‘Helpful’ Coworkers Are Less Liked, Study Finds
Unselfish, do-gooder coworkers are among the least liked by colleagues, a new study finds. It’s because those who are the first to volunteer help raise the bar, and other workers feel the new standard will make everyone look bad.
“It doesn’t matter that the overall welfare of the group or the task at hand is better served by someone’s unselfish behavior. What is objectively good, you see as subjectively bad,” study co-author Craig Parks of Washington State University told Wired Science.
Participants in the study were asked to play a game over a computer network with four other people. The game involved putting points into a kitty and taking others out, trying to both end up with the most points in their personal account but also to max out the points in the central pot for an unspecified bonus.
The catch? The other players were actually computer programs; one was programmed to play selfishly and take as many points as possible; another was programmed to play altruistically and give up as many points as possible.
The experiment was supposed to study the social consequences of cheating; the unselfish “player” was put in as a control. But when the human players were asked who they’d prefer to play with again, a majority of participants named both the cheat and the unselfish player. “They frequently said, ‘the person is making me look bad’ or is breaking the rules,” reports Wired. “Occasionally, they would suspect the person had ulterior motives.”
Wow.
There you have it: altruism at work is not always rewarded. Will this change how you do your job?
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