Nice Guys Finish First: The Competitive Altruism Hypothesis

Three experimental studies examined the relationship between altruistic behavior and the emergence of status hierarchies within groups. In each study, group members were confronted with a social dilemma in which they could either benefit themselves or their group. Study 1 revealed that in a reputation environment when contributions were public, people were more altruistic. In both Studies 1 and 2, the most altruistic members gained the highest status in their group and were most frequently preferred as cooperative interaction partners. Study 3 showed that as the costs of altruism increase, the status rewards also increase. These results support the premise at the heart of competitive altruism: Individuals may behave altruistically for reputation reasons because selective benefits (associated with status) accrue to the generous.

• Publication year

  2006

• Venue

  Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin

• Publication date

  2006-10-01

• Fields of study

  Medicine, Psychology

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1177/0146167206291006PMID 16963610
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

• Evolutionary Origins of Leadership and Followership

  2006cited by this paper
• Nobody's watching? Subtle cues affect generosity in an anonymous economic game.

  2005cited by this paper
• Prosocial behavior: multilevel perspectives.

  2005cited by this paper
• The Status Syndrome: How Social Standing Affects Our Health and Longevity

  2004cited by this paper
• The heroism of women and men.

  2004cited by this paper
• Sacrificing time and effort for the good of others: The benefits and costs of volunteerism

  2004cited by this paper
• Blood is thicker than water: kinship orientation across adulthood.

  2003cited by this paper
• Power, Approach, and Inhibition

  2003cited by this paper
• The nature of human altruism

  2003cited by this paper
• Power, approach, and inhibition.

  2003cited by this paper
• Leadership and Information Processing: Linking Perceptions and Performance

  2002cited by this paper
• New Evolutionary Perspectives on Altruism: Multilevel-Selection and Costly-Signaling Theories

  2002cited by this paper
• Reputation helps solve the ‘tragedy of the commons’

  2002cited by this paper
• Inter–Group Helping Relations as Power Relations: Maintaining or Challenging Social Dominance Between Groups Through Helping

  2002cited by this paper
• The evolution of prestige: freely conferred deference as a mechanism for enhancing the benefits of cultural transmission.

  2001cited by this paper
• Costly signaling and cooperation.

  2001cited by this paper
• Who attains social status? Effects of personality and physical attractiveness in social groups.

  2001cited by this paper
• Evolutionary psychology: The new science of the mind

  2001cited by this paper
• Community Identification Moderating the Impact of Financial Incentives in a Natural Social Dilemma: Water Conservation

  2001cited by this paper
• THE HANDICAP PRINCIPLE: A MISSING PIECE OF DARWIN'S PUZZLE

  2000cited by this paper
• Cooperation in modern society: Promoting the welfare of communities, states, and organizations

  2000cited by this paper
• Turtle hunting and tombstone opening. public generosity as costly signaling.

  2000cited by this paper
• The Impact of Personal Metering in the Management of a Natural Resource Crisis: A Social Dilemma Analysis

  1999cited by this paper
• Social identification effects in social dilemmas : a transformation of motives

  1999cited by this paper
• Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny

  1999cited by this paper
• The impact of metering in a natural resource crisis: a social dilemma analysis

  1999cited by this paper
• Leadership in social dilemmas: social identification effects on collective actions in public goods

  1999cited by this paper
• Leadership in social dilemmas: The effects of group identification on collective actions to provide public goods

  1999cited by this paper
• Competitive altruism: from reciprocity to the handicap principle

  1998cited by this paper
• Evolution of indirect reciprocity by image scoring

  1998cited by this paper
• The boundaries of reciprocal cooperation

  1998cited by this paper
• Development of prosocial, individualistic, and competitive orientations: theory and preliminary evidence.

  1997cited by this paper
• Reinterpreting the empathy-altruism relationship: when one into one equals oneness.

  1997cited by this paper
• Dominance, Prosocial Orientation, and Female Preferences: Do Nice Guys Really Finish Last?

  1995cited by this paper
• Social Dilemmas

  1995influential reference
• Sustained helping without obligation: motivation, longevity of service, and perceived attitude change among AIDS volunteers.

  1995cited by this paper
• Why do People Sacrifice for Their Nations

  1995cited by this paper
• Some Neo-Darwinian Decision Rules for Altruism: Weighing Cues for Inclusive Fitness as a Function of the Biological Importance of the Decision

  1994cited by this paper
• Bass & Stogdill's handbook of leadership: Theory, research, and managerial applications, 3rd ed.

