If someone is successful, you might attribute the outcome to good luck, for which he or she is not responsible. What do you think about someone’s setbacks? Do they come from bad luck or do you believe the person accountable?
People perceive luck in a sometimes surprising light, according to research conducted by Berit Brogaard, an associate professor of Philosophy and Psychology at the University of Missouri -- St. Louis. She finds that if the foreseeable consequences are bad, people will likely find you accountable, unless you’ve previously been hit by tragedy.
Brogaard’s web-based study of 20 faculty members and 150 college students is part of a larger project about “how thinking and emotions affect individual economic decisions ...,” the principal investigator explains. An article about it has been accepted for publication in Behavioral and Brain Sciences, a professional journal, and the university’s Institutional Review Board has just approved further research involving 1,500 human subjects.
The research suggests that a Danish/Norwegian concept, schadenfreude, is at work. This concept, Brogaard maintains, “means pleasures derived from the misfortunes of others,” but only when a person hasn’t already received his perceived “fair share.” Her empirical research also indicates that when good consequences arise, people assume that the luck is undeserved.
There’s no doubt that in our nation’s culture, people often subscribe a person’s success to luck or a personality trait, such as drive or discipline. You’ve heard the expression, “His number (finally) came up.” In such situations, the onlooker diminishes the person in his eyes to make the person more accessible -- or cut him down to size. The person who receives “deserved” misfortune is also brought a little lower, which boosts the onlooker’s opinion of his own self.
RECOGNITION
Recognition of achievement counteracts the perception of undeserved good luck. Good workplaces have a series of formal and informal recognition ceremonies that celebrate achievements and the path people take to get there. Annual sales meetings are cases in point, where a person’s hard work, savvy and skill blend to a deserved bonus, whether that’s a trip to an exotic location or, in the case of Mary Kay salespeople, a pink Cadillac. If attendees watch the ceremony, even if it’s a lunch, thinking that good luck alone occasioned it, the emcee, so to speak, dispels that notion.
Promotions are also forms of recognition. They suggest that the person’s achievements were excellent and likely to continue. They’re grounded in the belief that while some people do sail through life with seemingly all of the luck -- good looks, good health and money -- a company doesn’t consider one good outcome unrepeatable. If it did, no one, including overachievers, would ever move up or win plum assignments. Does upper management know something about success the rest of the workplace doesn’t? Perhaps they figured it out in their own climb and seek to nurture success in others.
Benefits, which many employees came to expect in the past when a person signed on with a company, are another form of recognition. Executives and managers have often been singled out for perks not shared by other employees. But recognition continues to go to rank-and-file workers in “Employee of the Month” designations, which accompany something as small as a free lunch (that isn’t really free!), a special parking spot, an extra personal day or more time off. Companies aren’t celebrating “luck.”
The importance of Brogaard’s research and conclusions for the workplace is clear. If you find yourself thinking that someone succeeded because of luck, you’re not giving that person credit for his work. Likewise, if you’re dumping on him for deserving bad luck, you might be lifting yourself a little higher. In your own eyes.
Dr. Mildred L. Culp welcomes your questions at culp@workwise.net. Copyright 2010 Passage Media.
RSS
E-Mail
Print
reprint or license
