No Stupid Questions - 195. Can You Be Too Nice?

Episode Date: May 12, 2024

Where is the line between a good guy and a doormat? Do people with sharp elbows make more money? And why did Angela’s mother give away her birthday present?Take the Big Five inventory: freakonomics.com/bigfive SOURCES:Kristen Bell, actor.Jeff Bezos, founder and executive chairman of Amazon.Harry Connick Jr., singer, pianist, and actor.Phyllis Fogelman, children's book publisher.Juli Fraga, psychologist and writer.Adam Grant, professor of management and psychology at the University of Pennsylvania.Allison Sweet Grant, writer.Timothy Judge, chair of the department of Management and Human Resources at The Ohio State University.Frank Jacobs, journalist and columnist at Big Think.Beth Livingston, professor of industrial relations at the University of Iowa.Topher Payne, playwright and screenwriter.Dax Shepard, actor and podcast host. RESOURCES:"Are You a Chronic People-Pleaser? Here’s How to Be Kinder to Yourself," by Juli Fraga (The Washington Post, 2023)."Geopsychology: Your Personality Depends on Where You Live," by Frank Jacobs (Big Think, 2023)."We Need to Talk About ‘The Giving Tree,'" by Adam Grant and Allison Sweet Grant (The New York Times, 2020).The Tree Who Set Healthy Boundaries, by Topher Payne (2020)."Do as You’re Told! Facets of Agreeableness and Early Adult Outcomes for Inner-City Boys," by Margaret Kern, Angela Duckworth, Sergio Urzúa, Rolf Loeber, Magda Stouthamer-Loeber, and Donald Lynam (Journal of Research in Personality, 2013).Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success, by Adam Grant (2013)."Do Nice Guys — and Gals — Really Finish Last? The Joint Effects of Sex and Agreeableness on Income," by Timothy Judge and Beth Livingston (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2012). EXTRAS:Big Five Personality Inventory, by No Stupid Questions (2024).“Personality: The Big Five,” series by No Stupid Questions (2024)."Are You Suffering From Burnout?" by No Stupid Questions (2023).

I don't even know how to respond to that. I'm Angela Duckworth. I'm Mike Maugham. And you're listening to No Stupid Questions. Today on the show, can you be too agreeable? What can I do to help you solve your problem? Hello, Angela. We are on our fourth personality trait of the big five. These have gone fast.

Oh my gosh. Three down. Here we go. So today we are talking about agreeableness. Right. And we have a great question to set this up. Hi, NSQ, it's really important to me to be kind and empathetic. I volunteer, I donate to many charities and nonprofits,

and I try to give everyone I meet the benefit of the doubt. I don't regret any of these behaviors, but I've been taken advantage of many times because of them. Friends always know that I'll help out when they need help moving or want to ride home from the airport, but they are suddenly busy when it's time to reciprocate. I've also been scammed out of money when I thought I was helping someone in need. My therapist tells me that I'm too nice, but I don't want to be meaner. Basically, my question is, can you be too agreeable? Faith.

Like, I assume that Faith, who probably took the Big Five inventory on our website, scored really high in Big Five agreeableness. And I'm going to guess that you also scored super high in this personality factor. So this was my lowest of the positive scores. No. I got a four out of five in agreeableness. Really?

It was your lowest one? Can't believe that. Yes. Well, I mean, except for neuroticism. Yeah, which you want to be low. Yes. Yeah, so I scored a four. What was your score? And what are the scores for our NSQ listeners?

Well, I scored a 4.33, so not that different from you. And our listeners scored 3.83, so a little bit lower than you. The national average is almost exactly the average for our NSQ listeners. So we are like straight up the middle of the alley for agreeableness compared to adults in the United States. And let me remind you of the six questions that you and I took. So there were three questions that were positively scored. I am someone who is compassionate, has a soft heart. I am someone who assumes the best about people. I am someone who's respectful, treats others with respect.

