

People really don't like unselfish colleagues - Terretta
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100823101110.htm

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zeteo
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.

~~~
yummyfajitas
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
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?

~~~
yummyfajitas
A = 1 standard dev above the mean. B = mean. C = 1 std dev below the mean, but
still performed remotely adequately. D = "If your major is theater and the
class is math, I won't stop you from graduating."

~~~
philwelch
Traditionally (and as is still the case at some schools, according to a friend
of mine now at Georgia Tech), the scale was:

A = Exceptionally above the mean. B = 1 stdev above the mean. C = mean. D = 1
stdev below the mean. F = More than 1 stdev below the mean.

At most schools, however, grade inflation has changed the scale upwards to
what you said.

~~~
ams6110
Interestingly, in many of my middle- and high-school classes, grades were not
based on standard deviations from the mean of actual class performance; they
were a fixed scale: 90% or better was an "A", 80 - 89% was a B, 70 - 79% was a
"C", etc. So you really could have the entire class be "better than average"
(by the more usual method of computing a "C" grade) if the teacher made an
assignment too easy.

My son's school still does this, though they've slid the scale up a bit, you
need a 93% or better now to get an "A", and they've added a safety net: if you
turn in any kind of reasonable attempt at all work assigned you will not get
lower than a D- in the class.

~~~
philwelch
There's no requirement that you curve the scores to any real distribution
after the fact--you can design your tests with the intention that the average
student gets 70-79% of the questions correct and students in other quintiles
get higher or lower scores, or with the intention that the average student
gets 80-89% of the questions correct, or with some other mix of intentions and
related test scores. With some experience and fiddling I bet you could get a
grading system like you describe which fell along a standard distribution.

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rdtsc
_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.

~~~
lsc
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
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."

~~~
lsc
A tech company with the "Don't make us look bad" attitude is not going to last
long, at least, not as a tech company.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
A startup with that attitude won't last long. Tech companies can last quite a
long time with any poisonous attitude, once the cash cow has been found.

I've experienced "work by CYA." It isn't pretty, but it has the "advantage"
that nothing too bad ever happens.

~~~
lsc
usually those companies become primarily sales oriented rather than technology
oriented. Take Oracle. Yeah, they have some technology... and they even
develop some new stuff. But primarily they work in sales. A less radical
example would be Microsoft.

The problem with the cya approach is that it minimizes the risk for any
particular individual, not for the organization as a whole. They don't take
the option that is least likely to fail, they take the option that is least
likely to bite them personally in the ass if it does fail.

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frankc
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.

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grellas
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.

~~~
yalurker
"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
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.

~~~
Xurinos
> Common sense on the other hand is the accumulation of your observations of
> humanity over a lifetime.

There is no such thing as common sense, and it is anecdotal, at best. Now if
the OP and a statistically significant number of people joined together to
assert the same point about the specific society discussed, we may have
something.

~~~
TGJ
How would you ever get a statistically significant number of people to agree
on anything if each person relied on those sets of statistics to assert their
point?

------
astine
"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.

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

~~~
ams6110
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.

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

------
scrod
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.

~~~
anigbrowl
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...](http://www.iaa.unisg.ch/org/few/web.nsf/SysWebRessources/Pub_CT_Science/$FILE/HerrmannTh%C3%B6niG%C3%A4chter2008\(Science\)+Antisocial+Punishment+Across+Societies.pdf)

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

~~~
anigbrowl
Tee-hee - it is pretty irritating. Just google 'antisocial punishment' -
social punishment is the more familiar phenomenon of not rewarding cheaters,
but it turns out not to be the norm in all societies. gScholar has the most 3
or papers near the top of the list.

