Give and Take-The More You Take, The More You Lose

I've written about emotional intelligence a few times this month, and I just read this press release from the University of Chicago about "Asymmetric Reciprocity to Positive and Negative Acts".  Bascially, if you're nice to others, they tend to be nice to you, but if you are mean, they tend to be REALLY mean to you.

I've seen this played out at work many times, but mostly in the negative sense.  Someone might be having a bad day and make a negative comment which lights the fuse to a series of escalating quid pro quo attacks.  And as the study indicates, negative behavior has greater impact than positive.  You would think that adults could act their age, but noooooo...

Here is an excerpt from the university's release:
In everyday social exchanges, being mean to people has a lot more impact than being nice, research at the University of Chicago has shown.

Feeling slighted can have a bigger difference on how a person responds than being the recipient of perceived generosity, even if the net value of the social transaction is the same, the research on reciprocity—giving and taking—shows.

"Negative reciprocity, or “taking”, escalates," said Boaz Keysar, Professor of Psychology at the University of Chicago and lead author of the paper "Reciprocity is Not Give and Take: Asymmetric Reciprocity to Positive and Negative Acts," published in the December issue of Psychological Science. The study was based on giving-and-taking games conducted on students and people in downtown Chicago.

The games provided data on how people respond to give-and-take social exchanges.

"For instance in driving, if you are kind and let someone go in front of you, that driver may be considerate in response. But if you cut someone off, that person may react very aggressively, and this could escalate to road rage," Keysar said.