People hate generosity as much as they hate mean-spiritedness
SELFISHNESS is not a good way to win friends and influence people. But selflessness, too, is repellent. That, at least, is the conclusion of a study by Craig Parks of Washington State University and Asako Stone, of the Desert Research Institute in Nevada. Dr Parks and Dr Stone describe, in the latest edition of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, how and why the goody two-shoes of this world annoy everyone else to distraction.
In the first of their experiments they asked the participants—undergraduate psychology students—to play a game over a computer network with four other students. In fact, these others (identified only by colours, in a manner reminiscent of the original version of the film, “The Taking of Pelham 123”) were actually played by a computer program. …
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