Givers and takers differ in their attitudes and actions toward other people. If you’re a taker, you help others strategically, when the benefits to you outweigh the personal costs. If you’re a giver,...
Regardless of their reciprocity styles, people love to be asked for advice.
Speak softly, but carry a big stick. —Theodore Roosevelt, U.S. president
At work, our sense of commitment and control depends more on our direct boss than on anyone else. When we have a supportive boss, our bond with the organization strengthens and we feel a greater span...
Sunk costs do have a small effect—decision makers are biased in favor of their previous investments—but three other factors are more powerful. One is anticipated regret: will I be sorry that I didn’t...
Being a giver is not good for a 100-yard dash, but it’s valuable in a marathon.
Responsibility bias is a major source of failed collaborations. Professional relationships disintegrate when entrepreneurs, inventors, investors, and executives feel that their partners are not giving...
By asking for help, you’re creating an opportunity for them to express their values and feel valued. By asking for a five-minute favor, you impose a relatively small burden—and if you ask a matcher, y...
Highly successful people have three things in common: motivation, ability, and opportunity. If we want to succeed, we need a combination of hard work, talent, and luck.
Responsibility bias occurs because we have more information about our own contributions than others’.
Success doesn’t measure a human being, effort does.
Dormant ties offer the access to novel information that weak ties afford, but without the discomfort
Procrastination may be the enemy of productivity, but it can be a resource for creativity. Long before the modern obsession with efficiency precipitated by the Industrial Revolution and the Protestant...
Even in seemingly independent jobs that rely on raw brainpower, our success depends more on others than we realize.
Every day, we all encounter things we love and things that need to change. The former give us joy. The latter fuel our desire to make the world different—ideally better than the way we found it. But t...
Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness. —Martin Luther King Jr., civil rights leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Se...
Start the spark of reciprocity by making requests as well as helping others. Help generously and without thought of return; but also ask often for what you need.
Good givers are great getters; they make everybody better, Simmons explains.
If originals aren’t reliable judges of the quality of their ideas, how do they maximize their odds of creating a masterpiece? They come up with a large number of ideas. Simonton finds that on average,...
This doesn’t feel like I’m persuading you. As Aronson explains, you’ve been convinced by someone you already like and trust: Yourself.
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