Why We Don't Really Like Unselfish People

Researchers have long noticed that we don't like selfish people or "free riders"—people who take from the public good without contributing to it—and we tend to expel them from our groups. But Craig Parks, a social psychologist at Washington State University, and former doctoral student Asako Stone, ran a series of experiments and found something rather surprising: We don't like having unselfish people in our groups either, and we want to expel them, too.

But why? Past research has shown that unselfish people are beneficial to a group's overall welfare. Well, Parks and Stone say we don't like having unselfish people around because we worry that they establish "an undesirable behavior standard." As the researchers write:

there is evidence that, within a group task setting, social comparison tends to induce feelings of interpersonal competition. People feel driven to outdo the group member who is setting the standard. In a setting such as ours, the standard being set by the benevolent other is to give up a considerable amount of personal resources and receive only a small payoff in return. To compete with such a person means that one would need to give even more and take even less, not a very desirable prospect. Removal of this person would eliminate that competitive standard.

They also found that unselfish group members are seen as rule breakers (breaking the rule of equity), and we sometimes assume they have ulterior motives. This now has got them wondering: What happens when unselfish people are rejected by others? Do they give up trying to help the group or try harder?