In life, many of us grapple with the balance between being kind or assertive to advance ourselves, whether in personal interactions or professional pursuits. We’re constantly faced with choices: to cooperate for mutual benefit or to compete to gain advantage over others.
We are often caught in a dilemma because advice from management experts and life coaches often fluctuates between extremes, urging us to either always be accommodating or to adopt a fiercely competitive stance.
In 1984, Dr. Robert Axelrod of the University of Michigan devised an ingenious empirical experiment to tackle this dilemma, based on an iterative version of the classic game theory experiment known as the Prisoner’s Dilemma.
Continue reading “An empirical approach to being nice (but not a pushover) in the workplace”