Let’s face it: Some people just have a knack for bringing their bad vibes and appalling habits to work with them.

You know the type. They’re not always negative people, but are inclined to let negative emotions—their fears, their anxieties—seep into every team project they touch. They’re likeable enough, but also seem fond of testing everyone’s patience, from the benign (leaving the breakroom a mess) to the cruel (snide comments, offensive remarks).

So, we try our best to endure, and not let the bad habits and negative emotions of others define our perceptions of the person. We try to keep the creative process free of their foul moods, and we assume we can salvage positive outcomes despite one person’s poor attitude.

But can we, really? 

It’s actually surprisingly hard to keep an individual worker’s negativity from poisoning the entire team-based process, says UD management Prof. Kyle Emich, who studies how the emotions and personalities of one’s teammates affect workplace performance. 

Emich and coauthor Lynne Vincent of Syracuse University conclude in a recent study that the bad influence of negative people is often amplified by their mindset: Negative people are likely to be more focused on preventing bad outcomes than on promoting good ones—a dynamic that also serves to stifle the creative process by shifting the momentum toward selecting an idea rather than coming up with new ideas.

Some of Emich’s conclusions seem to heed common sense: By tackling challenges with a “promotional” mindset, team members help accommodate the creation of novel ideas. This is why being in a good mood generally improves creativity. 

But other conclusions in the study might seem counterintuitive: The researchers also found that negative emotions don’t always have to be associated with negative outcomes, and that having a few prevention-focused people on the team can help keep especially large groups grounded and realistic about their ideas. Some negative emotions—such as anger—can actually help people come up with new ideas.

“When people are angry, they don’t really care about the risks, they just want to go do something,” providing the “promotional” energy needed to achieve the goal, says Emich, whose study involved 1,625 participants on 427 work teams. “We found on the other hand that when team members were experiencing tension or fear, their teams were not able to come up with anything new or groundbreaking.”

So the next time someone brings their bad mood to work, beware: The collateral damage could be bigger than you think.