  1990influential reference
• The Biology of Moral Systems, Richard D. Alexander. Aldine, Hawthorne, New York (1987), xx, +301. Price $34.95 hardback, $16.95 paperback

  1987cited by this paper
• Reciprocal food sharing in the vampire bat

  1984cited by this paper
• Socialization in Small Groups: Temporal Changes in Individual-Group Relations1

  1982cited by this paper
• The effects of communication, resource feedback, and identifiability on behavior in a simulated commons

  1981cited by this paper
• The evolution of cooperation

  1981influential reference
• Is Empathic Emotion a Source of Altruistic Motivation

  1981cited by this paper
• “Public” Choice and Cooperation in n-Person Prisoner's Dilemma

  1978cited by this paper
• ‘The Selfish Gene’

  1977cited by this paper
• Effects of opportunity to communicate and visibility of individual decisions on behavior in the common interest.

  1974cited by this paper
• The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism

  1971cited by this paper
• Success, failure, attention, and reaction to others: The warm glow of success.

  1970cited by this paper
• The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups.

  1966cited by this paper
• Book Review: Organizational Behavior: The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups

  1966cited by this paper
• The genetical evolution of social behaviour. I.

  1964cited by this paper
• I. THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES BY MEANS OF NATURAL SELECTION

  1963cited by this paper
• SOCIAL animal.

  1953cited by this paper
• A constant error in psychological ratings.

  year unknowncited by this paper

• The Influence of Blood Donation Experience on Donor Behavior Through Donor Pride in Thailand

  2026cites this paper
• Status Facilitates Cooperative Behaviour in Public Goods Games by Enhancing Perspective-Taking: The Moderating Effect of Power.

  2026cites this paper
• Would you be as green as your family or loved ones? The influence of intimate relationships on pro-environmental behaviors

  2026cites this paper
• *Social Rewards Protection Theory: Why People Morally Derogate Prosocial Actors for Undisclosed Personal Benefits

  2026cites this paper
• When Generosity Backfires: Children's Evaluation of Sharing With Negative Social Consequences.

  2026cites this paper
• Modeling human reputation-seeking behavior in a spatio-temporally complex public good provision game

  2025cites this paper
• Cooperation is not rewarded by friendship, but generous and selfish students repel each other in social networks

  2025cites this paper
• Does Saying “Thanks a Lot” Make You Look Less Than? The Magnitude of Gratitude Shapes Perceptions of Relational Hierarchy

  2025cites this paper
• Prosocial behavior and reputation: how and when does helping a high-power recipient backfire?

  2025cites this paper
• Cultural Differences in Perceptions of Power: A Cultural Logics Perspective

  2025cites this paper
• Darwin in the classroom: Incorporating an evolutionary perspective into tourism and hospitality education

  2025cites this paper
• Would You Put Your Sustainability on Display? Preferences for the Visibility of Sustainable Household Energy Measures in the Netherlands

  2025cites this paper
• To disclose or not? The impact of prosocial behavior disclosure on the attainment of social capital on social networking sites

  2025cites this paper
• Neural correlates of social observation and socioeconomic status in influencing environmental donations.

  2025cites this paper
• Beyond Good Intentions: Unraveling the CSR‐Employee Health Nexus Through the Lens of Job Stress and Work Overload: A Three‐Wave Time‐Lagged Study

  2025cites this paper
• Research on the Impact of Social Satisfaction from the Subjective Perspective of Residents during Urban Renewal

  2025cites this paper
• Elevated Power Promotes Prosocial Behavior More Than Elevated Status.

  2025cites this paper
• See and Sing: How and When Does Frontline Employee Green Behavior Influence Consumer Evangelism?