And you may recall there were three reverse scored items. So the more you say, yeah, it's like me, the lower your agreeableness score. I'm someone who is sometimes rude to others. I'm someone who can be cold and uncaring. I am someone who tends to find faults with others. I mean, I will say that Big Five agreeableness is partly about being a compassionate person. So I think we should talk about that because that's what faith is curious about. But there is a whole other part of Big Five agreeableness, which is really more about being compliant with other people's requests, not because you're kind-hearted or that you are sympathetic, but just that you have this tendency to kind of like fall in line with other people's demands. Interesting.

I have lived all over, well, the world, but all over the United States as well. And I found this thing by a journalist named Frank Jacobs called Geopsychology Your Personality Depends on Where You Live, who was referencing this 2021 study published in Perspectives on Psychological Science. And they did a survey on agreeableness in the United States and what regions are quote unquote the most agreeable or disagreeable. And I would love for you to guess. Oh my gosh, this is so fun. I'm gonna guess the Northeast, including New York, is the least agreeable. And I am gonna guess that the Midwest is the most agreeable.

Complete stereotyping here. They found that disagreeableness hangs heaviest over some Western states, from Montana to New Mexico, Nevada, to the Western halves of Kansas and Oklahoma. But this was my favorite line. There is an additional grumpiness epicenter in New England. Oh, there you go.

Okay, so I was not wrong. But the most agreeableness is pronounced in the South, as one might imagine. Oh, forgot about the South. But they did, to your point, find an important cluster in Minnesota and the Dakotas, where people are very agreeable. I am no expert on geographic psychology, and I don't want to say that this is scientific fact, but let me speculate that when I talk about these two faces of agreeableness,

there's the compassion elementableness, there's the compassion element and then there's compliance. Sometimes compliance is also called politeness. I have not lived in the South, but I wonder whether it's more a polite culture than a truly compassionate culture. And I say this in part because there were two years in my life where I lived with a couple of roommates who were from the South.

I mean, they had that wonderful like, soft accent. Southern charm. Yeah, they were just like, I guess for somebody who grew up in New Jersey, it was just so charming. They always were polite. I mean, always solicitous and like no problem. But then after some months, I realized that there were times where they were totally irritated with me or totally irritated with other people and I got to see it when we would come home

from some dinner party where they had been exceedingly polite and seemingly kind, but then they would come home and just thrash the person. So I do kind of wonder about the finding that people from the South are more agreeable because I mean, you could be polite and compassionate, but I think politeness and compassion or compliance and compassion, I mean, they're not the same thing.

And I do think it's worth asking the question whether you can have too much of these tendencies. What's your instinct on this? Yeah, obviously. Oh, really? You're like, this is an easy question. For me, it is. In the workplace, for example, I really look for and benefit from healthy conflict.

And if people feel like they just have to be compassionate, compliant, agreeable. Don't get me wrong, it can be an incredible asset when someone, their default is yes, they're going to figure out a way to get things done. At the same time, it's really damaging when people are just willing to say yes to everything. You never get to the best answer. And if leaders haven't set up a culture where you can give feedback, where there can be this healthy conflict, where people are willing to push back and be quote unquote not agreeable in the you think the conflict goes underground like people go to the bathroom together and Like my two roommates, you know Just start talking trash and then they come back in the room and like everything's fine

Or do you think it's that people just like kind of stop thinking hard about what really should get done? I think both of those probably happen, right? And again, I'm gonna put that on both sides. People have to be willing to speak up and you have to create a culture where people feel safe to speak up. Right. If you think like, oh, the goal in life

is just to go from a three in agreeableness to a four and from a four in agreeableness to a five, it does actually raise these questions about like, well, what if you really disagree with somebody at work? What if you feel like you're getting taken advantage of, like faith does? You're basically being a doormat. So there does seem to be this really messy nuance to it, which is like, it can't always be the right thing to say yes, to agree, and maybe not even the right thing to always be

thinking about other people. I was talking to our friend, Adam Grant, Grant, who as you know is a professor of management at Wharton. So when Adam came to my university, you know University of Pennsylvania, which includes Wharton, I was already there. And I was asked to meet him and make him happy enough that we could recruit him. But immediately we got into an argument. Like from like minute three, we were like, that doesn't make sense. And it's because we started talking about research and Adam was studying being a giver, you know, somebody who really asked the question, what can I do to help you?

