spiritual, physical health post-COVID; have you thoroughly recovered?  The long-term effects of the worldwide pandemic linger for many people.  Still, why did humanity turn mean and more violent, rude, and utterly disrespectful to one another? Or, you may be thinking " It's the Boomers; it's the Gen Xers; it's the Millennials; it's the Gen Zers/Gen Alpha." If so, you'd be incorrect because meanness is running rampant among all generations, cultures, ethnicities,colors, socio-economic states, and genders.

To get a psychological therapist’s point of view, I suggest you read the following article: https://www.choosingtherapy.com/why-is-everyone-so-mean-to-me/#:~:text=Common%20reasons%20people%20are%20mean,from%20toxic%20people%20in%20therapy . In it, the author identifies 12 reasons why people behave in such mean, toxic ways.

The USA is among the 50 most violent / “conflict-ridden countries” … The United States is the only Western nation among the world’s 50 most conflict-ridden countries, according to new research that measures political violence around the globe. The U.S. ranking is driven by rising levels of political violence and a proliferation of far-right groups in the country in recent years, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, or ACLED. ACLED, a data collection, analysis and crisis mapping nonprofit based in the U.S. state of Wisconsin, gathers data for more than 240 countries and territories around the world. In the 12 months to early September [2023], it recorded more than 139,000 incidents of political violence worldwide, an increase of 27% over the prior year… The U.S. was rated as ‘turbulent,’ along with 19 other countries, mostly in Africa and Asia, including Libya, Ghana and Chad.  Sam Jones, head of communications at ACLED, said the U.S. placement on the list shows that political violence is not confined to poor or nondemocratic countries. ‘The U.S. is in the same turbulent index category as other countries that might be more traditionally understood as ‘conflict-affected’ like the Central African Republic … though, of course, it has a much lower overall ranking than such countries, which is important to note,’ Jones said in an email to VOA.  Jones said a deterioration in two indicators — danger to civilians and armed group fragmentation — was largely responsible for the U.S. ranking. ‘Danger to civilians’ represents the number of violent incidents targeting civilians and includes acts of violence such as police shootings. The ‘armed group fragmentation’ indicator is equally important. It indicates the number of armed groups such as militias involved in political violence. In the American context, it means that ‘non-state armed actors, such as far-right militia groups … have increasingly proliferated and splintered, which is correlated with higher risks of violence and creates additional obstacles for violence prevention efforts,’ Jones said.” (qtd. in https://www.voanews.com/a/us-joins-list-of-top-50-conflict-ridden-countries/7280415.html).  So, the meanness and violence spreads.

Why do you think some people are more mean and violent now? What can we each do to change the rise in meanness and violence toward each other? 

Please share your thoughts and insights by either commenting below this post if you are reading this on social media, or, if you are reading this through your email subscription, please share, by emailing me, at reimaginelife22@gmail.com.

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