
Nice People Really Do Have More Fun - JoshTriplett
http://www.wsj.com/articles/nice-people-really-do-have-more-fun-1476916829
======
grecy
I once had it explained to me there are two kinds of happiness in the world,
additive and subtractive.

In subtractive, a person tries to add happiness to their life by taking it
away from other people around them - putting people down, criticizing, picking
on people, name calling, etc. Other people are never good enough in their
eyes.

In additive, a person adds happiness to their life by giving it to other
people around them - compliments, fun activities, positive attitude, etc.
Making those around them happier makes the person happier.

It changed my perspective on a lot of people when I viewed their actions in
this way.

~~~
jsprogrammer
You may have a very skewed perspective if you think that anyone who is giving
criticism is trying to make themselves happy at others' expense.

~~~
pjc50
That's .. not what that post said at all. Maybe your perspective is the skewed
one?

There's a difference between constructive criticism, and people for whom
criticism is the dominant mode of conversation.

~~~
jsprogrammer
That's exactly what the post said. Maybe you can provide a different
interpretation?

>In subtractive, _a person tries to add happiness to their life by taking it
away from other people around them - putting people down,_ _criticizing_ _,
picking on people, name calling, etc._

~~~
yequalsx
It's clear from the "putting people down" and "name calling" part of that
sentence that the criticizing is not meant in a constructive sense. The poster
is clearly talking about a situation in which a person feels lifted up,
happier by bringing others down. Such a person, in that capacity, is not
providing constructive feedback.

~~~
jsprogrammer
You can argue that they are not providing constructive feedback, but the claim
was:

> _a person tries to add happiness to their life by taking it away from other
> people around them_

~~~
striking
There's an ambiguity in the comment, but reading the comment charitably can
dispel the notion that the person claimed _any_ form of criticism is a form of
maliciously bringing people down.

Read it however you want, but taken in context I disagree that that's their
intended claim. I think that poster meant that malicious criticism is
something that can make unhappy people feel a little better about themselves.

~~~
jsprogrammer
There is little ambiguity. The space of happiness was divided into two
mutually exclusive groups (subtractive & additive) with the listed qualities.

------
whamlastxmas
> In 2003, scholars from the University of South Carolina looked at the impact
> of being nice on perceived male attractiveness. They recruited 194 female
> volunteers to participate in a mock dating game in which they had to pick
> between two men, Todd and Mike. The researchers varied Todd’s levels of
> handsomeness and “niceness” while keeping Mike’s personality and looks
> constant and neutral.

This sounds like a bullshit experiment. I seriously doubt the researchers
managed to capture the effective kind of cocky/jerk behavior that works well
with some women. Additionally, they're measuring self-reported opinions from
women, rather than what the real-world result would be. I say this without any
sort of negativity attached to it, but women often say they feel one thing
while acting as though they feel another, especially as it pertains to their
relationships with men. Again, I don't think this is a negative trait, it just
is what it is. I see men all the time acting less than gentlemanly towards
women and having the woman verbally shooting him down, but still going home to
sleep with him. It's so predictable when done right.

~~~
sunny16
Just want to clarify something here- I think guys too often assume that the
"jerk" part of "cocky jerk" is somehow a key component of getting the girl.
It's not. The confidence is the important part. A confident, nice guy has just
as much of a chance with a girl as a confident, mean guy. I would argue he has
a better chance.

The term "Nice Guy" describes a guy who thinks he is being "gentlemanly" when
really he's just being shy. I think it's important to distinguish kindness
from confidence, lest we all start treating women poorly in an effort to get
them to sleep with us.

~~~
pmoriarty
Yours and the comment you're replying to sound so reductive. People are
different. They like other people for lots of different reasons that can't be
reduced to a single trait or even a handful of traits. There are 7 billion
people on this planet, and you are both generalizing this stuff to the moon.

~~~
whamlastxmas
I made a point to qualify everything I said.

