Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success

by Adam M. Grant

Over time, giving may build willpower like weight lifting builds muscles. Of course, we all know that when muscles are overused, they fatigue and sometimes even tear—this is what happens to selfless givers.

In 2001, the chemical industry tanked, and he lost a sizable portion of his fortune. Most people would cut back on giving until they recovered. But Huntsman made an unconventional decision. He took out a personal loan, borrowing several million dollars to make good on his philanthropic commitments for the next three years.

Huntsman believes that being a giver actually made him rich. In his giving pledge, Huntsman writes: “It has been clear to me since my earliest childhood memories that my reason for being was to help others. The desire to give back was the impetus for pursuing an education in business, for applying that education to founding what became a successful container company, and for using that experience to grow our differentiated chemicals corporation.”

There’s little doubt that Huntsman is a skilled businessman. But the very act of giving money away might have contributed to his fortune. In Winners Never Cheat, he writes, “Monetarily, the most satisfying moments in my life have not been the excitement of closing a great deal or the reaping of profits from it. They have been when I was able to help others in need . . . There’s no denying that I am a deal junkie, but I also have developed an addiction for giving. The more one gives, the better one feels; and the better one feels about it, the easier it becomes to give.”

This is an extension of the idea that otherish givers build willpower muscles, making it easy to give more, but is it possible that Huntsman actually made money by giving it away? Remarkably, there’s evidence to support this claim. The economist Arthur Brooks tested the relationship between income and charitable giving. Using data from almost thirty thousand Americans in the year 2000, he controlled for every factor imaginable that would affect income and giving. He adjusted for education, age, race, religious involvement, political beliefs, and marital status. He also accounted for the number of times people volunteered. As expected, higher income led to higher giving. For every $1 in extra income, charitable giving went up by $0.14.* But something much more interesting happened. For every $1 in extra charitable giving, income was $3.75 higher. Giving actually seemed to make people richer. For example, imagine that you and I are both earning $60,000 a year. I give $1,600 to charity; you give $2,500 to charity. Although you gave away $900 more than I did, according to the evidence, you’ll be on track to earn $3,375 more than I will in the coming year. Surprising as it seems, people who give more go on to earn more.

Jon Huntsman Sr. may be on to something. Research shows that giving can boost happiness and meaning, motivating people to work harder and earn more money, even if the gift isn’t on the colossal scale of Huntsman’s. In a study by psychologists Elizabeth Dunn, Lara Aknin, and Michael Norton, people rated their happiness in the morning. Then, they received a windfall: an envelope with $20. They had to spend it by five P.M., and then they rated their happiness again. Would they be happier spending the money on themselves or on others? Most people think they’d be happier spending the money on themselves, but the opposite is true. If you spend the money on yourself, your happiness doesn’t change. But if you spend the money on others, you actually report becoming significantly happier. This is otherish giving: you get to choose who you help, and it benefits you by improving your mood. Economists call it the warm glow of giving, ...

These benefits are not limited to giving money; they also show up for giving time. One study of more than 2,800 Americans over age twenty-four showed that volunteering predicted increases in happiness, life satisfaction, and self-esteem—and decreases in depression—a year later. And for adults over sixty-five, those who volunteered saw a drop in depression over an eight-year period. Other studies show that elderly adults who volunteer or give support to others actually live longer. This is true even after controlling for their health and the amount of support they get from others. In one experiment, adults either gave massages to babies or received massages themselves. Postmassage, those who gave had lower levels of stress hormones—such as cortisol and epinephrine—than those who received. It seems that giving adds meaning to our lives, distracts us from our own problems, and h...

Overall, on average, happier people earn more money, get higher performance ratings, make better decisions, negotiate sweeter deals, and contribute more to their organizations.

