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This hasn’t been a good year for jerks in the workplace. Apart from the usual controversies about egomaniacal politicians, baseball managers and CEOs, a popular new book recommends zero tolerance for assholes and a research report by the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Management School underscores the toxic organizational impact of emotions in the workplace.

Experts who study emotional intelligence, also called EQ for emotional quotient, gather data proving that highly empathetic rather than insensitive people excel in business or personal relationships. The emerging ’science’ of EQ is gaining traction among recruiters and HR executives, many of whom screen potential hires for these ’soft skills’.

What hasn’t been well understood until now is how intense emotions, especially in the workplace, impact productivity and spread from person to person.

“We engage in emotional contagion,” contends Sigal Barsade, a Wharton professor who studies the influence of emotions on the workplace. “Emotions travel from person to person like a virus.”

Can your bad day - or bad attitude -psychologically infect your co-workers? In turn, can a co-worker’s bad vibes negatively affect your productivity?

“Everybody brings their emotions to work,” adds Barsade. “You bring your brain to work. You bring your emotions to work. Feelings drive performance. They drive behavior and other feelings. Think of people as emotion conductors.”

Barsade is the co-author of a recent paper entitled, “Why Does Affect Matter in Organizations?” (”Affect” is another word for “emotion” in organizational-behavior studies.) The answer: Employees’ moods, emotions and overall dispositions have an impact on job performance, decision-making, creativity, turnover, teamwork, negotiations and leadership.

Stanford Prof. Robert Sutton, author of “The No-Asshole Rule” summarizes the lessons of his book this way:

• The rule of avoiding working with, or hiring, jerks is adopted by many organizations to avoid disharmony in the workplace
• You shouldn’t allow staff to get away with anti-social or ‘oddball’ behavior; as such behavior is likely to cause office conflict
• There is an argument for allowing just one ‘asshole’ in your office based on deviance studies. These cite that the presence of one such individual leaves everybody else is better off, as they see how not to behave.

Unconsciously, it appears that we also lead not just with our ideas and actions but also with our emotions. Do you have any co-workers who rub you the wrong way? Is there anything you can do about it?