Why You Should Want to Work with Someone Who Brags
Why You Should Want to Work with Someone Who Brags
July 24, 2014
Fast Company — Findings from a BGU study published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology suggest that pride isn’t all that bad.
Researchers, including BGU Ph.D. student Anna Dorfman, Dr. Tal Eyal and Prof. Yoella Bereby-Meyer of BGU’s Department of Psychology, examined the effect of self-worth on performance in collaborative tasks.
They performed a study in which participants were assigned essay topics. One group wrote about a time they felt proud of themselves, while the other wrote about a fun memory. A control group did neither.
Participants were then asked to play a fishing game, where they caught 13 to 17 fish for every 60 attempts. They were led to believe this was a team effort and that another person was fishing in their “pond,” also trying to land as many fish as possible. The catch: If the pond was over-fished, both players would lose everything.
Surprisingly, the participants who wrote about a pride-filled anecdote threw back more fish, to avoid depleting the population too much. Those who wrote about a joyful time returned no more or less than the control group.
Pride, we’re taught to believe, is a negative emotion, and a self-confident person is seen as oil in water when it comes to teamwork. Humility is lauded as the better personality trait. This study’s experiment shows the opposite: Give people something to boast about, and the emotion can be a positive force.
Stories Like This
