A new academic study shows you don’t have to be a jerk to get ahead in the world.
According to research published Monday by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, selfish, deceitful and aggressive individuals are no more likely to attain power than generous, trustworthy and nice people.
Researchers conducted two studies measuring participants’ disagreeableness prior to entering the work force and then looked at their influence 14 years later, as their careers unfolded.
“Both studies found disagreeable individuals did not attain higher power as opposed to extroverted individuals who did gain higher power in their organizations,” the study said. “Furthermore, the null relationship between disagreeableness and power was not moderated by individual differences, such as gender or ethnicity, or by contextual variables, such as organizational culture.”
Researchers found “disagreeable individuals engaged in two distinct patterns of behavior that offset each other’s effects on power attainment.
“They engaged in more dominant-aggressive behavior, which positively predicted attaining higher power, but also engaged in less communal and generous behavior, which predicted attaining less power,” the study said. “These two effects, when combined, appeared to cancel each other out and led to a null correlation between disagreeableness and power.
“Disagreeable individuals were intimidating, which would have elevated their power, but they also had poorer interpersonal relationships at work, which offset any possible power advantage their behavior might have provided,” the study said.
“Many people believe that nice guys finish last,” said the study’s lead author Cameron Anderson, a professor of organizational behavior at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley.
“When we are presented with someone in power who’s a jerk, it sticks out to us. It’s very salient,” Anderson told CNN. “And I think we notice those (people) much more than we do people in power who are nice, those people kind of blend into the background. Examples of people in power who are just awful human beings are more available in people’s minds.”
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