COLUMN: Why nice guys finish last
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“Pick up a bee from kindness and learn the limitations of kindness” – Sufi Proverb
“Nice guys finish last” is a saying that has become ubiquitous in American society. When a phrase becomes colloquialized like this, there tends to be a deep truth behind it. However, it appears that there has been backlash against this idea in recent years. As a society, we would like to believe that niceness is a parameter for success. While this ideal is nice to think about, in reality, this is not the case: nice guys often do finish last. When I refer to a ‘nice guy’ in this context, I do not mean a man who cares about other people. Instead, I’m referring to a male who is conflict averse, agreeable, generally complaisant, and in general, not very aggressive. However, I am not saying that being a jerk is the way to get ahead in life either, those who disregard the interests of others will inevitably be plotted against. I am instead acknowledging that combativeness and assertion are important variables for success, and that ignoring these variables and being a ‘nice guy’ is detrimental to that goal.
I am also not purporting there to be such a thing as an ‘alpha male’. The alpha male concept is one area of evolutionary biology that is wildly misunderstood. Humans belong to multiple social groups and exist in numerous hierarchies. Therefore, there can be no male that is at the top of all hierarchies. Another reason that the alpha male idea is not applicable to humans is the fact that among chimpanzees, every subordinate below the alpha is of equal power while human hierarchies are much more complex than that. At best, the idea of alpha and beta males are archetypes that are vague representations of what traits can be used to gain social dominance.
The most clear demonstration of this phenomenon is in terms of income. The psychological literature is very clear on the relationship between income and personality. It affirms that nice guys finish last when speaking about income. The Big Five Personality model has been commonly accepted as the best scale to analyze personality by the academic psychological community. The general idea is that one’s personality is composed of five trait spectrums, namely Extraversion, Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Agreeableness. Agreeableness is exactly what it sounds like, how easily you agree with other people and your propensity to avoid conflict. According to a study entitled Do nice guys–and gals–really finish last? The joint effects of sex and agreeableness on income (Judge, Livingston, Hurst) agreeableness is inversely proportional with income, and this trend was even more skewed for men. If you’re too agreeable, you are at an absolute disadvantage to rise through the economic hierarchy. As Niccolò Machiavelli, the famous political scientist once said: “If a ruler who wants always to act honorably is surrounded by many unscrupulous men, his downfall is inevitable.” Likewise, in a capitalist society full of disagreeable people aiming and competing to get to the top, an agreeable person will have an inevitable downfall.
This idea of nice guys finishing last doesn’t apply only to income but in many other areas, including sexual selection. Reproduction is a highly competitive domain. The Pareto distribution is a “power-law probability distribution” that is observed in many forms of human interaction. It is also known as the 80/20 rule meaning that 80% of the wealth is in possession of 20% of the population. It is widely speculated that the Pareto distribution even applies to sexual attraction, but this is a very difficult area to gather empirical data for. If the Pareto distribution does apply to attraction, this would mean that 20% of males receive 80% of female attention. This would hypothetically occur on the female’s end as well, and evolutionary history is very clear that females are usually the ones that select their mates. On another column, in which I wrote about the economics of dating, I relayed the evolutionary history of female selectivity with regards to sexual selection:
“In our primate evolutionary ancestors, females were indiscriminate mates. However, as evolution progressed, females became increasingly selective. The issue of mate selection is incredibly difficult, especially when there are so many options. Our smart female primal ancestors decided they would let the males fight it out and mate with those males who rose to the top. In short, primate mating evolved to become based on a hierarchy of competence.”
This means that female sexual selection is predicated on the male dominance hierarchy, and that females desire mates in the upper stratas of that hierarchy. When you understand this predisposition, it makes sense why the Pareto distribution would apply to attraction and it becomes extremely obvious why nice guys finish last.
It makes sense from a pragmatic point of view; our early human ancestors primarily operated in tribes. In order to guarantee survival, tribes had to operate in a way where those who would be the strongest leaders were promoted up the chain of command. It would not make sense to promote agreeable men to leadership roles in a survival situation; it would increase the chances of collapse. The tribes that made this mistake led to the further sustaining of the hierarchy-oriented neurocircuit through the process of natural selection.
If you’re an agreeable male, it isn’t hopeless. In a similar matter to how antisocial people can learn sociability as a skill, assertiveness and combativeness can be learned: it’s only a matter of practice. To deny this fact would be to live in the naiveté of our own evolutionary programming. Nice guys finish last, but you don’t have to.
Kristian Fors is a student at Utah State University majoring in Finance and Economics and is an opinion columnist for the Utah Statesman. He can be reached at krfors@gmail.com.