Expressing Gratitude May Promote Better Collaboration

In past blog posts, I have featured some excellent research on the benefits of expressing gratitude. Most of that work focused on the benefits to the person giving thanks. New research from UNC-Chapel Hill Professor Sara B. Algoe and her colleagues demonstrates an interesting ancillary benefit from thanking others. They call it the witness effect. Gratitude doesn't just benefit the individuals giving and receiving thanks; it also has a positive impact on third parties who witness this exchange.

In their experimental studies, the scholars found that the research subjects "who witnessed a 'thank you' in one line of text, expressed to someone who previously helped the grateful person, were themselves more helpful toward the grateful person." Moreover, in their studies, they found that witnesses "wanted to affiliate more with the grateful person and with the person toward whom gratitude was expressed." Algoe and her colleagues concluded that, "Gratitude may help build multiple relationships within a social network directly and simultaneously."

Here is an excerpt from the paper that Algoe and her colleagues published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology:

Specifically, when Harry does something nice for Tom, it is the expression of gratitude that provides a rich signal about Harry. At a fundamental level, the witness learns that Harry voluntarily spent time or effort to do something on Tom’s behalf that Tom values. We proposed and found that witnesses would be more interested in affiliating with a person like Tom (Experiment 5). In addition, we proposed and tested the possibility that this signal would reveal Tom to be a morally good person; indeed, we found that benefactors who were more praised by grateful people were seen as more good which, in turn, predicted greater willingness to help them (Experiment 8). Although our evidence comes from one study, we believe this is a promising avenue for future research: prior research documents that people quickly judge others’ moral goodness (Lindeberg, Craig, & Lipp, 2018) and it carries greater weight than warmth or competence in some settings (Goodwin, Piazza, & Rozin, 2014; Wojciszke, Bazinska, & Jaworski, 1998).

In short, this research suggests that a workplace in which expressions of gratitude are commonplace may be fertile ground for more cooperation and effective collaboration.  Leaders should take notice.  

Are You Signaling a Desire to Cooperate?

Emma Levine, Alixandra Barasch, David Rand, Jonathan Berman, and Deborah Small have published an interesting new paper titled, "Signaling emotion and reason in cooperation," in the Journal of Experimental Psychology.  They conducted a series of experiments to examine how people decide whether to cooperate with another individual.   The experiments used two-player prisoner dilemma games to examine what might cause someone to be more or less cooperative with another party.   Their findings identify an interesting distinction between emotional and rational cues.  Here's an excerpt from NYU Stern's concise summary of the article: 

The experiments revealed that people infer that emotional actors are more likely to be prosocial, or altruistic, than rational actors. That is, people assume that individuals who make their decisions emotionally are more likely to cooperate, and then respond accordingly by cooperating more with them. “We find that people associate one’s reliance on emotion with prosocial motivations and feelings such as empathy and compassion, rather than selfish emotions, such as greed,” says Professor Barasch.

In addition, reaction to these signals depends on how people themselves make decisions. While people who rely on emotion themselves are quite responsive to signals of emotion and reason, people who rely on reason do not respond as strongly to these cues, instead making their decision to cooperate through calculated self-interest. “We show that people see emotion as a signal of cooperation, and will cooperate more with individuals who make their decisions emotionally. However, signals like this are less important to people who make their own decisions using reason – they cooperate less overall, and are not responsive to these social cues.”

The study has important implications as we work on new teams or with new partners on a project or initiative.   We not only need to be aware of the cues that we are emitting, but we must understand how others make decisions.  Are they more rational or emotional? What does that mean for our ability to engage in cooperative behavior?   Naturally, we also need to be careful not to put ourselves in a precarious position, where others might try to take advantage of our altruism.   Finally, we need to think carefully about our own behaviors that might suggest a powerful desire to pursue self-interests.  Those cues might harm our ability to elicit cooperation from the very people we need to work with to achieve our personal goals as well as the broader organizational objectives.  

Cooperation & Competition in the Venture Capital Market

Yael Hochberg, Michael J. Mazzeo and Ryan McDevitt have conducted some interesting new research on competition and cooperation in the venture capital market.   They found that competition has a different impact in the VC market as compared to most other industries.   Mazzeo explains in a write-up on the Kellogg Insight website:

"In other industries what you see is that the first competitor that is similar to you to enter the market hurts you a lot, and the second competitor hurts you a little less, and the third even less.  But that flips around in the venture capital industry, where the first competitor that is similar to you to enter the market doesn't hurt you very much, but the second competitor hurts you a little more and the third hurts you even more.  This makes sense because there is a beneficial element to the first competitor in the market if you are working together and sharing resources. But that benefit begins to go away with the second competitor, and it's even less with the third."

Cooperation is key in the VC market because some firms may be very adept at providng the expertise required to help a particular start-up grow, but may want to spread the risk by bringing in a partner to provide some of the needed capital.  In certain cases, a start-up may need different types of expertise, access to networks, etc.  One VC firm may provide some of that assistance, while another VC firm may provide other forms of support and guidance.   Once firms work together on one deal, they may learn that they can work together effectively, and that each has important capabilities to contribute.  That makes them likely to want work together again.   Thus, cooperation becomes crucial to success in the VC market. 

On the other hand, VC firms still compete to find the best deals, get the most favorable terms, identify the next hidden gem so that they can get in early, etc.   What that means is that a feeding frenzy can eventually take place, where too much money is chasing too few deals... as a result, diminishing returns eventually can kick in, and returns on investment can fall.   Cooperation doesn't mean that rivalry won't harm returns.  That still happens, as it would in any industry.