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February 18 - March 9, 2025
It turns out that the more you talked, the more you like the group.
When we hear a powerful persuasive message, we get suspicious. In some cases, we’re concerned about being tricked, duped, or manipulated by a taker.
“The art of advocacy is to lead you to my conclusion on your terms. I want you to form your own conclusions: you’ll hold on to them more strongly.
Studies show that asking questions about your plans to floss your teeth and avoid fatty foods significantly enhances the odds that you will actually floss and eat healthy.
By speaking with greater speed, volume, assertiveness, and certainty, takers convince us that they know what they’re talking about.
“The paradox comes from people thinking an inclusive leader isn’t strong enough to lead a team, when in fact that leader is stronger, because he engenders the support of the team. People bond to givers, like electromagnetism.”
New research shows that advice seeking is a surprisingly effective strategy for exercising influence when we lack authority.
Studies demonstrate that across the manufacturing, financial services, insurance, and pharmaceuticals industries, seeking advice is among the most effective ways to influence peers, superiors, and subordinates.
Advice seeking is also consistently more influential than the matcher’s default approach of trading favors.
When executives asked a director for advice in this manner, that director was significantly more likely to recommend them for a board appointment—and they landed more board seats as a result.
Appearing vulnerable doesn’t bother givers, who worry far less about protecting their egos and projecting certainty. When givers ask for advice, it’s because they’re genuinely interested in learning from others.
When we ask for advice, in order to give us a recommendation, advisers have to look at the problem or dilemma from our point of view.
the people who had done him the favor liked him substantially more than the people who didn’t.
Matchers expect something back from each person they help. Otherish givers help with no strings attached; they’re just careful not to overextend themselves along the way.
When the callers brought in donations, most of the money went directly to student scholarships, but the callers were left in the dark: they had no idea who was receiving the money, and how it affected their lives.
The turnaround highlights a remarkable principle of giver burnout: it has less to do with the amount of giving and more with the amount of feedback about the impact of that giving.
Attaching a single patient’s photo to a CT exam increased diagnostic accuracy by 46 percent. And roughly 80 percent of the key diagnostic findings came only when the radiologists saw the patient’s photo.
Giving more can be exhausting if it’s in the same domain. Instead of giving more in the same way, over and over, she expanded her contributions to a different group of people.
Happiness increased when people performed all five giving acts in a single day, rather than doing one a day.
American adults who volunteered at least one hundred hours in 1998 were more likely to be alive in 2000. There were no benefits of volunteering more than one hundred hours. This is the 100-hour rule of volunteering.
lack of social support is linked to burnout.”
“One of the most striking aspects of the human stress response is the tendency to affiliate—that is, to come together in groups to provide and receive joint protection in threatening times.”
This is what the firefighters did: when they started to feel exhausted, they invested their limited energy in helping their colleagues. Intuitively, they recognized that giving would strengthen their relationships and build support (at least from matchers and givers).
other studies have shown that givers accrue an advantage in controlling their thoughts, emotions, and behaviors.
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.
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, and psychologists call it the helper’s high. Recent neuroscience evidence shows that giving actually activates the reward and meaning centers in our brains, which send us pleasure and purpose signals when we act for the benefit of 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.
people who failed to maintain an equilibrium between their own needs and their partner’s needs became more depressed over the next six months. By prioritizing others’ interests and ignoring their own, selfless givers exhaust themselves.
Lillian Bauer fell into three major traps that plague many givers, male and female, in their dealings with other people: being too trusting, too empathetic, and too timid.
The givers were twice as likely to be victimized as the takers, often as a direct result of trusting takers.
Before the negotiation, the researchers asked the dating couples how in love they were. The stronger their feelings of love, the worse they did.
Nowak has found that it can be more advantageous to alternate between giving and matching.
In generous tit for tat, the rule is “never forget a good turn, but occasionally forgive a bad one.”
Although Freecycle grew in part by attracting people who already leaned strongly in the giver direction, it accomplished something much more impressive. Somehow, Freecycle managed to encourage matchers and takers to act like givers.
when people feel distressed, guilty, or sad toward another person in need, they help.
It was an uncommon commonality.
In the study, for example, people wrote about how super-heroes 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,
Reciprocity Ring, which was developed by University of Michigan sociologist Wayne Baker and his wife Cheryl at Humax. Each student would make a request to the class, and the rest of the class would try to use their knowledge, resources, and connections to help fulfill the request. The request could be anything meaningful in their professional or personal lives, ranging from job leads to travel tips.
when we try to predict others’ reactions, we focus on the costs of saying yes, overlooking the costs of saying no. It’s uncomfortable, guilt-provoking, and embarrassing to turn down a small request for help.
roughly 90 percent were initiated by the recipient asking for help. Yet when we have a need, we’re often reluctant to ask for help. Much of the time, we’re embarrassed: we don’t want to look incompetent or needy, and we don’t want to burden others.
Many times, you can have bigger impact if you know what to ask, rather than knowing what to say.