"some women", "women often say", "all the time" (instead of every time),
"predictable"

There are 7 billion people, and even if it's 7 billion unique snowflakes,
they're still all snowflakes. We're more alike than we are different. This is
especially true when you boil it down to young, unmarried, childless, American
women who are social and go to places where they can meet men. These are the
women whose opinion on a man's approach matter the most in the context of
dating advice. Sure, these women are all unique in their own ways, but they
are not very unique in what they find attractive in men.

------
elt0n
"In my view, the fact that niceness beats physical beauty is evidence of the
existence of God."

Wait, what? Isn't this a highly subjective and religious claim that comes out
of nowhere and isn't relevant to the article? Or is that a commonly used
expression I am unaware of?

~~~
whamlastxmas
To me it seemed to be written entirely as a joke. The idea being that this is
an example of inherit goodness in the universe that we don't often see since
the entire model is based on ever-dwindling entropy. The universe is
pessimistic by nature if you think about it.

------
sotojuan
> Selfish nastiness is all the rage, but research shows that pleasant behavior
> leads to more success and happiness in life

What does the first part of the sentence mean? Where is "selfish nastiness"
considered good? Even on social media the jerks are either blocked, ignored,
or waste time in silly arguments. If people are rude in the media, it's
because watching people be nice all day isn't very fun.

~~~
coldtea
> _What does the first part of the sentence mean? Where is "selfish nastiness"
> considered good?_

In political candidates with strange hairdos who attract a huge majority of
the population, in fictional pop heroes like Dr. Gregory House, in actual pop
heroes like Kanye West and numerous other places besides...

~~~
fjh
House is basically a modern interpretation of Sherlock Holmes, with the same
unpleasant personality. Which seems to contradict the idea that jerk
protagonists are a new phenomenon.

~~~
adrianratnapala
I didn't notice that House and Holmes were supposed to be unpleasant people.

~~~
antisthenes
Are you sure you were watching the same shows?

It's about House MD, the doctor and Sherlock, played by Benedict Cumberbatch.
Their unpleasantness is a key part of their respective shows, to the point of
being a major plot driver in some cases.

~~~
photogrammetry
Sherlock the Cumberbatch character and Sherlock the Arthur Conan Doyle
character are quite different, and House is definitely not derived from the
Cumberbatch character (simply because that would mean the scriptwriters were
time-travelers).

~~~
coldtea
Back to our topic though, the two modern characters, Cumberbatch's Sherlock
and House are both arrogant and nasty (yeah, with a "damaged" core
underneath).

The original Sherlock wasn't like House but in the more broad sense. E.g. he
didn't sadistically play games with his underlings (which he didn't much have)
and Watson. He also wasn't about "blunt truth" and other such things House
was.

------
tomp
Causation vs. correlation is getting old...

Maybe happier people are nicer?

~~~
hexane360
Maybe people who tend to be in better situations find it easier to be nice,
and to have fun.

------
fuqted
I can't read that, but I've thought about this subject and I'll give my two
cents.

Let me preface this by saying that I always seem to regret being nice. It's
the people that are mostly unaware of others that seem to be the most happy.
These same people don't seem to have a problem being cruel as the feeling
comes to them.

This doesn't sound good, but it's true. This doesn't have much to do with this
story though.

A couple years ago I was on the bus and this kind of thing was on my mind.
Over the years my best friend and I have switched between who was more
dominant and a couple years ago it was him. He wasn't nice about this either.
On the bus there was a woman and what I assume to be her two daughters. The
daughters were kind of playing around the bus and climbing on things. One
daughter was obviously more dominant; she was the one basically deciding what
game they were playing and she didn't let the other forget that it was 'her
game'. After the dominant one was particularly rude, the other went off and
did her own thing and start playing behind a seat or something. She seemed to
be pretty amused with what she was doing.

After a while the dominant one got bored and went to see what her sister was
doing. After seeing that she was having fun, the dominant one joined in and
her sister accepted in an obvious way, because she was still busy amusing
herself. After that they seemed to have an equal understanding with eachother.

