You Can Make A Toxic Office Culture Supportive With Your Optimism, Study Suggests

Do you often find yourself neglecting your real self and trying to impersonate someone in the office? You can call it the ‘office way’ – you are always trying to fake confidence or some other trait just to be part of the crowd. You may be a positive person inside but the office gloom gets to you and soon, you turn negative. It’s like a switch – the toxic office culture somehow rubs you in the wrong way and makes you feel so much worse about yourself. But a new study from the University of Arizona shows that if you are more positive about yourself and supportive of the true self of others, then you can bring a change to the toxic office culture. Maybe you can make it so much better. The study is from the Journal of Applied Psychology.

The researchers were trying to examine the different kinds of ‘acting’ that office workers perform.

The author of the study, Allison Gabriel says: “Surface acting is faking what you’re displaying to other people. Inside, you may be upset or frustrated, but on the outside, you’re trying your best to be pleasant or positive. Deep acting is trying to change how you feel inside. When you’re deep acting, you’re actually trying to align how you feel with how you interact with other people.” 

So, when it comes to surface acting, a person might fake that they are in a good mood when they are talking to a co-worker. Deep acting is when they experience the variety of emotions that they wish to display to the coworker. 

The participants of the poll were from different industries – manufacturing, education, financial, etc. Most of these people fell under any of the four categories chosen by the researchers: there were ‘non-actors’ who did not do any kind of acting or did it rarely. There were ‘low actors’ who showed higher levels of surface acting than deep acting; ‘deep actors’ who inclined towards deep acting and had really low surface acting levels and finally, there were the ‘regulators’ who hit high points in both kinds of acting. 

Each of these groups had different motivations which led them to act in a certain way. Deep actors acted in their own way because they had prosocial aims and wanted to enrich their relationship with coworkers. Regulators wanted to preserve an impression of their own selves. 

When we look at the outcomes, regulators experience the highest level of mental and physical strain. According to Gabriel, “Regulators suffered the most on our markers of well-being, including increased levels of feeling emotionally exhausted and inauthentic at work.” Deep actors, on the other hand, enjoyed the social benefits that they get. They got a lot of support from their colleagues and there was progress in their professional goals. 

So, it is clear that just have a surface smile will not do you any good in the toxic office culture. Rather than faking it, you should nurture the relationships that you have tot he fullest. That will create a supportive environment and clear the toxic office culture effect of offices in general.

As per Gabriel, “I think the ‘fake it until you make it’ idea suggests a survival tactic at work. Maybe plastering on a smile to simply get out of an interaction is easier in the short run, but long term, it will undermine efforts to improve your health and the relationships you have at work…In many ways, it all boils down to, ‘Let’s be nice to each other.’ Not only will people feel better, but people’s performance and social relationships can also improve.”

But being nice is not enough. You have to be truly invested in another person and your motivation should be a driving factor as well in this area.

Gabriel continues: “The main takeaway is that deep actors – those who are really trying to be positive with their co-workers – do so for prosocial reasons and reap significant benefits from these efforts.”

So, why not take a step to drop this toxic office culture altogether and engage in some positivity?

Do you often find yourself neglecting your real self and trying to impersonate someone in the office? You can call it the ‘office way’ – you are always trying to fake confidence or some other trait just to be part of the crowd. You may be a positive person inside but the office gloom gets…

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *