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

by Eric Barker

why do we have this impression of them as bloodthirsty savages? It’s called marketing. It’s much easier, cheaper, and safer to have people surrender quickly because they’re terrified of you than it is to fight every battle, so pirates were sharp enough to cultivate a brand image of barbarity.

“Contrary to conventional wisdom, pirate life was orderly and honest.” You may be a pirate at heart yourself. Ever get tired of a bully of a boss and think about striking out on your own? Think everyone should have a say in how the company is run? Think a corporation is obligated to take care of its people? And that racism has no place in business? Congrats! You’re a pirate.

Pirate ships were very democratic places. All rules needed to be agreed to unanimously. Captains could be deposed for any reason, and this turned them from tyrants into something closer to servants. The only time a captain had total authority was in the midst of battle, when quick decision-making was a matter of life and death.

Pirates ended up forming a “company” you might be very happy to work for. Since the boss could be fired at any time, he was quite focused on taking good care of his employees. Captains’ wages weren’t significantly larger than anyone else’s. As Leeson explains, “The difference between the highest and lowest paid person in this pirate crew was thus only a single share.” And he didn’t get ridiculous perks. Pirate captains didn’t get a bigger bunk on the ship or more food.

Pirates Inc. also had great benefits. Fighting bravely or being the first to notice targets was handsomely rewarded with bonuses. Got injured? Just file a claim. Pirates effectively had a disability plan, covering battle-related injuries. And these fantastic HR initiatives worked. The historical record shows pirates had no trouble getting people to join their ranks, while the Royal Navy resorted to compelling men to sign up. Pirates Inc. even had a diversity program hundreds of years before it was popular or mandated by law. Why? They weren’t morally enlightened; racism simply wasn’t good business whereas treating people right was. It gave them an advantage in recruiting and retaining talent. It’s estimated that the average pirate ship was approximately 25 percent black. Each crewmember...

“Pirate governance created sufficient order and cooperation to make pirates one of the most sophisticated and successful criminal organizations in history.”

When Wharton School professor Adam Grant looked at who ended up at the bottom of success metrics, he found an awful lot of nice guys—“Givers.” In studies of engineers, medical students, and salespeople, those who were the most giving to others consistently came up short. They missed more deadlines, got lower grades, and closed fewer sales.

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. Givers are found at the very top and very bottom. Those same studies showed that the majority of productive engineers, students with the highest grades, and salespeople who brought in the most revenue were all Givers.

for every dollar donated, income for that person went up by $3.75. There was a clear relationship between how much was given and how much was earned that year.

Income peaks among those who trust people more, not less. In a study titled “The Right Amount of Trust,” people were asked how much they trusted others on a scale of one to ten. Income was highest among those who responded with the number eight. This aligns with what Adam Grant found, with Givers at the top of success metrics.

Leaders are supposed to be tough. We saw earlier that some negative traits actually help people who are in charge. However, when we look at the top ranked leaders in the military, where we would expect toughness to be prized, the exact opposite is true: those scoring the best are supportive, not stern.

People less tolerant of unethical behavior had a higher well-being than those who were okay with a big dose of cheating.

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. Even more surprising, those who donate their time to help others feel less busy and like they have more free time.

In a lot of short-term scenarios a little cheating and bullying can pay off. But over time it pollutes the social environment and soon everyone is second-guessing everybody and no one wants to work toward the common good. Being a Taker has short-term benefits, but it’s inherently limited. In the end, nobody wants to help you because they know what you’re really like. Who are a Taker’s worst enemies? Other Takers, says Adam Grant’s research. While Givers get tons of help from other Givers and receive protection from Matchers—who believe that to maintain fairness kind acts should be rewarded—they have only Takers to worry about. Meanwhile, Takers end up being disliked by everyone, including other Takers.

totally selfless Givers exhaust themselves helping others and get exploited by Takers, leading them to perform poorly on success metrics. There are a number of things Givers can do to 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.” So by doing all their good deeds one day a week, Givers make sure assisting others doesn’t hamper their own achievements. One hundred hours a year seems to be the magic number.

the other ace in the hole Givers have: Matchers. They want to see good rewarded and evil punished, so Matchers go out of their way to punish Takers and protect Givers from harm. When Givers are surrounded by a coterie...

In the short term, being a jerk has benefits but eventually poisons the well since others become jerks around you. In the long term, being a Giver pays off big, thoug...

In cards, you can never be sure you’ll win a particular hand, but once the odds favor you, the gods of math decree that the longer you stay, the better you do.

All TFT did was cooperate on the first Prisoner’s Dilemma round, then in every subsequent round, it did whatever the opponent did previously—that is, if on the previous round the opponent cooperated, it cooperated on the next round; if the opponent betrayed, it betrayed on the next round. This simple program decimated the competition. So Axelrod ran the tournament again. He reached out to even more experts and this time had sixty-two entries. Some algorithms were more complex and some were variants on TFT. Who won? Simple ol’ tit for tat. Again.

When TFT met a program that cooperated on every move, the gains were enormous. Even programs like Tester (the backpedaler) learned that playing along was more beneficial than the marginal gains earned from defecting.

TFT also displayed something vital: forgiveness. By not being complex, by only remembering what the other player did most recently, TFT was able to bring out the best in almost any program that was not totally evil or utterly random. TFT was not just a cooperator and a punisher but also a teacher. It showed the other players how to play better. Axelrod says that one of the reasons the not-nice programs performed so poorly is because they could not forgive and got caught in death spirals.

Rather than always repeating the opponent’s last move, it would occasionally forgive and cooperate after being betrayed. While this led to it losing a couple more points to evil programs like ALL D, those points were more than made up for by the generous TFT’s tremendous gains pulling potentially nice programs out of death spirals.

The main reasons for the success of TFT were that it was nice, it was forgiving, it was easy for the other players to deal with, and it would retaliate when necessary.

We get a reputation. The majority of our dealings are not anonymous. Most of us deal with the same people over and over again. Betray them and they remember it. An early edge achieved with betrayal isn’t worth much since it poisons what could have been a fruitful long-term relationship.

Business schools frequently do a negotiation experiment in which two groups are told to decide how a pile of oranges, which both groups need, should be split. Both groups are given specific details the other group can’t see. Much like in the Prisoner’s Dilemma, the bad guys do terribly. They assume the game is zero-sum: every orange they get is one the other group doesn’t get. But the cooperators, the people who share and communicate quickly, discover that the special instructions each person was given include a detail: one group only needs the fruit of the orange; the other group only needs the peels. 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.

Matchers don’t necessarily cooperate. Matchers tend to wait until others do something nice before they respond in kind. This passive attitude drastically reduces the number of interactions they have. Meanwhile, Givers run around handing out favors, losing a little to Takers, getting a fair share back from Matchers, and winning the lottery whenever they meet another Giver. Givers can be great networkers by merely being themselves, while the hesitant Matchers wait for an engraved invitation to the party.

Again, most of life isn’t zero-sum. Just because someone else wins, that doesn’t mean you lose. Sometimes that person needs the fruit and you need the peel. And sometimes the strategy that makes you lose small on this round makes you win big on the next.

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 s...

not only is reciprocity one of the key elements of being influential and winning favor with others but it’s also essential that you go first. Matchers wait and miss too many opportunities. And Takers trade short-term gains for long-term losses. Remember, all the big winners were nice and all the big losers started off betraying.

Never betray anyone initially. Why make someone question your motives? But if a person cheats you, don’t be a martyr.

TFT was the simplest of them all, and adding some occasional forgiveness was the only way to improve it. You need to be able to teach the people you’re dealing with because you want the relationship to continue.

You cooperate with me, I cooperate with you. You betray me, I betray you.

in zero-sum games like chess you want your intentions to be unclear, but in the iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma, it’s the exact opposite. You want the other player to see what you’re doing so they can join you. Life is more often like the latter.

When you take a job take a long look at the people you’re going to be working with—because the odds are you’re going to become like them; they are not going to become like you. You can’t change them. If it doesn’t fit who you are, it’s not going to work.

bad work environments can make you a bad person and can make you unhappy.

people who surround us often determine who we become. When we see others around us perform altruistic acts, we’re more likely to act altruistically ourselves.

This also allows us to more safely be Givers—and get the success benefits that top-ranked Givers get without the fear of ending up a martyr.

Kissing your boss’s ass isn’t immoral or unsavory if the boss is someone you actually respect. At that next job interview find out who you will be reporting to. Ask to speak to that person and do some research on them. Studies show that your boss has a much larger effect on your happiness and success than the company at large.

All the successful programs in Axelrod’s competition cooperated first. Givers outdo Matchers because they volunteer help without waiting to see what the other person will do. Plenty of other research backs this up. Robert Cialdini says that being the first to offer help is key to engendering a feeling of reciprocity, which is one of the cornerstones of persuasion and ingratiation.

When Harvard Business School’s Deepak Malhotra teaches negotiation, the first thing he says isn’t “Be tough” or “Show the other side you mean business.” His number-one recommendation to students is “They need to like you.”

Doing quick favors for new acquaintances tells other Givers you’re a Giver and can earn you the protection of Matchers. Go ahead and send that new inmate a gift basket. When the knives come out in the prison yard you’ll have a lot more people watching your back.

the most successful people in that study on the power of trust ranked themselves an eight—not a ten—as to how much they trusted others.

It’s just human nature that when people do too much and don’t ever push back, they get taken for granted. So if you’re not a total saint, it’s okay; being a saint is actually a very poor strategy for getting ahead.

It turns out that the best way to punish Takers in the workplace is good old-fashioned gossip. Warning others about Takers will make you feel better and can help police bad behavior.

giving too much can lead to burnout. A mere two hours a week of helping others is enough to get maximum benefits, so there’s no need for guilt or for martyring yourself—and no excuse for saying you don’t have time to help others.

What lessons can you take from the jerks without becoming a jerk? A common trend through the research was that jerks aren’t afraid to push a little. They self-promote. They negotiate. They make themselves visible. This can be done without being a jerk. Maybe you won’t gain everything the jerks get, but you can benefit from putting yourself out there—and without losing your soul.