In 2003, Virgin mogul Richard Branson set up a council called The Elders to fight conflict and promote peace, bringing together Nelson Mandela, Jimmy Carter, Kofi Annan, Desmond Tutu, and other leaders to alleviate suffering in Sudan, Cyprus, and Kenya. In 2004, Branson launched Virgin Unite, a nonprofit foundation that mobilizes people and resources to fight deadly diseases like AIDS and malaria, promote peace and justice, prevent climate change, and support entrepreneurs with microloans and new jobs in the developing world. In 2006, he pledged to donate all $3 billion of the profits from the Virgin airline and train businesses over the next decade to fight global warming. In 2007, he offered a $25 million prize for innovations to fight climate change.

Branson was giving long before he became rich and famous. At age seventeen, a year after starting Student magazine and five full years before launching Virgin Records, Branson started his first charity. It was the Student Advisory Centre, a nonprofit organization that helped at-risk youth with a range of services. He made a list of problems that young people faced, from unwanted pregnancies to venereal disease, and convinced doctors to offer free or discounted services. He spent many nights on the phone at three A.M. consoling people who were contemplating suicide. Looking back, he notes that early in his career, he “had been interested in making money only to ensure Student’s continuing success and to fund the Student Advisory Centre.” Today, giving continues to energize him. The “thing that gets me up in the morning is the idea of making a difference,” Branson writes, “to help safeguard our future on this planet. Does that make me successful? It certainly makes me happy.”

These energizing effects help to explain why otherish givers are fortified against burnout: through giving, they build up reserves of happiness and meaning that ...

Employees who reported strong concern for benefiting others and creating a positive image for themselves were rated by supervisors as being the most helpful and taking the most initiative.

Ironically, because concern for their own interests sustains their energy, otherish givers actually give more than selfless givers.

No good deed goes unpunished. —attributed to Clare Boothe Luce, editor, playwright, and U.S. congresswoman

David Hornik’s term sheet, explains, “Whether you’re nice or not nice is separate from whether you’re self-focused or other-focused. They’re independent, not opposites.”

Research suggests that in general, givers are more accurate judges of others than matchers and takers.

Peter was a victim of empathy, the powerful emotion that we experience when we imagine another person’s distress. Empathy is a pervasive force behind giving behaviors, but it’s also a major source of vulnerability.

Peter accomplished this maneuver by getting inside Rich’s head, rather than his heart. Studies led by Columbia psychologist Adam Galinsky show that when we empathize at the bargaining table, focusing on our counterparts’ emotions and feelings puts us at risk of giving away too much.* But when we engage in perspective taking, considering our counterparts’ thoughts and interests, we’re more likely to find ways to make deals that satisfy our counterparts without sacrificing our own interests. Peter never would have discovered his solution if he had continued to empathize with Rich. By shifting his focus from Rich’s feelings to his thoughts, Peter was able to see the world through a taker’s eyes and adjust his strategy accordingly.

Once successful givers see the value of sincerity screening and begin to spot agreeable takers as potential fakers, they protect themselves by adjusting their behavior accordingly. Peter’s experience offers a clue into how givers avoid getting burned: they become matchers in their exchanges with takers. It’s wise to start out as a giver, since research shows that trust is hard to build but easy to destroy. But once a counterpart is clearly acting like a taker, it makes sense for givers to flex their reciprocity styles and shift to a matching strategy—as Peter did by requiring Rich to reciprocate by adding value to the business. “It’s built into my nature now to not give takers much time, and certainly not waste my time with them,” Peter says.

It comes with a risk: generous tit for tat encourages most people to act like givers, which opens the door for takers to “rise up again” by competing when everyone else is cooperating. But in a world where relationships and reputations are visible, it’s increasingly difficult for takers to take advantage of givers. According to Nowak, “The generous strategy dominates for a very long time.”

By thinking of himself as an agent representing his family, Sameer summoned the resolve to make an initial request for a higher salary and tuition reimbursement. This was an otherish strategy. On the one hand, he was doing what givers do naturally: advocating for other people’s interests. On the other hand, he intentionally advocated for his family, whose interests were closely aligned with his own. At the same time, he wasn’t pushing so far as to become a taker: he sought a balance in meeting his family’s interests and his company’s. “My value system means that I’m not going to do anything that’s wrong or unfair,” Sameer explains. “I’m not going to try to gouge anyone, but I am going to push to the point that’s right and fair.”

