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American Morning

Driving Mad

Aired August 08, 2003 - 07:36   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: You know all about road rage, right? Well, a new study that we first told you about yesterday says that the stress of commuting can spill over into the workplace and do so in ugly ways. This report says that an irritating commute makes it more likely that a worker will be hostile to others while on the job.
Dwight Hennessy is an assistant professor of psychology at Buffalo State College in New York and he's the one who conducts this study we talked about and he joins us this morning from Buffalo.

Good morning.

Glad to have you with us.

And in the interests of full disclosure, I must say that we kind of chuckled at this yesterday. It sort of drew a big duh? You know, in the studio here we talked about this study, saying that commute -- bad commutes means, you know, a bad time at work for folks.

But tell us more about this and what in this report should surprise us.

DWIGHT HENNESSY, BUFFALO STATE COLLEGE: Well, in large part, I think what really surprised me in some respects was that this happened mainly among men, that, you know, I'm not suggesting that women don't engage in workplace aggression, and this is consistent with other research that men are more likely to be both the perpetrators and victims. But a lot of this is not what you'd stereotypically think of as workplace aggression. I think there's a stereotype of that "postal worker syndrome" of violence that happens.

But most of this is fairly subtle and...

HARRIS: Like how?

HENNESSY: I think this is really consistent with a lot of the emerging research on workplace aggression that -- I think people try to engage in this in ways that aren't really blatant, that they can get away with and have alternate excuses for, things like staring or dirty looks, which was actually the number one; belittling people; intentionally interrupting them. These don't sound like, on the surface, like they are, you know, outright violence, but when you look at them in terms of a pattern, they lump together and over time really do make for an unhealthy workplace because these can create further conflict that then escalates and creates more stress in the workplace and so on and so on. And... HARRIS: Doctor, tell us how you drew the conclusions, though, that this was related to commuting. I mean couldn't we just be talking here about just some pretty just plain mean people?

HENNESSY: We could be, but one of the things that we did look at was people's personality and we're controlling for that over and above the personality. Those who had a more difficult commute that day, those who reported greater stress during that morning actually demonstrated more stress during that actual -- or, sorry, more aggression during that work day.

HARRIS: Did you find any differences in the, among the kind of jobs that people had? Were some jobs more prone to have these kind of problems than others?

HENNESSY: Well, in this study there weren't enough variations in the job types, but there are studies out there on differences between job types.

HARRIS: OK.

HENNESSY: In this case, just not enough differences to have anything meaningful.

HARRIS: All right, real quickly, give us an idea of some suggestions that you have for solving this problem here, aside from moving closer to work.

HENNESSY: Well, that actually would be a big one. But, you know, some of the biggest reasons for commuter stress are things like congestion. And we've done some work, David Wiesenthal (ph) at York University, who's also part of this symposium at APA, also has some recent research that listening to music, deep breathing can actually help reduce stress. There's some great stuff. Organizations are trying to help people deal with their frustration and anger at work, a wonderful way to help solve this problem. Social support from families is a great way to help reduce aggression in the workplace.

HARRIS: Well, I'm glad that you were able to bring all that to our attention this morning and it really convinced us this was a very serious and very in depth report there.

Dr. Dwight Hennessy, thank you very much.

Appreciate that.

HENNESSY: Thank you.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com







Aired August 8, 2003 - 07:36   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: You know all about road rage, right? Well, a new study that we first told you about yesterday says that the stress of commuting can spill over into the workplace and do so in ugly ways. This report says that an irritating commute makes it more likely that a worker will be hostile to others while on the job.
Dwight Hennessy is an assistant professor of psychology at Buffalo State College in New York and he's the one who conducts this study we talked about and he joins us this morning from Buffalo.

Good morning.

Glad to have you with us.

And in the interests of full disclosure, I must say that we kind of chuckled at this yesterday. It sort of drew a big duh? You know, in the studio here we talked about this study, saying that commute -- bad commutes means, you know, a bad time at work for folks.

But tell us more about this and what in this report should surprise us.

DWIGHT HENNESSY, BUFFALO STATE COLLEGE: Well, in large part, I think what really surprised me in some respects was that this happened mainly among men, that, you know, I'm not suggesting that women don't engage in workplace aggression, and this is consistent with other research that men are more likely to be both the perpetrators and victims. But a lot of this is not what you'd stereotypically think of as workplace aggression. I think there's a stereotype of that "postal worker syndrome" of violence that happens.

But most of this is fairly subtle and...

HARRIS: Like how?

HENNESSY: I think this is really consistent with a lot of the emerging research on workplace aggression that -- I think people try to engage in this in ways that aren't really blatant, that they can get away with and have alternate excuses for, things like staring or dirty looks, which was actually the number one; belittling people; intentionally interrupting them. These don't sound like, on the surface, like they are, you know, outright violence, but when you look at them in terms of a pattern, they lump together and over time really do make for an unhealthy workplace because these can create further conflict that then escalates and creates more stress in the workplace and so on and so on. And... HARRIS: Doctor, tell us how you drew the conclusions, though, that this was related to commuting. I mean couldn't we just be talking here about just some pretty just plain mean people?

HENNESSY: We could be, but one of the things that we did look at was people's personality and we're controlling for that over and above the personality. Those who had a more difficult commute that day, those who reported greater stress during that morning actually demonstrated more stress during that actual -- or, sorry, more aggression during that work day.

HARRIS: Did you find any differences in the, among the kind of jobs that people had? Were some jobs more prone to have these kind of problems than others?

HENNESSY: Well, in this study there weren't enough variations in the job types, but there are studies out there on differences between job types.

HARRIS: OK.

HENNESSY: In this case, just not enough differences to have anything meaningful.

HARRIS: All right, real quickly, give us an idea of some suggestions that you have for solving this problem here, aside from moving closer to work.

HENNESSY: Well, that actually would be a big one. But, you know, some of the biggest reasons for commuter stress are things like congestion. And we've done some work, David Wiesenthal (ph) at York University, who's also part of this symposium at APA, also has some recent research that listening to music, deep breathing can actually help reduce stress. There's some great stuff. Organizations are trying to help people deal with their frustration and anger at work, a wonderful way to help solve this problem. Social support from families is a great way to help reduce aggression in the workplace.

HARRIS: Well, I'm glad that you were able to bring all that to our attention this morning and it really convinced us this was a very serious and very in depth report there.

Dr. Dwight Hennessy, thank you very much.

Appreciate that.

HENNESSY: Thank you.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com