I don't know about nice people having more fun, but the moral if the story is
if you have more fun people will be nicer to you.

~~~
flowersoldier
I've worked as a Greeter in a Health Clinic for 6 years and I get paid to be
"nice." Here's what's interesting: Not everyone likes when I'm nice to them -
in fact, some of them get downright offended. I don't let it bother me but
their reaction seems based on fear.

It's interesting because smiling is free - it literally costs nothing.
However, a smile does have value, and is an emotional transaction with another
person. A simple smile can sometimes have more impact than we can understand.

Having said that, a smile is also something we should never expect or demand
from someone else. That's what makes them so special when they are freely
given.

Kindness is the International Currency.

------
whamlastxmas
Subheader: Selfish nastiness is all the rage, but research shows that pleasant
behavior leads to more success and happiness in life.

Full text:

The great comedian Mel Brooks once contrasted comedy and tragedy. “Tragedy is
when I cut my finger,” he said. “Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer
and die.”

Mr. Brooks neatly encapsulates our current public culture of selfish
nastiness. From this year’s ghastly presidential race, to the reality
entertainment that spawned it, to the open sewer backing up from your Twitter
feed, it looks like the worst behavior is being publicly rewarded, doesn’t it?
You could be forgiven for believing that maybe the polarities of karma have
reversed, and the world now belongs to jerks. Right?

Wrong. Nice people, rejoice: Notwithstanding the prominent examples today in
political and popular culture, the best available research still clearly shows
that in everyday life the nice people, not the creeps, do the best at work, in
love and in happiness.

Let’s start with the job market. This has been another brutal year in which to
graduate. Research from the Economic Policy Institute finds that young college
graduates’ underemployment rate is nearly a third higher today than it was in
2007. Everyone is looking for an edge.

That edge is being pleasant and friendly. In one 2015 study published in the
Journal of Applied Psychology, a team of scholars from France and the U.S.
looked at the impact of civility and warmth to colleagues on perceived
leadership and job performance. In addition to being seen as natural leaders
by co-workers, nice employees performed significantly better than others in
performance reviews by senior supervisors. For those who make it to
leadership, niceness is also a key to success. A 2015 NBC poll found that most
people would take a nicer boss over a 10% pay increase.

On the other hand, some researchers believe there are salary costs to being
nice. In 2012, research published in the Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology found that while those with high levels of “agreeableness” were
less likely to be fired, they didn’t make the most money.

It is important to note that these researchers’ definition of agreeableness
included “compliance” with the will of others. In many cases, however,
compliance is not niceness; it is weakness. To be truly nice is not to comply
when you disagree, but rather to disagree without being disagreeable. It isn’t
to please at any cost, but rather to avoid being unpleasant even while
standing up for what is right.

The benefits of being nice extend to love. In 2003, scholars from the
University of South Carolina looked at the impact of being nice on perceived
male attractiveness. They recruited 194 female volunteers to participate in a
mock dating game in which they had to pick between two men, Todd and Mike. The
researchers varied Todd’s levels of handsomeness and “niceness” while keeping
Mike’s personality and looks constant and neutral.

The results were clear and conclusive. When their looks were equivalent, “Nice
Todd” outperformed Neutral Mike. “Jerk Todd” lost 85% of the time to Mike even
when Todd was better looking. In my view, the fact that niceness beats
physical beauty is evidence of the existence of God.

But probably the greatest benefit of being nice accrues to one’s own
happiness. In 2010, two British researchers looked at the effects of engaging
in small daily acts of kindness. Their results, published in the Journal of
Social Psychology, show clear causal evidence that kind acts, systematically
deployed, raised the participants’ self-judged happiness.

It’s important to note that kindness and niceness are not identical. Kindness
requires active generosity. But if you wonder whether the same experimental
results will stand up, use yourself as a guinea pig. Deliberately set out to
be nice for a week and see how it makes you feel. I’m confident you will like
the result.

Can anyone learn to be nice? No doubt it is harder for some people than for
others, but anyone can make progress and see benefits. One simple strategy for
doing so is mimicry: Imitate the nicest person you know.

In my own case, that was my father. My dad died fairly young, at age 66.
Hundreds of people who had known him over the years showed up at his funeral,
and everyone I spoke to offered more or less the same observation: He was a
truly nice man. Not a bad legacy, I thought. So I set out to imitate a few of
his habits.

The most salient was his cheerful interaction with total strangers. He made
banter with supermarket clerks, bellmen, bus drivers—everyone. “Hot enough for
ya?” he’d ask, especially in winter. This mortified me as a child, especially
when his friendliness so frequently went unrequited. But he didn’t care—if his
clichés and corny jokes didn’t get a smile from one person, they might from
the next. So now, to the chagrin of my own teenage children, I do the same. It
has made me a happier person.

Niceness certainly is not a substitute for more active virtues like generosity
and courage. But it’s a good start, and perhaps the easiest way to improve our
lives. These days it is also a countercultural statement. To be nice is to
subvert a pop culture that celebrates tactical nastiness—and instead choose a
long-term personal strategy to build a happier life in a better world.

Mr. Brooks is president of the American Enterprise Institute.

