Does It Pay to Be a Jerk?

 Do consider yourself quarrelsome, difficult, and stubborn? If so, congratulations; you may be earning more than your more cooperative and well-mannered colleagues. That’s the conclusion revealed in “Do Nice Guys — and Gals — Really Finish Last?,” a study soon to be released in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Timothy Judge of the University of Notre Dame, Beth Livingston of Cornell University, and Charlice Hurst of the University of Western Ontario looked at who makes the most money and found that disagreeable men win out over everyone else.

I fell into a funk for several days after reading their paper because while I may not consistently practice kindness (as Chronicle blog commenters seem to delight in reminding me), I admire it in others very much. That made it all the more depressing to learn that nasty men earn up to 18 percent more than other men and the premium for cantankerous women is about 5 percent. Time to paint a big “s” for sucker on my forehead for spouting off about the importance of civil behavior? Maybe, maybe not.

To read the entire article visit: Does It Pay to Be a Jerk?

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