People really don't like unselfish colleagues

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100823101110.htm

by Terretta • 16 years ago

57 41 16 years ago

rdtsc• 16 years ago

Parks and Stone found that unselfish colleagues come to be resented because they "raise the bar" for what is expected of everyone. As a result, workers feel the new standard will make everyone else look bad

Please. People don't like others who raise the bar. This is not news. The same thing can be said about co-workers that work harder. Sure others don't like them because during the performance review they will be compared to them.

leot• 16 years ago

People don't like others who raise the bar.

How much don't they like others? Under what circumstances? Why? are all people like this? Is there a way to model this behavior?

The same thing can be said about co-workers that work harder. Sure others don't like them because during the performance review they will be compared to them.

What if the co-workers were good friends? What if the co-workers made the team look good? What if the co-workers were charismatic and sincere? What if the co-workers had done significant favors for each of the 'others' individually?

A lot of science is carefully proving and describing the obvious.

Now, I don't know if this study succeeded is doing so based on the article ... but in general, when common knowledge is distilled to precise facts it becomes something you can, e.g., use in software.

baguasquirrel• 16 years ago

Social identity theory suggests that if a close friend excels in an area that is important to us, then we will feel threatened by them. But if they excel in an area not important to us, we will share in their success.

Research into basic desires also suggests that some people are competitive in nature, to the exclusion of others.

So to help you find an answer to your question:

Are we concerned about our performance on the job? Are we concerned about career advancement in general?

Are the person(s) in question a competitive (i.e. vengeful) personality? What about the rest of the team? Americans are notable for having one of the most competitive cultures in the West, whereas Germany has one of the least.

lsc4• 16 years ago

I think the interesting thing about technical work is that the real productivity gains are not in working harder, but in using better methods. If your co-worker is way more effective at a technical job, you can usually learn from her and become more effective yourself, without working much or any harder...

I think this is an important distinction... if my co-worker raises the bar by working harder, then yeah, I'm expected to work harder. but if my co-worker brings more effective methods? suddenly I become very interested in learning from this co-worker.

weaksauce• 16 years ago

I agree with you, but I am also hesitant to say that we are in the majority of people. When someone does something more efficiently I am all ears just like you. I don't think that the majority of people distinguish hard worker and more efficient worker though so the two get lumped into the category of "makes me look bad."

pavel_lishin• 16 years ago

> suddenly I become very interested in learning from this co-worker.

Which doesn't mean you like them, or don't resent them.

(Not you personally, but the average employee.)

scrod• 16 years ago

This is merely another downside of competition within groups, where a boss or other administrative entity would compare individuals' relative performance, and as a result create a group incentive to maintain lower productivity.

When group members are directly responsible to each other, as in the case of a small startup or egalitarian cooperative, this effect disappears.

I'd imagine it would be fairly straightforward to model this in game-theoretic terms.

Terretta• 16 years ago

> in the case of a small startup or egalitarian cooperative, this effect disappears

Not sure about that egalitarian cooperative counterexample. As shown whenever people are co-opted into a cooperative, "all animals are selfish, but some animals are more selfish than others."

However, your startup example is certainly in line with other research suggesting cooperation among kin:

http://svenssonresearchlaboratory.blogspot.com/2009/04/under...

Perhaps the key is the social networking mentioned in this link. These students in this submission's article were not necessarily part of a social network. This has implications for the HR department when a company grows large enough to have a "company culture".

anigbrowl2• 16 years ago

Distressingly, it turns out that antisocial punishment can evolve as easily as social punishment, and has done so in many societies: http://www.iaa.unisg.ch/org/few/web.nsf/SysWebRessources/Pub...

This is something of a hot topic in the economics/psychology are now - several new papers are out along the same lines, but most of them are still paywalled. I have a hunch that predispositions to act one way or the other will turn out to be strongly correlated with a person's perceptions of social mobility.

A large-scale (albeit stereotypical) example of what the OP is talking about is in the economics of labor relations, where an individual 'eager beaver' attitude and the collective goals of a union are somewhat at odds.

v21• 16 years ago

Name them and maybe some piratical paywall activist will share them for us all.

zeteo• 16 years ago

Gah. Where do we even begin with this article's problems?

1. The studies were done with college students (a very unrepresentative, and relatively immature group), in a non-organization (basically they were linked only by a possible monetary reward at the end) and with some very trivial incentive in play. If this has "implications for business work groups, volunteer organizations, non-profit projects, military units, and environmental efforts", please let us know how those implications are arrived at!

2. The description of the experiment is unclear and self-contradictory: "...pools of points that they could keep or give up for an immediate reward of meal service vouchers. Participants were also told that giving up points would improve the group's chance of receiving a monetary reward." So if you "give up" points you _both_ get free meals _and_ you improve the group's welfare?! That doesn't make any sense.

3. What's the deal with the rules - what rules were the "do-gooders" breaking? They're only mentioned in passing but they seem essential for the meaning of the experiment.

yummyfajitas2• 16 years ago

Regarding point 1), it's even worse than that. College students live in an environment where "do-gooder" behavior objectively harms them.

If I slack off and you study hard, the professor is comparing my 40/100 to your 85/100. This results in me getting a lower letter grade.

zephyrfalcon• 16 years ago

To be honest, I never understood this letter grading system used in the US (and maybe elsewhere)... and if you already have scores (like 40/100 vs 85/100), why even bother with another system?

Confusion• 16 years ago

4. The situation is completely artificial, to the extent that experimental partners are simulated and behave randomly. The conclusion could as well be that people don't like erratic behavior, even if the unpredictable behavior is do-goody. I can completely empathize with that: don't we all want to be able to depend on a colleague? To be sure that something that gets promised gets done and gets done well? Someone that behaves erratically is simply less trustworthy.

grellas• 16 years ago

Psychological studies of this type tend only to promote superficial analysis.

