Barking Up the Wrong Tree: The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Success Is (Mostly) Wrong

by Eric Barker

Feeling powerless actually makes you dumber.

in a shocking number of areas bad things are more impactful and longer lasting than good things:

bad is stronger than good, as a general principle across a broad range of psychological phenomena.”

they’re assertive about what they want, and they’re not afraid to let others know about what they’ve achieved.

They do win in the short term.

Studies show expecting others to be untrustworthy creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. You assume they’ll behave badly, so you stop trusting, which means you withhold effort and create a downward spiral.

So, yes, individual shenanigans can pay off—but it’s only a matter of time before other people start cutting corners too.

“The quality of a society is more important than your place in that society.”

“Not being nice may look promising at first, but in the long run it can destroy the very environment it needs for its own success.”

You’ve shown others that the way to succeed is by breaking the rules, so they’ll break them too, because bad behavior is infectious and people do what works. You’ll be creating other predators like yourself.

In fact, the data show that street gangs don’t create crime. It’s the exact opposite: crime creates street gangs.

the majority of successful prison gangs on record were created not as a way to further evil but as a way to provide protection to their members while incarcerated.

Corrupt countries with Mafia-style groups are more economically successful than countries with decentralized crime, showing higher rates of growth.

The presence of yakuza in Japanese cities is negatively correlated with civil lawsuits.

Pirates were so successful because they treated their people well. They were democratic. They trusted one another. And they set up an economically sound system to make sure this would be the case.

that famed pirate, over the course of his career, killed exactly zero people. And there are no cases on record of anyone walking the plank. Nope. Not one.

“Contrary to conventional wisdom, pirate life was orderly and honest.”

So treating those around you well can lead to far greater success than selfishness—even if your goal is to make mischief.

The people who consistently are looking for ways to help others are overrepresented not only at the bottom but also at the top of most success metrics.

“Matchers” (people who try to keep an even balance of give and take) and “Takers” (people who selfishly always try to get more and give less) end up in the middle.

Yes, on average jerks do better, but at the very top we see the Givers.

Income peaks among those who trust people more, not less.

those who responded with a number above an eight had incomes 7 percent lower than the eights.

Who suffered the most? Those with the lowest levels of trust had an income 14.5 percent lower than eights. That loss is the equivalent of not attending college.

While some of those studies say the social stress of being a powerless nice guy can give you a heart attack, the big-picture research shows that the old maxim “The good die young” isn’t true.

people who were kind actually lived longer, not shorter.

those who gave more to others lived longer.

they aren’t necessarily any more thrilled with their lives.

ethical people are happier.

Studies show spending money on others makes us happier than spending it on ourselves.

Volunteering even just two hours a week predicts increases in life satisfaction.

those who donate their time to help others feel less busy and like the...

build limits for themselves and make sure they don’t go overboard.

people are happier and less stressed when they “chunk” their efforts to help others versus a relentless “sprinkling.”

One hundred hours a year seems to be the magic number.

They want to see good rewarded and evil punished, so Matchers go out of their way to punish Takers and protect Givers from harm.

TFT was not just a cooperator and a punisher but also a teacher. It showed the other players how to play better.

one of the reasons the not-nice programs performed so poorly is because they could not forgive and got caught in death spirals.

The first was that later rounds would be like earlier rounds.

The second mistaken assumption was that the games are zero-sum.

If the groups talk to each other, they can easily get everything they both need. But if they immediately resort to fighting, both groups do worse.

The longer the time we anticipate we’ll be dealing with someone, the better the behavior we can expect.

Givers often take it on the chin in the short term, but over the long term—when they can meet other Givers and gain the protection of Matchers—their reputation becomes known, and boom. They go from the bottom of success metrics to the top.

Givers can be great networkers by merely being themselves, while the hesitant Matchers wait for an engraved invitation to the party.

DON’T BE ENVIOUS

Again, most of life isn’t zero-sum. Just because someone else wins, that doesn’t mean you lose.

TFT never got a higher score than its counterpart did in any single game. It never won. But the gains it made in the aggregate were better than those achieved by “winners” who edged out meager profits across many sessions.

“Tit for tat won the tournament not by beating the other player but by eliciting behavior from the other player [that] allowed both to do well.”

Don’t worry how well the other side is doing; worry about how...

DON’T BE THE FIRST ...