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The reactions triggering in the brain seems to move to other areas of the brain, when we continue to observe.
Everyone knows the uncomfortable feeling of watching a boss yell at a colleague.
For years, experts have focused on how that toxicity affects the direct victim, leaving the silent bystanders in the background.
Now, scientists are peering directly into the minds of those witnesses to see exactly what drives them to speak up or stay quiet.
Inside the mind
Researchers from Rutgers Business School teamed up with the university’s brain health institute for a unique experiment.
They placed volunteers inside a medical scanner and showed them videos of supervisors verbally attacking staff members.
According to the research team, the goal was to shift the focus away from the main target and onto the people watching from the sidelines.
“We often think of workplace abuse as something that affects only the target,” explained doctoral candidate Nguyen Pham in a university release.
Watching it happen
The data showed that seeing a toxic interaction immediately triggers the parts of the brain linked to alarm and anger.
However, as the person continues to watch, the brain activity quickly shifts to areas associated with moral judgment.
The study found that simply feeling angry was not the main reason people decided to intervene or offer support.
Instead, the researchers discovered that deep empathy was the strongest predictor of whether someone would actually take a stand.
Pham added that the scans “gave us a sort of window into the potential emotional and moral processes that shape whether someone might stand up to abusers or stand down.”
These findings were presented at the recent Academy of Management Conference in Copenhagen.
Building better teams
The results suggest that companies hoping to fix toxic office cultures should focus on building compassion rather than just sparking outrage.
David H. Zald, a psychiatry professor at Rutgers, praised the cross-disciplinary effort in a statement.
“By providing scanner access, technical guidance for integrating behavioral tasks into imaging protocols, analysis support and pilot funding, the center helped make this project feasible,” Zald noted.
Ultimately, understanding how witnesses react could be the key to fixing broken work environments from the inside out.
Sources: Rutgers Health, ScienceDaily