And I think, you know, he's always been interested actually in the dynamic between men and women in the workplace. And he was very interested in how in his observation a lot of women ask exactly that question, what can I do to help you solve your problem? And a lot of men were asking the question, what can you do to help me solve my problem? And he saw this asymmetry and he saw these female givers who were getting taken advantage of. They were getting all the scutt work, you know, like, well, somebody's gotta write up

the minutes from this meeting, and like somebody's gotta like start the word document. He saw that clearly men were less likely to volunteer for those tasks to concede when asked. I get into this argument with him, now this is years ago, I have since evolved, but at the time I was defending the position that more and more and more giving was the right and right and right thing. So I was a little bit like Faith, I was like, isn't it just the right thing to be as altruistic

as possible? And then Adam said, no, you it just the right thing to be as altruistic as possible? And then Adam said, no, you know, you're going to be a doormat. And then he gave me this counter proposal. He's like, look, here's the way to be a giver who doesn't get taken advantage of. When you give, always ask yourself, what's the problem that I'm solving for this other person? And at the same time, how does this benefit me? I had like an allergic reaction. I was like, that's not the way my mother raised me. I know. I have the same allergic reaction.

Doesn't that just sound like Machiavellian? I want to govern my life as a good person who does things just because it's the right thing to do, not because there's anything in for me. Right? I mean, intuitively, doesn't it ruin it when the gift has an ulterior motive? I think we share that incident completely. Speaking of our friend Adam Grant, he wrote something with his wife in the New York Times where he talks a lot about this idea of self-sacrifice versus generosity. He said, those are pretty different things. Self-sacrifice is not

sustainable and it isn't healthy because people who only care about others tend to kind of neglect themselves which leads to more anxiety, more depression, etc. Whereas those who are generous, it's not about the self-sacrifice, it's about giving in ways that nurture more givers. They said being less selfless actually allows you to give more, because instead of letting people sap your energy, you maintain your motivation. That's something I can agree with. That is exactly what he said in that argument. Yeah, but what you're repeating here is that it was also what's in it for me.

I guess the phrasing for me matters a lot, because if it's like, hey, I'll do this to help you, but only if it also helps me, that feels just messed up. Yeah, and I think actually that's eventually, you know, where his thinking evolved, because as I said, this is years and years and years ago, I think it was before he started writing books, and in the book, Give and Take, Adam has this typology, there are three kinds of people. One kind of person is a giver. They're primarily motivated to help other people solve their problems.

One kind of person is a taker. They're primarily motivated to get ahead and to relate to other people with the question, what can you do to solve my problems? Also, there's the possibility that you're a matcher. And the matcher is actually the thing that we were just describing, like I'll do this for you if you do something for me. I'll do a favor for you on Monday because on Tuesday I might need you to do a favor for me. And this nuance here is that it is possible to think about this as more sustainable giving,

as you said. Not like I'm a matcher, it's tit for tat, it's quid pro quo, but it's more like how am I going to do this without becoming like an exhausted, burnt out, cynical, detached, on the brink of quitting person? And I think the sustainable part isn't always, oh, because you're going to do something for me, but something different. Like, I remember we got a voice memo from one of our NSQ listeners from now, you know, weeks back, and they worked in some kind of charitable work. And they said that in their many years of working in that sector and also hiring people, what they had learned is to not hire people with a quote, savior complex. And the listener goes on to

describe how when you hire somebody who's like a martyr, you know, it's like, I won't eat lunch, you can have all my money and like, every person that I come across, I have to save them too, that you just know they're going to burn out. I think that's the nuance. Maybe not that you should go through life as a matcher and you should always look for like what you can get out of things when you give, but just that you should find a sustainable, self-propelling way, because otherwise you do, I think, eventually get to the end of your rope. The other group that I find somewhat difficult, and again, on the surface it may seem positive, is people pleasers.

