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Comment by trevelyan | Hacker News Reader

This blog post is factually incorrect in the sense that it contradicts the current state-of-the-art in psychology research, which comes from the regression analysis of statistically-identifiable personality traits against actual career outcomes in repeated large-n survey research.

Specifically, empathy is associated with "agreeability" in the five-factor OCEAN model (the dominant scientific model of personality traits in psychology). In this model, agreeability has been repeatedly shown to correlate with worse career outcomes and lower professional satisfaction over time.

This is not to say that being an asshole is good, but if we are measuring career performance in terms of the traditional metrics that matter to most people (promotion and pay), the statistical reality is that high levels of empathy don't move the needle in the direction people conventionally assume they want.

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I think there might be confusion about terminology. The form of empathy that the author is referring to is more "understanding other people" than being "kind, sympathetic, cooperative, warm and considerate". Basically, putting yourself in the other person's shoes and seeing things from their perspective as opposed to being agreeable or kind. The former is the essence of strategy and manipulation. The latter is generally being a good person.

It's clear that if you want to get ahead in life, understanding how other people perceive things is THE skill. Being warm, kind and sympathetic is also good, but not required. I can understand how being agreeable can be a detriment in many professional situation. The form of "empathy" being described in the blog post is always an advantage.

Could be the other way around, that people that become leaders lose their empathy? I've read that this is a real effect.

Either way makes sense to me, empathy is a horrible trait in a leader. I know that seems like a horrible thing to say, but I am a very empathetic person and would make a horrible leader. Wanting to please everyone leads to stress and indecision.

When you can place yourself in the position of a colleague/customer/supplier, you often understand "they did the best they could given their resources" - be those financial, emotional, intelligence, etc.

Often I see more senior leaders in business have a somewhat flagrant disregard for their staff and suppliers constraints - "I don't want excuses or reasons, just make it work... You should have foreseen these problems, and worked with me to mitigate them."

Personally I find getting the balance right, between understanding how and why a situation has occurred, or will occur - and how to "motivate" a customer/supplier/colleague to do "better" irrespective of the resources - really quite hard.

Indeed, I will often be making the excuses on behalf of my suppliers... because I often understand the constraints on them just as well as they do, and can articulate them more clearly. And that is the complete opposite of what I see many "successful" executives do. Many of who have selective hearing, and only hear the good news, and never the bad unless it gives them an advantage.

Googling didn't turn up anything on a link between empathy and agreeableness. Only a study that had both words in the title.

From Wikipedia:

"Agreeableness is a personality trait manifesting itself in individual behavioral characteristics that are perceived as kind, sympathetic, cooperative, warm and considerate.... People scoring low on agreeableness are generally less concerned with others' well-being and report having less empathy...."

and:

"Agreeableness is usually associated with a lower income as opposed to aggressive employees who are found to have a higher income."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agreeableness

To save others the time, here are the Wikipedia sources for the quotes listed:

https://web.archive.org/web/20131217221700/http://www.workpl...

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886908...

The first source is a press release from what appears to be an HR company which attempts to debunk the claim that agreeableness correlates with lower income based on a survey they contracted through a polling agency.

That survey portends to show that "almost half of American workers (45 percent) believe employees with more agreeable personalities (those who seem more tolerant, less controlling, or more willing to consider co-workers’ ideas) are more successful in the workplace". There are a lot of problems with this statement...

(1) Less than half of American workers actually agreed with the stated result. (2) The study survey was carried out by a local North Carolina polling agency with no data available as far as I can tell. (3) Believing that 'agreeable' persons are more successful in the workplace does not contradict the finding that 'agreeableness' correlates with low incomes -- as in many cases, what many individuals believe does not necessarily correspond to the truth.

The study they apparently contracted the survey in response to was called, "Do Nice Guys – and Gals – Really Finish Last? The Joint Effects of Sex and Agreeableness on Income" [1]. Needless to say, you'll want to skip the press release and go straight to that paper.

I am unable to read the second source, thanks to Elsevier's brutal lockdown of scientific research. That being said, I'm hesitant about buying into the thread parent's claim that TFA "contradicts the current state-of-the-art in psychology research" given that I have only been able to find that one study purporting to link "agreeability" with lowered income.

[1] http://www3.nd.edu/~cba/Nice--JPSPInPress.pdf

I linked to Wikipedia because it properly contextualizes the five-factor model and somewhat accurately summarizes the research. If you need academic sources try searching for the following terms (or some variation) at Google scholar:

five-factor agreeableness salary

I get 10,000 results for that search and the teasers show the overwhelming trend of the findings ("a significant negative relationship between agreeableness and salary", "agreeableness is negatively related to initial career success", etc). An online readable version of the paper you mention as being inaccessible is the first result for a Google search on the exact title. Subsequent results do seem to be either media coverage or paywall spam.

http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?ar...

The paper you linked is the one I was able to read -- I linked the full text in my previous post. The paper I was unable to access was "Development and Validation of an International English Big-Five Mini-Markers" which I was interested in for its apparent validation of the model at a more general level.

I peered through the Google Scholar results this morning, and I did indeed find several approachable articles on the subject. For those interested:

[1] "The five-factor model of personality and career success" http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0001879100...

[2] "The Big Five Personality Dimensions and Job Performance: A Meta-Analysis" http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1744-6570.1991....

[3] "The effects of personality on earnings" http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167487004...

[4] "Ability and Personality Predictors of Salary, Perceived Job Success, and Perceived Career Success in the Initial Career Stage" http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-2389.2008....

The results are varying, [1] and [2] confirm, while [2] seems to disconfirm (haven't read that one beyond the abstract yet as I need to go to work). [3] appears to confirm but only finds this relationship holds true for women.

In any case, thanks 'trevelyan for pointing me towards some interesting weekend reading!

Sure, empathy might be positively correlated with agreeability, but it does NOT mean that there is any causality between them.

I am incredibly empathetic towards people (by the article's definition), but in no way you could label me as "agreeable".

Could it be that people who are non-agreeable often switch careers when they butt heads with others and this switching gives them higher income than those who stay in one place and wait for promotions?

> ... In this model, agreeability has been repeatedly shown to correlate with worse career outcomes and lower professional satisfaction over time.

That's sad.

Do you have any links to the studies?

This is a decent starting point if you're not familiar with the OCEAN model:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits

If you are interested and have the time, Jordan Peterson has a great course that covers the five factors and goes into some detail on what we think we know about them. This is agreeability:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOJR-nEhNMk

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