We often assume that how we respond to a rude comment says something stable about us: our personality, our culture, even the language we are speaking. If someone reacts calmly, we presume they are a patient person. If they snap back, we might assume they are short-tempered.
But our research suggests something more immediate is at work. In tense moments, several factors interact, and how we feel “right now” often shapes our reply as much as – and sometimes more than – who we are in general.
In our 2025 study, published in the Journal of Pragmatics, we explored how bilingual people respond to workplace impoliteness. Our findings challenge a common assumption: that stable traits such as emotional intelligence can reliably predict how people will manage difficult interactions.
Instead, we found that momentary mood has a measurable effect on how people respond to rudeness, while stable traits have more influence over the decision to engage. Emotional intelligence, as a general trait, did not predict these responses in the way we might expect.
We worked with 104 Spanish-English bilinguals. Participants first completed a questionnaire measuring emotional intelligence. They were then placed in either a positive or negative mood, induced through videos designed to elicit emotional responses. Finally, they responded to ten workplace scenarios involving impoliteness, in both Spanish (their first language) and English (their second language).
The scenarios included direct criticism, sarcastic remarks, and more subtle forms of impoliteness, such as not thanking someone for a gift or failing to give feedback after a presentation.
This design allowed us to ask three key questions:
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Does emotional intelligence influence how we respond to rudeness?
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Does our current mood influence our linguistic choices?
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Do we react differently in our first and second languages?
Emotional intelligence: less decisive than expected
A central hypothesis was that people with higher emotional intelligence would handle impoliteness more constructively. That did not happen. There were no significant correlations between overall emotional intelligence scores and the types of responses participants produced.
Why might that be? Our results point to an important distinction: emotional intelligence is not the same as morality, character, or adherence to social norms. When faced with rudeness, participants may have been guided less by their ability to process emotions and more by their personal moral codes.
This showed up clearly in comments from participants with lower emotional intelligence scores who chose not to respond at all to rudeness. Their answers included statements like:
“Better not to answer than say something I’d regret”
“I wouldn’t want to put myself on their level and be sarcastic”
In other words, someone who might feel anger and lack the tools to regulate it could still choose restraint because of their values. From a socio-cognitive perspective, emotional intelligence may shape how people internally appraise the offence, but social norms and personal ethics seem to take over when it comes to what they actually say.
This echoes earlier findings that, in conflict situations, culture and norms often outweigh emotional traits, with emotional intelligence acting only as a mediator.
Read more:
Trying your best in a second language? Here’s why native speakers seem so rude
Sociability: the trait that matters
While overall emotional intelligence did not predict responses, one facet did: sociability. This trait is linked to confidence in social interaction and assertiveness.
Less sociable participants were more likely to stay silent in the face of impoliteness, whereas more sociable ones tended to respond, often assertively. Choosing not to respond can be a way of dealing with rudeness: it may mean the person felt offended but chose not to show it, or that they did not want to express their feelings openly.
This finding challenges the idea that our responses to impoliteness are a simple, reciprocal “tit for tat”. Instead, personal agency can play a role in deciding whether we engage at all.
Read more:
Does rudeness have a legitimate place in politics? The case for and against
Mood: the strongest predictor
Where personality traits were weak predictors, mood was powerful. Participants in a negative mood produced more offensive counter-attacks, while those in a positive mood showed greater acceptance of impoliteness.
But the story is subtler than it first appears. Although people in a negative mood responded offensively more often, the offensive replies produced by those in a positive mood were sometimes more direct, blunt, and strongly worded. This suggests that good moods may reduce concern for social expectations, leading to fewer but harsher outbursts.
These patterns align with psychological research showing that mood affects how carefully we process social rules. Negative moods can trigger more constrained, socially aware processing, while positive moods can lead to looser adherence to norms.
No difference between languages
One of the most surprising results was what didn’t happen. We expected that participants would be more tolerant of impoliteness in English – their second language – assuming that a second language carries less emotional weight. Instead, responses were strikingly similar in both languages.
This may be due to:
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Pragmatic transfer: participants applied the same social response patterns from their first language to their second language
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High proficiency in English: all participants had an upper-intermediate and above proficiency level in English
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The influence of personal beliefs and social identity overriding language differences.
In short, when people feel offended, they seem to draw on the same pragmatic toolkit, regardless of the language they are using.
Read more:
Impulse and inhibition: the complex ways bilingual brains balance reason with emotion
Workplace implications
Our study has clear implications for workplace communication.
Recent conversations about wellbeing and mental health have encouraged openness about mood in professional settings. And this openness is not a trivial matter: our mood genuinely affects how we communicate under stress. A tense morning, a bad meeting or personal worries can all make us more likely to fire back at a colleague. A good day, however, may make us more tolerant, or occasionally more blunt.
For language learning and intercultural communication, the findings are equally important. Teaching pragmatic or cultural norms in a second language may not be enough. Understanding how emotions, personality, and social norms interact is key to navigating conflict across languages.
Our study’s title, “How we are versus how we are feeling”, captures its core message. When faced with rudeness, how we feel in the moment may matter more than personality. Emotional intelligence did not predict reactions in a straightforward way. Mood and sociability likely combined with personal morality and social norms to shape what participants actually said.
In everyday life, this means our curt reply to a rude email may not say much about our character, but it does say a lot about whether we skipped lunch, slept badly, or had a frustrating commute.
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