Well, how would you describe people pleasers? Well, if I may, I'd love to borrow because I read an article from a journalist and psychologist named Julie Fraga in the Washington Post, and I feel like she summarized it better than I can, truthfully. So she said, here are some signs of a chronic people pleaser, over apologizing, taking responsibility for other people's feelings, agreeing even when you don't, saying yes to avoid conflict, and feeling like your needs don't matter. To me, it's exhausting to work with someone who's a chronic people pleaser in that it's like, you should disagree with me. We should have healthy conflict.

Please stop over apologizing. Let's just get it done. Have you ever heard this expression, disagree, but commit completely? Oh, of course. Yeah, it's one of Amazon's great principles. Yes, I've read all of Jeff Bezos' annual letters and you know that's weird for me

since I don't care anything about like money or profits or revenues. But you know, Jeff Bezos started writing these annual letters when he started Amazon, and to me they're all about psychology and human nature. And this expression, disagree but commit completely, really stuck with me. And basically, Jeff was describing, I think, you know, very similar situations to what you're talking about. He was like, you know, there are going to be times in anybody's life where you have a conflict and sometimes we're going to discuss it and we're going to agree. And that's great because we'll kind of come to maybe a third possibility that neither of us thought of.

But sometimes we're going to talk and like the end of the conversation is that we're going to disagree. And this expression like disagree but commit completely, I think means I'd prefer that you disagree openly. But when as a team, we've decided to go in a certain direction, like an army marching, you kind of have to fall in line. So I do think that there'll be times where you should disagree and go your own way. I do think there are times where you should disagree and commit completely. But the whole idea that it's okay to have conflict that's not resolved, to disagree fundamentally with another person, I mean, wow, I have to say it really took me a long time to learn that in life.

So I love the principle of disagree and commit for a lot of reasons. One, it says in the principle, I expect disagreement. Like we encourage disagreement. We need everybody to speak up. I'm predicting it, I'm okaying it. Right. Yeah. And I love that idea. At the end of the day, we have to pick one direction to go.

We can't just, you know, vacillate in this eternal disagreement. You can't have like half the marketing team doing one strategy. The other half of the marketing team's gonna do the exact opposite. Right. And so the idea is, okay,

we wanna encourage healthy conflict here, where people can speak up and speak their minds, and then, once we make a decision and we're going this direction, we're all gonna align behind it, and so I think it's an incredible principle. Yes. Well listen, Angela and I would love to hear your thoughts on agreeableness, where do you fall on the spectrum

and how has this part of your personality affected your life? Record a voice memo in a quiet place with your mouth close to the phone and email it to nsq at Freakonomics.com and maybe we'll play it on a future episode of the show. Also, if you wanna learn more about your own personality, head to Freakonomics.com slash Big Five.

You can take the Big Five inventory and you'll get an immediate personality profile. Your results will remain completely anonymous. And if you like the show and want to support it, the best thing you can do is tell a friend about it. You can also spread the word on social media or leave a review in your podcast app. Still to come on No Stupid Questions, Do nice guys really finish last? I don't even know how to respond to that,

other than like, bummer. Now, back to Mike and Angela's conversation about agreeableness. You know, Mike, when I was, gosh, I can't remember, maybe I was still in graduate school. Anyway, a very long time ago, I did some research on Big Five agreeableness. It's not my specialty, but I was curious about, like, how does Big Five agreeableness matter in your life, especially for kids? So I did this study on university boys. It was part of something called the Pittsburgh youth study So these inner city boys were assessed when they were young and then they were kind of followed up Later in life and one of the things that we found as other scientists have is that you know, there are these two

