Unselfish and Unwanted
You are a benevolent soul at work. You volunteer to organize projects. You stay late to help others with their work. Your instinct is to think of group interests rather than your own.
Buddy, better watch your back.
Parks (Washington State U) and Stone (Desert Research Institute) set out to study the tolerance of group members to those who abuse a “public good.” Perversely, what they found in their four controlled experiments is that unselfish group members — those who gave much toward the public good but took very little — were in fact quite unpopular. So unpopular that others wanted to kick them out of the group.
“Our data are pointing to an emerging notion that group members temper their desire for productivity with an equally strong, perhaps stronger, desire for equality of participation,” they write in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
Why would removal of performance differences be so important that group members are willing to sacrifice collective output for it?
A couple of reasons. One, people feel driven to outdo the group member who is setting the standard. In this setting, Parks and Stone note, “the standard being set by the benevolent other is to give up a considerable amount of personal resources and receive only a small payoff in return. To compete with such a person means that one would need to give even more and take even less, not a very desirable prospect.”
And two, that generous dude is unwittingly breaking the social rules of the group. The norm within the group is to take in proportion to what you give, but our friend is giving way more than she is taking. A rule is a rule.
Moral of the story: Don’t mess with groupthink.
The Desire to Expel Unselfish Members From the Group, by Craig D. Parks and Asako B. Stone; Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (2010, Vol. 99, No. 2, 303–310)