Do nice guys always finish last in the workplace? A University of Iowa study has an answer

A University of Iowa researcher set out to discover whether the old adage is true, that "nice guys finish last." 

Her finding, after years of research? Niceness can actually help put someone ahead in the workplace. 

Rong Su, UI associate professor of management and entrepreneurship, started researching positivity in the workplace with three doctoral students. Huiyao Liao, a co-researcher, presented the essential research question for the study, which was published this spring through the Psychological Bulletin Journal.

"The idea that he came to me with is, what does it mean for an employee if they are pro-socially motivated? So, if they're being nice in terms of wanting to always help people, does that benefit their performance?" Su said. 

Su said her team started looking at how to test the idea that nice guys always finish last. 

"The assumption is that the corporate world is competitive," Su said. "If you're being too nice, you're gonna fall behind; that doesn't benefit your performance."

The group looked at factors such as how employee actions were responded to, and if their niceness was reciprocated. They also looked at whether workers fall behind when they are focusing on being helpful toward others.

"What does that mean for their well-being, for their happiness? Does being helpful and being nice at work contribute to their well-being because they are helping others and make their work more meaningful, or does it make it more likely for them to burn out?" Su said. 

Do nice guys finish last? Not exactly. 'They're more likely to emerge as a leader.'

To answer those questions, Su and her group used a meta-analysis research process and looked at the results of hundreds of other studies on the topic. 

"We used a sophisticated statistical method to quantitatively summarize all these relationships across close to 300 studies and, analyzing the data, we were able to show under what context is pro-social motivation beneficial for job performance," Su said. 

The group found that being agreeable has minimal benefit to work performance, but being socially motivated, meaning wanting to help others' well-being, has its perks. 

"That's nice in terms of being helpful. So you're not being nice in terms of always saying yes and complying to other people's requests, you're actually being nice in a more proactive way," Su said. "You're going out of your way to help others when they need help, but also in organizational settings, you're offering suggestions. You speak up with the goal to help the organization."

Su said the research shows that being socially motivated has benefits, including feeling good after helping a person. Additionally, they found that supervisors rate employees who are more socially motivated higher on performance evaluations.

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"It benefits career success as well," Su said. "If an employee is someone who is socially motivated and always wants to help, they rate those employees higher in terms of leadership potential, so they're more likely to emerge as a leader or be considered for promotions."

The group also found that there are two types of motivation: discretionary and obligatory. Discretionary means people generally want to help others, while obligatory involves someone acting because of a sense of duty.

There is also a difference between being socially motivated and being altruistic, or selfless.

"We showed that you don't have to be helpful while sacrificing yourself. There is a way to be helpful, really be thoughtful ... but also managing your own job tasks and without sacrificing your own job," Su said. 

Su said, when employers are looking to hire people, they should value workers who are socially motivated, along with other positive traits.

"We show that even if you consider how smart someone is ... conscientious, hard-working and reliable, pro-social motivation still has a value added in helping managers select employees who can perform well and can contribute too," Su said. 

Su hopes the findings can help both employers and employees create better workplaces. 

Read the full findings of the study here. 

"You can encourage your employees to be pro social and to help each other without sacrificing their own job performance," Su said. "If companies and managers strongly believe in this mantra of 'nice guys finish last,' they're going to treat their employees very differently and they're going to cultivate a very different culture."