~~~
barnacs
Thanks, I really appreciate your effort copying the article here. Could you
please do this for all paywalled content from now on? Or maybe we should have
a bot do it just in case you have something different planned for the rest of
your life.

~~~
whamlastxmas
Give me those sweet, sweet internet points and maybe I will

------
raarts
> For those who make it to leadership, niceness is also a key to success. A
> 2015 NBC poll found that most people would take a nicer boss over a 10% pay
> increase.

Doesn't this mean that most bosses are not nice, ergo niceness makes it less
likely to get a promotion?

Of people prefer a pay increase over a nicer boss that would prove that nice
people get promoted more often.

------
matthjensen
Arthur Brooks is the president of the American Enterprise Institute, so I'll
leave a plug here for another AEI initiative that I work on: The Open Source
Policy Center. We build open source tools for policy analysis like TaxBrain
and the underlying models. One of the underlying models, Tax-Calculator, you
can even use to calculate the effects of policy proposals on your own taxes.

------
htns
I realize there's two different sets of people involved, but it's still
disappointing to see HN upvote both "psychology is trash science" articles and
"what these scientists found will surprise you" clickbait.

------
mooseburger
Maybe I'm too cynical, but this sounds too much like a just world fallacy. At
any rate, I'm having a hard time distinguishing between "nice" and "sucker",
and the article didn't bother differentiating between the two. I guess in my
mind, they're one and the same. Most guys I would describe as nice are
actually just weak guys that are respected by nobody. It's hard to imagine
that they're happy, and they do not seem to be happy.

There are men I have known that technically are nice, but I never would have
thought to describe them as such. "Cool" seems a more apt descriptor. And the
difference between "cool" and "nice" seems to involve a certain degree of
selfishness.

~~~
tormeh
Yeah, some people are nice just because they think they have to in order to be
close to likeable. Truth is, most of those would love to be assholes if they
could get away with it. I've been like that. Probably still is, just to a
lesser extent.

Being authentically nice requires a lot of deep-seated confidence. It's hard
to care too much about others if you're constantly worrying about yourself.

~~~
xyzzy4
It was easier for me to be nice to everyone once I realized that they and
their loved ones are all going to die one day. Puts things in perspective.

~~~
thehooplehead
I pretty much do the opposite. I remember that everyone was a child once and
some, unfortunately, still are. Basically attributing annoyances/disagreements
to ignorance/differing values rather than malice.

------
the_duck
paywalled.

~~~
bananicorn
Try searching the title + site from google, you'll get there without paying :)

~~~
zeveb
That doesn't actually work — I just tried it.

~~~
loarake
worked for me

~~~
cypherpunks01
In my case there are 2 conditions required:

\- Search referer, i.e. clicking in from google search or using HN "web" link

\- Clean WSJ site cookies or incognito mode

Maybe one of you read the WSJ recently, and one hadn't?

~~~
zeveb
Yup, I had already clicked on the article, so the WSJ knew that I'd been there
previously.

