Employees who encountered more problems while driving to work reported greater morning irritability and more negative behavior towards colleagues later that day, according to new research. A three-to-five-minute relaxing music exercise after the journey weakened the link between commute problems and irritability.
The study, published online in the Journal of Applied Psychology, followed more than 80 full-time employees over 15 working days, according to an Indiana University account of the research. The analysis covered 650 complete daily survey records.
It focused on people who drove to work. The results therefore cannot automatically be extended to employees travelling by bus, train, subway or bicycle.
Commute problems were linked to morning irritability
Jake Gale, Trevor A. Foulk, Amir Erez, Satish Krishnan, Hae-Lyeng Rose Kim and Binyamin Cooper conducted the research.
At the start of work, participants reported the demands they had encountered during that morning’s drive. The questionnaire covered stop-and-go traffic, accidents, congestion, noise, difficult weather, frequent braking and delays caused by traffic lights or stop signs.
They also rated their irritability. After work, participants reported whether they had engaged in behaviors such as speaking unpleasantly to a colleague, criticising a coworker’s suggestion, excluding somebody from a conversation, venting a bad mood or arguing over a minor matter.
These are examples of what researchers call interpersonal counterproductive work behavior. In plain English, they are actions that make working with somebody more difficult or unpleasant.
On days when participants experienced more commute demands, they reported greater morning irritability. Higher irritability was then associated with more expressed rudeness, coworker mistreatment and other counterproductive interpersonal behavior during the working day.
The commute conditions were naturally occurring rather than created by the researchers. The findings therefore show a day-to-day association, not proof that traffic or another driving problem directly caused a particular act at work.
Why small annoyances may follow drivers into work
The researchers argue that irritability is different from anger caused by one obvious event. It is a negative, highly aroused state that can build through several smaller impediments without leaving the person with one clear source to blame.
Gale, an assistant professor at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business Indianapolis, said: “When you’re driving and someone brake checks you or rides your tail, those are subtle annoyances that cumulatively create a negative experience.”
A driver may arrive at work after dealing with slow traffic, repeated braking and an inconsiderate motorist. None of those events needs to be severe. Together, however, they may leave the person more easily annoyed when a colleague asks a question or challenges an opinion.
This does not mean the colleague caused the mood. The paper’s explanation is that irritation created in one setting may be attributed to something happening in the next one.
Earlier commuting research often failed to find that general negative feelings or tension explained changes in work behavior. Gale and his colleagues suggest that the more specific state of irritability is a better fit for the repeated, relatively minor obstacles common during a difficult drive.
Relaxing music weakened part of the process
The study combined its daily surveys with two within-person interventions. The more convincing result came from relaxing music.
On five study days, participants were instructed to sit comfortably after commuting, close their eyes and listen to a three-to-five-minute track while focusing only on the music. The exercise significantly weakened the association between commute demands and morning irritability.
A supplemental field study reported by the researchers, involving 109 motorised-vehicle commuters and 863 daily records, produced a similar result.
The finding is narrower than saying music made every participant calmer. It did not establish that a short track eliminated irritability or directly prevented rude behavior. It showed that the relationship between a demanding commute and subsequent irritability was weaker when the music exercise was used.
The second intervention asked participants to consider a work event from a colleague’s perspective and write two to five sentences about how that person might think or feel. Its results were mixed. Perspective taking weakened the link between irritability and one measure of coworker mistreatment, but not the study’s measures of expressed rudeness or broader counterproductive interpersonal behavior.
Commute stress and commute time are not the same thing
The findings add to evidence that the experience of a journey can matter separately from its duration.
A three-wave study of US employees who drove to work found that commute stress, rather than commute time, was associated with greater conflict between work and personal life. That conflict was associated with lower leisure and family satisfaction.
A separate three-wave survey of 340 full-time employees linked commute stress to negative emotions, which were associated with poorer performance in required duties and voluntary activities that help an organisation. Employees who were better at regulating their emotions experienced a weaker link between commute stress and negative feelings.
Both were observational survey studies and do not prove that commute stress caused the outcomes. Journey time is not irrelevant either. A systematic review of 45 studies found that commute duration and transport mode were related to some wellbeing and mental-health outcomes, although the causal pathways remained unclear.
What employers can conclude
The principal study has several important limits. It involved a relatively small group of drivers, lasted 15 working days and relied on participants to report their own workplace behavior. The researchers did not observe their interactions or ask colleagues to rate them.
It also does not show that every bad drive results in mistreatment or that commuting is the main cause of poor workplace behavior. Management practices, workload, sleep and many other factors can affect how an employee treats other people.
Even so, the repeated daily measurements allowed the researchers to compare each employee with the same person on other days. The pattern was not simply that habitually irritable people also disliked commuting. Within individuals, more demanding commute days were associated with more irritability and worse self-reported interpersonal behavior.
Companies cannot remove roadworks or prevent congestion, and the study does not make employers responsible for every journey. It does suggest that the transition between the car and the first demanding interaction of the day deserves some attention.
A short period of relaxing music is cheap and easy for a driver to try. However, the evidence supports that specific exercise more clearly than broader workplace policies such as delayed meetings or flexible start times, which the researchers did not test.
Whether crowded public transport, a disrupted rail journey or a difficult bicycle commute produces the same pattern remains unanswered. Further research will also need to establish whether the music intervention works as well for those commuters.
