(Xinhua) — Workers who are worried about negative gossip or being snubbed by their colleagues could end up hurting themselves, a new study says.

The study by the University of British Columbia said that paranoid employees have motivation to seek out information to confirm their fears but in the process, could ultimately annoy colleagues and increase the likelihood they would be rejected.

Karl Aquino, the study’s lead author and a professor at the UBC Sauder School of Business, said it was natural for people to wonder how others view them, especially when social acceptance in the workplace is often rewarded with power and financial compensation.

“However, our research shows employees should do their best to keep their interactions positive and ignore the negative,” Aquino said of the study recently published in the journal Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. “As the expression goes, kill them with kindness.”