  2025cites this paper
• The do-gooder dilemma: A self/other asymmetry in the perceived emotional costs of self-reporting good deeds

  2025cites this paper
• Development of the Japanese version of the healthy selfishness and pathological altruism scale

  2025cites this paper
• All are welcome! How power distance belief and religiosity impact consumer responses to corporate racial equity initiatives

  2025cites this paper
• Who Likes Americans and Who Doesn’t: Assessing Effects of Fundamentalism, Liberal Values, and Prosociality on Tunisian Attitudes

  2025cites this paper
• Human face as a biosocial marker in human evolution

  2025cites this paper
• The importance of feeling above-average morally versus agentically

  2025cites this paper
• Striving for Success and Being Seen as Virtuous: The Impact of Achievement Values on Reputation Concerns

  2025cites this paper
• How Gossip Rules the World: Three Hypotheses

  2025cites this paper
• Rocks and Cavemen, Clicks and Trolls: How Trolling May Be the Modern Equivalent of Rock-Throwing

  2025cites this paper
• The Power is Yours: How Power Drives People’s Preference for Sustainable Luxury

  2025cites this paper
• A Social Hierarchy Perspective on the Detrimental Effects of Leader–Member Exchange Differentiation on Team Functioning: Leader‐Conferred Status Versus Member‐Conferred Status

  2025cites this paper
• Working through emotions: Sadness predicts social engagement and physiologic linkage for men and disengagement for women in dyadic interactions.

  2025cites this paper
• Investigating the effects of single-dose intranasal testosterone on economic preferences in a large randomized trial of men

  2025cites this paper
• Are High-Hierarchy Individuals More Corrupt? The Interaction of Power and Two Forms of Status on Corruption

  2025cites this paper
• Virtual Agent Economies

  2025cites this paper
• Message Framing in Consumer Food Conservation: The Interaction Effects of Message Framing and Time Metaphors

  2025cites this paper
• Love of Status

  2025cites this paper
• The effect of power motive on cooperation: The moderating role of eye cues and self‐construal

  2025cites this paper
• The Impact of Public Service Motivation on Voice Behavior and the Moderating Role of Risk Preference: A Survey Among Grassroots Public Employees in China

  2025cites this paper
• People are less likely to selfishly deceive those who achieved status through virtue rather than dominance or competence

  2025cites this paper
• Is Virtue Good for You?

  2025cites this paper
• Mapping the moral architecture of effective and extraordinary altruism

  2025cites this paper
• The effect of seeing and being seen on household energy efficiency investment: the cases of solar panels and high-efficiency glass

  2025cites this paper
• The hidden costs of human cooperation.

  2025cites this paper
• Unpacking the role of demographic characteristics in organizational citizenship behaviour: An intersectional approach

  2025cites this paper
• Efficiency Recalibrates Social‐Emotional Trade‐Offs Behind Partner Choice in Direct Reciprocity through Intention‐Specific Neural Bases

  2025cites this paper
• The Persistence or Diminishment of Employee Stewardship Behaviour: Exploring the Crucial Roles of Supervisors' Cultural Orientation, Admiration, and Status Conferral

  2025cites this paper
• Better or different? Self‐differentiating appeals interact with self‐theories to predict volunteer intentions

  2024cites this paper
• The role of exogenous testosterone and social environment on the expression of sociosexuality and status-seeking behaviors in young Chilean men.

  2024cites this paper
• Crucial to Me and My Society: How Collectivist Culture Influences Individual Pro-Environmental Behavior through Environmental Values

  2024cites this paper
• Supply Chain Challenges in Competitive World: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Manufacturing and Service Sectors

  2024cites this paper
• The effects of social (dis)engagement on status conferral: A context dependent account

  2024cites this paper
• Mechanisms of Self-Control in the Influence of Moral Elevation on Pro-Social Behavior: A Study Based on an Experimental Paradigm

  2024cites this paper
• The Need for Status, Organizational Citizenship Behavior, and Overall Evaluation: Focusing on the Moderating Effects of Political Skill and Task Visibility

  2024cites this paper
• Resonance of Review Behavior: Will People Follow in Their Friends’ Footsteps?

  2024cites this paper
• Examining self-regulation as a potential intervention for moral grandstanding on social networking sites

  2024cites this paper
• Message (in)congruence: Tweeting while competing for donations

  2024cites this paper
• Do college students with higher attachment anxiety or avoidance tend to have lower subjective social status? Evidence from a cross‐sectional and a longitudinal study

  2024cites this paper
• Unveiling the veil: exploring how wellbeing motivations shape anonymous and public prosocial behavior in Indonesia

  2024cites this paper
• How Charitable Appeals Shape Donors’ Donation Choices

  2024cites this paper
• Chimpanzees engage in competitive altruism in a triadic ultimatum game

