The rapid nature of electronic communication can be a party pooper. You could be living the happiest moment of your life one second, and the next, receive an email that ruins it all. Maybe that was the sender's intention or maybe not, but your moment is ruined anyway. That can happen more often now than ever, with face-to-face interactions minimised. But the fact of the matter, as new research points out, is that the impact an impolite email can have on an individual cannot be understated. And we invited experts to share how, as a sender or receiver, you can handle the situation responsibly.

Cause and effect

Led by Zhenyu Yuan, a researcher at the University of Illinois, Chicago, the research was published in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology and comprised two studies. The first one was a survey of 233 working employees in the United States about their experiences with email "incivility", and the second was a diary study where they found out that this incivility was positively associated with insomnia and a "heightened negative affect at the beginning of the workday." Yuan and team also divide the forms of email rudeness into two categories: active (demeaning or derogatory remarks made by the sender about the recipient) and passive (ignoring emails or requests in it).