A co-worker who has a gracious, giving spirit (and, hence, is unselfish) is infinitely to be preferred to one embodies the opposite traits. That is the person who will be there when times get tough and sacrifice is required. It is the person who will not dart out the door, or dodge responsibility, when something has gone wrong and people have to step up to take responsibility. It is the person who will respect you as a co-worker, who will take a personal interest in knowing that you are well, who will sympathize when you share a problem, who will support you through your trials - I am not talking here about one who is a close friend but rather of the traits exemplified by one who has a loving, kind spirit that is ever alert to show concern for the welfare of others and who is willing to sacrifice for the good of larger aims besides immediate self-interest.

That is what I think of when I think of working with "unselfish colleagues." A genuinely unselfish person is an admirable person by any measure and will usually be humble to boot, not focusing on outward show and phony braggadocio that tends to the sort of self-advancement that is the exact opposite of unselfish.

Such people are known to all of us and are universally admired, or pretty nearly so. And the character traits that underlie the core of such a person cannot be identified or isolated in a superficial study of a few college students playing an artificial game or two.

Common sense will always trump "science" in our understanding of areas such as this and will allow us to sense intuitively what we really don't need people in white lab coats to tell us.

NewHighScore• 16 years ago

Well stated.

StavrosK• 16 years ago

The title is quite misleading, I think. The article clarifies that the sort of people others resent is the person who is too eager to volunteer for things, thus raising the bar for everyone and creating more work.

If someone at your office worked 16 hours a day, making you look bad, even though nobody would reasonably expect you to work that long if your colleague didn't do it, wouldn't you resent them?

Unfortunately, it's all relative, so the fact that he's hard-working makes you look lazy by comparison.

yalurker• 16 years ago

"Common sense will always trump "science" in our understanding of areas such as this and will allow us to sense intuitively what we really don't need people in white lab coats to tell us."

Wow, there is so much wrong with this sentence I can't believe it got up votes. This particular study may have flaws, and/or there may be errors in extrapolating the results of this isolated game to general workplace dynamics, but that doesn't mean science is bad.

"Common sense" does not, ever, trump science. "Common sense" is a lazy excuse for "I have an opinion that I can't back up with any data". How many times haven't we all read someone trying to make a claim like "It's common sense that marriage should be between one man and one woman".

Different people might have wildly different ideas backed up by "common sense". That's why we do studies - to find out what the truth is, even if it disproves our initial guess or we are uncomfortable/unhappy with the result.

timwiseman• 16 years ago

In the hard sciences, you are absolutely right.

In social sciences, I am not certain you are correct, there is at least a solid counterargument.

All social sciences are dealing with topics with numerous confounding variables that cannot be removed, and many others that they do not try to remove.Common sense on the other hand is the accumulation of your observations of humanity over a lifetime.

I think Mr. Grellas' statement may be too strong, the social sciences likely will eventually catch up to and surprass any individuals common sense in understanding humanity. But I think that day is a very long way away and it will likely include the subjective observations of trained and worldly observers like Desmond Morris even when it does arrive.

For the forseeable future, I suspect he is right and that the common sense of an observant and worldly person is a better predictor of human behavior than the formal social sciences.

bugsy2• 16 years ago

Feynman could tell whether or not there was a flaw in a proof just by hearing what the conclusion was and applying common sense. That worked for him since he had a really good intuition based on decades of thinking and personally observing.

Let me give an example. Let's say that you read a study by Cheesodyne Rocket Corporation that the Moon is made of extremely valuable and delicious Stilton cheese.

You could invest in this company based on their scientific analysis, perhaps even redirect your entire society to paying Cheesodyne exorbitant amounts to spend 20 years building a rocket. Critics can be mocked, downvoted, and placed in shackles for being ignorant unscientific rubes who don't understand that all studies published in journals represent absolute Truth that May Not Be Questioned.

Or you could use common sense and say that there's obviously a flaw in the study because the conclusion just ain't right.

PlanarPlatypus• 16 years ago

To put it another way, some people want to do the minimum they can to get paid and don't get any kind of fulfilment from their work. Couple this with the prevailing management practice of "man hours" scheduling[1] and the reason for the resentment described becomes obvious.

On the subject of "common sense" always trumping science I suggest reading the examples linked from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterintuitive

[1] The line is usually "Well blah managed to process 200 forms while you only managed 150, why are you so slow?". The debate the advisability of this method is another question.

frankc• 16 years ago

This is quite the definition of "unselfish". When I think unselfish, I think of the guy who steps in to help you out with something and doesn't ask for any credit or imply a quid pro quo. I don't think of glory hogs who go out of their way to make a spectacle of their work ethic.

JoeAltmaier• 16 years ago

Is this even a bad thing? Do you have to like someone to work with them?

ams61102• 16 years ago

No you don't. And I often wish that companies would stop trying to treat the employees as some kind of big "family." Company picnics, bowling, golf, Christmas parties, etc. that everyone is urged if not forced to go to (outside of work hours of course). About 10 years ago I just stopped going to these things. I already spend 40 - 50 hours a week with all these people, I don't need an evening or weekend day stolen from my time with my REAL family and friends to spend more time with co-workers.

astine• 16 years ago

"Parks and Stone found that unselfish colleagues come to be resented because they "raise the bar" for what is expected of everyone. As a result, workers feel the new standard will make everyone else look bad."

This kind of attitude, is not an attitude you want people working for you to have.

astrofinch• 16 years ago

What if the students that the psychology profs hired weren't very good actors, and their selfless behavior didn't seem genuine?

People really don't like unselfish colleagues

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