Being Nice
Why Being Nice Makes A Difference
Dear Reader,
In our self-centered,
get ahead world, being "nice" isn't going to get you any place.
Haven't you heard that "Nice guys finish last"? And yet, being humble
is a core value of one of the fastest growing businesses of the last 10 years,
Zappos.com. Today, the company's annual sales are over a billion dollars, and
part of the reason is that they are nice to customers and employees. Could
there be something to this being nice idea, after all?
Maybe so. Research by
Alex Edmans, at the Wharton School of Business, has found that businesses
appearing in Fortune magazine's 100 Best Companies To Work For in America, also
have consistently higher stock return than companies of similar size. Zappos is
near the top of that list, offering employees $1,500 after the initial two week
trainings to quit, if they don't think the job will be one they'll love. Few
take the offer.
Science, being what it
is, wants to find out more.
Research, ten years ago
on oxytocin, by Paul J. Zak, a professor at Claremont Graduate University in
California and his team, showed that in animals, it increased the ability to
tolerate burrow-mates. In humans, could that toleration be expressed to
compassion, humility, trust? Zak, who is author of The Moral Molecule: The
Source of Love and Prosperity, and his team knew that oxytocin is not an easy
substance to study, as the brain has to be coaxed into making it all, and it
disappears very rapidly, with a mere three minute half life.
Another challenge came
in the form of actually testing virtue. You can't ask people if they are nice
(who'd say "No" to that?) and so, temptations to virtue came in the
form of money. If subjects trusted a stranger with the cash, there was the
opportunity for growth, and the chance that the stranger would not share the
spoils with you. Using blood samples of participants, Zak and his team were
able to show that the more money a subject got a show of trust [with], the more
the brain produced oxytocin. The more oxytocin in the system, the more likely a
subject was to reciprocate to the person who'd initially trusted them.
Think about that for a
minute. We have a chemical that's naturally in our brains and is released when
someone, even a stranger, treats us nicely, and the chemical motivates us to be
nice in return. It's the nuts-and-bolts biology behind The Golden Rule, which
exists as part of every culture on the planet.
The findings have been
confirmed in many experiments, in the lab and out in the field, where Zak has
taken samples at church services, at sporting events, even from indigenous
people in the rain forest. Across all these peoples and events, it appears that
positive social interactions stimulate oxytocin and bring people together as a
community. Among the thousands who have taken part in the experiments, 95%
release oxytocin, when treated nicely, and respond in kind.
What might inhibit the
oxytocin response? Things like high stress, abuse in childhood that was early
and severe in nature, some psychiatric disorders and the high testosterone of
young men.
This study is one of the
first bits of research in a new field known as neuroeconomics. No doubt you'll
be hearing more about it, in the future.
To your good health,
Kirsten Whittaker
Daily Health Bulletin
Editor
Sources:
Psychology Today info on
oxytocin:
The Society for Neuroeconomics:
Research by Alex Edmans,
Wharton School of Business:
Paul J. Zak, professor
at Claremont Graduate University in California:
Amazon link to The
Morale Molecule: The Source of Love and Prosperity:
Paul Zak video
presentation on trust, morality and oxytocin:
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