CASE INCIDENT 1 On the Costs of Being Nice Agreeable people tend to be kinder and more accommodat While being agreeable certainly doesn't appear to ing in social situations, which you might think could add to their success in life. However, one downside of agreeableness help your paycheck, it does provide other benefits. Agreeable individuals are better liked at work, more is potentially lower earnings. Research has shown the answer likely to help others at work, and generally happier at to this and other pudrles, some of them may surprise you. work and in life. First, and perhaps most obvious, agreeable individu Nice guys and gals may finish last in terms of earnings als are less adept at a type of negotiation called distribu but wages do not define a happy life and, on that front, tive bargaining. As we discuss in Chapter 18, distributive agreeable individuals have the advantage. bargaining is less about creating win-win solutions and more about claiming as large a share of the pie as pos Questions sible. Because salary negotiations are generally distribu 4-15. Do you think employers must choose between tive, agreeable individuals often negotiate lower salaries agreeable employees and top performers? Why for themselves than they might otherwise get. or why not? Second, agreeable individuals may choose to work in 4-16. The effects of personality often depend on industries or occupations that earn lower salaries, such the situation. Can you think of some job as the "caring" industries of education and health care. situations in which agreeableness is an important Agreeable individuals are also attracted to jobs both in the virtue and some in which it is harmful to job public sector and in nonprofit organizations. Third, the performance? earnings of agreeable individuals also may be reduced by 4-17. In some research we've conducted, the negathe their lower drive to emerge as leaders and by their ten effect of agreeableness on earnings has been stron dency to engage in lower degrees of proactive task behav ger for men than for women (that is being agree lors, such as thinking of ways to increase organizational able hurt men's earnings more than women). effectiveness. Why do you think this might be the case