  2024cites this paper
• Pride Appeals and Temporal Framing Compatibility Effects in Green Advertising

  2024cites this paper
• From heterogeneity to inequality: The impact of nationality diversity on leadership in multinational teams

  2024cites this paper
• The pathway from advertising appeals to behavioral intention: rainbow LGBTQ + ads and self-expressive

  2024cites this paper
• The position that awaits: Implications of expected future status for performance, helping, motivation, and well-being at work

  2024cites this paper
• Becoming Better: When and Why Positive Status Change Induces Prosocial Behavior Versus Self-Interested Behavior

  2024cites this paper
• Encouraging altruistic user-generated content in gamified review platforms

  2024cites this paper
• What Can we Learn About Human Nature from Interacting with Strangers? Relationship Type Determines Behavior in the Dictator Game

  2024cites this paper
• Doing good with flow: Unlocking brand passion through virtual CSR co‐creation participation and immersive experiences

  2024cites this paper
• Partner Choice does not Promote Altruism in a Joint Taking Game

  2024cites this paper
• Building Altruistic and Moral AI Agent with Brain-inspired Affective Empathy Mechanisms

  2024cites this paper
• A Configurational Perspective on the Quality of Managers’ Counterfactual Reflections

  2024cites this paper
• Dependency-Oriented Versus Autonomy-Oriented Help: Inferred Motivations and Intergroup Perceptions

  2024cites this paper
• Morals over money: The relationship between moral motivations and Consumers' food waste

  2024cites this paper
• The roots of cooperation

  2024cites this paper
• How virtue, competence, and dominance conjointly shape status attainment at work: Integrating person-centered and variable-centered approaches.

  2024cites this paper
• Effects of social inhibition and group relations on altruistic behaviour of children under conditions of reputational threat

  2024influential citation
• Prosocial behaviour enhances evaluation of physical beauty

  2024cites this paper
• Building Altruistic and Moral AI Agent With Brain-Inspired Emotional Empathy Mechanisms

  2024cites this paper
• Group-bounded indirect reciprocity and intergroup gossip

  2024cites this paper
• The meaning of seeking help: The effects of ascribed and achieved status of the help‐seeker on observer attributions, expectations, and willingness to offer help

  2024cites this paper
• Organisational antecedents of employee ambassadorship on social network sites

  2024cites this paper
• What Will People Think? How College Students Evaluate Bystander Intervention Behavior

  2024cites this paper
• How infants predict respect-based power.

  2024cites this paper
• Money is Status Memory - The Generally Accepted Platform for Interpersonal and Intertemporal Prestige Status Transfer

  2024cites this paper
• A Typology of Psychological Mechanisms Underlying Prosocial Decisions

  2024cites this paper
• Status and subjective well-being: A conceptual replication and extension of Anderson et al. (2012)

  2024cites this paper
• Positive reputation for altruism toward future generations regardless of the cost for current others

  2023cites this paper
• How prosocial actors use power hierarchies to build moral reputation

  2023cites this paper
• Communicating the cost of your altruism makes you cool—competitive altruism and sexual selection in a real-life charity situation

  2023cites this paper
• Relative status and dyadic help seeking and giving: The roles of past helping history and power distance value

  2023cites this paper
• Unselfish Alibis Increase Choices of Selfish Autonomous Vehicles

  2023cites this paper
• The transnational prosocial activities of elite African footballers: an exploratory study of the costs and the benefits

  2023cites this paper
• The nature of status: Navigating the varied approaches to conceptualizing and measuring status

  2023cites this paper
• Do you reap what you sow? Driving mechanism of supply chain transparency on consumers' indirect reciprocity

  2023cites this paper
• Effects of cost and praise‐seeking need on motive inference for those who engage in helping behaviours

  2023cites this paper
• Reminders undermine impressions of genuine gratitude.

  2023cites this paper
• Rebels with a cause? How norm violations shape dominance, prestige, and influence granting

  2023cites this paper
• The STATUS signaling FUNCTION of FOOD WASTE

  2023cites this paper
• For me, for you, or for the environment? Explaining young consumers’ motives for adopting electric cars based on the fundamental motive framework

  2023cites this paper
• Egoistic and altruistic claims in organic cotton apparel advertising

  2023cites this paper
• Evidence of the active participation of women in the intergroup conflict based on the use of aggression and cooperation

  2023cites this paper