As a student, I didn’t have a wife and children yet, but I could see myself as an agent on behalf of college students in search of jobs that would defray the cost of tuition and provide meaningful work experiences. I might be a doormat when lobbying solely for my own interests, but when I was representing the interests of students, I was willing to fight to protect them.

By the time they give slices of pie away, the entire pie is big enough that there’s plenty left to claim for themselves: they can give more and take more.

How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature which interest him in the fortunes of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, although he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it. —Adam Smith, father of economics

people who initially give things away for selfish reasons begin to care about the people they’re helping. When the recipient arranged to pick up his mattress, Beal was thrilled. “I thought I was getting away with giving a mattress away, that I was the one benefiting,” he says. “But when the person showed up at my door and thanked me, I felt good. It was only partially a selfish act: I was helping someone else in a way that made me happy. I felt so darn good about it that I started giving away other items.”

Common ground is a major influence on giving behaviors. In one experiment, psychologists in the United Kingdom recruited fans of the Manchester United soccer team for a study. When walking from one building to another, the soccer fans saw a runner slip on a grass bank, where he fell holding his ankle and screaming in pain. Would they help him? It depended on the T-shirt that he was wearing. When he wore a plain T-shirt, only 33 percent helped. When he wore a Manchester United T-shirt, 92 percent helped. Yale psychologist Jack Dovidio calls this “activating a common identity.” When people share an identity with another person, giving to that person takes on an otherish quality. If we help people who belong to our group, we’re also helping ourselves, as we’re making the group better off.*

Together, these two forces facilitate the development of a bond with Freecycle. Instead of buying an item from another person, people feel that they’re receiving gifts from a community. The gratitude and goodwill generated means that they begin to identify with the community, seeing themselves as Freecycle members. Once this identification happens, people are willing to give freely to anyone who shares the Freecycle identity. This extends their willingness to give across the whole Freecycle community, spurring members to offer items that they no longer need in response to requests when they can help. By giving away things they don’t want, takers can feel like they’re not losing anything of value, yet maintain the norm of giving so they can still get free stuff when they want it. For matchers, because there’s no way to pay it back, paying it forward is the next best thing—especially since they’re helping people just like themselves. In a classic experiment, when people received help from one peer, they were more likely to give help to another peer, matching by following the norm of social responsibility. This is what happened with the parents who gave away baby supplies: they restored their sense of a reciprocal, even exchange by donating items they no longer needed to fellow parents in similar situations.

It appears that similarity to the self adds a bit of grease to the attraction process: people are just a bit more enthusiastic, friendly, and open-minded when they meet someone who reminds them of themselves.

It was not just any commonality that drove people to act like givers. It was an uncommon commonality.

people only identify with a generalized giving group after they receive enough benefits to feel like the group is helping them.

When people think about the general attributes of superheroes, they generate a list of desirable characteristics that they can relate to themselves. In the study, for example, people wrote about how superheroes are helpful and responsible, and they wanted to express these giver values, so they volunteered. But when people think specifically about Superman, what comes to mind is a set of impossible standards, like those popularized in the TV series The Adventures of Superman: “faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.” No one can be that strong or heroic, so why bother trying?

On Freecycle, givers modeled a standard that seemed attainable. When members saw a ninety-eight-year-old man building bikes for kids, they knew they could do something too. When members saw people giving away items like clothes and old electronics, they felt it would be easy for them to do the same. The small acts of giving that started on Freecycle made it easy and acceptable for other people to give small amounts. Indeed, Cialdini finds that people donate more money to charity when the phrase “even a penny will help” is added to a request. Interestingly, this phrase increases the number of people who give without necessarily decreasing the amount that they give. Legitimizing small contributions draws in takers, making it difficult and embarrassing for them to say no, without dramatically reducing the amount donated by givers.

As early as 1835, after visiting the United States from France, the social philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville wrote that Americans “enjoy explaining almost every act of their lives on the principle of self-interest.” He saw Americans “help one another” and “freely give part of their time and wealth for the good of the state,” but was struck by the fact that “Americans are hardly prepared to admit” that these acts were driven by a genuine desire to help others. “I think that in this way they often do themselves less than justice,” he wrote.

If many people personally believe in giving, but assume that others don’t, the whole norm in a group or a company can shift away from giving. “Ideas can have profound effects even when they are false—when they are nothing more than ideology,” writes the psychologist Barry Schwartz. “These effects can arise because sometimes when people act on the basis of ideology, they inadvertently arrange the very conditions that bring reality into correspondence with the ideology.” When people assume that others aren’t givers, they act and speak in ways that discourage others from giving, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Once his reputation among his peers depended on giving, he contributed. By making contributions visible, the Reciprocity Ring sets up an opportunity for people of any reciprocity style to be otherish: they can do good and look good at the same time.

In a series of experiments led by NYU psychologist Peter Gollwitzer, people who went public with their intentions to engage in an identity-relevant behavior were significantly less likely to engage in the behavior than people who kept their intentions private. When people made their identity plans known to others, they were able to claim the identity without actually following through on the behavior. By signing the kindness pledge, Harvard students would be able to establish an image as givers without needing to act like givers.

To turn takers into givers, it’s often necessary to convince them to start giving. Over time, if the conditions are right, they’ll come to see themselves as givers.

In support of this idea, studies of volunteering show that even when people join a volunteer organization to advance their own careers, the longer they serve and the more time they give, the more they begin to view the volunteering role as an important aspect of their identities. Once that happens, they start to experience a common identity with the people they’re helping, and they become givers in that role. Research documents a similar process inside companies: as people make voluntary decisions to help colleagues and customers beyond the scope of their jobs, they come to see themselves as organizational citizens.*

Some people, when they do someone a favor, are always looking for a chance to call it in. And some aren’t, but they’re still aware of it—still regard it as a debt. But others don’t even do that. They’re like a vine that produces grapes without looking for anything in return . . . after helping others . . . They just go on to something else . . . We should be like that. —Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor

As expected, the joint gains were highest when both parties were very intelligent. Barry and Friedman broke down each party’s gains, expecting to find that the smarter negotiators got better deals for themselves. But they didn’t. The brightest negotiators got better deals for their counterparts.

“The smarter negotiator appears to be able to understand his or her opponents’ true interests and thus to provide them with better deals at little cost to him- or herself,” Barry and Friedman write. The more intelligent you are, the more you help your counterpart succeed.

“You might be underestimating the success of givers,” I told them. It’s true that some people who consistently help others without expecting anything in return are the ones who fall to the bottom. But this same orientation toward giving, with a few adjustments, can also enable people to rise to the top. “Focus attention and energy on making a difference in the lives of others, and success might follow as a by-product.”

And remember when Peter Audet, the Australian financial adviser, seemed to be wasting hours of his time by driving out to help a poor scrap metal worker manage his money? The client turned out to be the wealthy owner of a scrap metal business, resulting in major gains for Peter’s firm—but the story doesn’t end there. Peter learned that the scrap metal owner was too busy running the business to take a vacation, and he wanted to help. A few months later, another client expressed that she wasn’t happy in her job as a manager at an auto body shop. Peter recommended her to the scrap metal owner, who had a need for her skills, and it turned out that she lived five minutes away from the scrap metal yard. She started work three weeks later, and the client took his wife on their first vacation in years. “Both of these clients are happy and grateful that I think about their whole lives, not just their investments,” Peter says. “The more I help out, the more successful I become. But I measure success in what it has done for the people around me. That is the real accolade.”

Simon Sinek writes, “Givers advance the world. Takers advance themselves and hold the world back.”

By shifting ever so slightly in the giver direction, we might find our waking hours marked by greater success, richer meaning, and more lasting impact.