we found, as other scientists have, is that there are these two faces of agreeableness, two halves of agreeableness, if you will. We called it compliance and compassion. We found it's generally a good thing to be an agreeable little boy in Pittsburgh. So the little boys who were more compliant or polite, they ended up getting more education. They also grew up to more likely have jobs versus be unemployed. They were less likely to father a child while still a teenager. They were less likely to get involved in crime. I mean, is that all maybe tied to the compliance side? You're more willing to follow rules? These were all about the compliance side Yeah, and the compassion side also had its positives and in particular the little boys who are high in the compassion aspect of Agreeableness ended up having longer Committed personal relationships, but we had exclusively looked at little boys in Pittsburgh, and not just any little boys, these were all boys

who by some metric were at risk for not so great life outcomes, which is why there was a reasonably high percentage of them who did end up in criminal situations, teen parenthood, etc. If you widen the lens, you can ask the question, well, what about for most people? Is agreeableness good for most people? So later, I did another study with a national sample of American adults, and we looked at all the big five, and we've talked about this study a little bit. But for agreeableness, we looked at the relationships with income and with wealth, you know, how

much money they had accumulated over their lives. Do you want to guess what the relationship is between your agreeableness and how much money you make and how much money you accumulate? I would guess that disagreeable people make more money and in some sense get promoted more frequently because they're more willing to just say, this is what I want, this is what I need. Sharp elbows. I am pretty dang agreeable and I'll admit, sometimes I'm in a negotiation and I'm like, okay,

that's fine, instead of push, push, push, push, push. So my gut would be disagreeable people actually end up making more money on average. Correct. So agreeableness and income were negatively correlated or as you put it, more disagreeable people make more money and, you know, by kind of a substantial margin, they have greater lifetime wealth as well. It's complicated.

Like, maybe if you're a little boy in inner city Pittsburgh with lots of risk factors, being compassionate and compliant is a protective factor in terms of your long-term life outcomes. But if you look at the big picture at everyone, I don't know, to me it was really sad. I was like, oh no, nice guys really do finish last. Yeah, but I think there has to be a balance. You still have to be good to work with. I worked with one individual for a while who could get stuff done, but no one would ever work with them a second time.

And that is not a sustainable strategy. Because they were so aggressive. Yeah. I think you have to meet a bar of agreeableness for then this disagreeable trait to impact that you can make more money, et cetera, et cetera. But you know, there is a cultural dimension to all this. And again, thinking about men versus women.

So there was a study that was done by Tim Judge, who's a really terrific psychologist who studies the workplace, et cetera. And then also Beth Livingstonston who does the same. And they had a prediction, just like our study, that in general, people who are more agreeable would earn less money. And what they found is that this was especially true for men. Wait, agreeable men make less money.

Like nice guys finish last could be the summary of this. Oh. Okay. I'm so sorry. I know. They concluded that there's a kind of backlash against agreeable men. It's not the conventional gender role that we expect.

And so you're not only gonna be penalized for being nice, but you're like doubly penalized because like that's not the way you're supposed to be in our society. I don't even know how to respond to that other than like bummer. And I feel like I'm a very agreeable person. And now I'm actually wondering, Mike, what are you like when there is conflict in the business context? In a negotiation, I will give you an example recently where I was negotiating something and I took a much stronger stance than I normally would and got a way better outcome.

It was not inherent to me to be that, quote, disagreeable in the moment, but it worked way better. And that's, I think, important to understand when to deploy different elements of this personality family. Right. You know, I feel like I still want to be my mother's daughter. You know, I grew up with this mom who just seemed to me to be like an infinite well of generosity. It didn't matter who knocked on our door. They could come to Thanksgiving dinner. She gave away everything. I mean, she literally gave away my sister Annette's stuffed animal collection one year. My sister had been, over the course of her childhood, carefully accumulating these stuffed animals. She would keep them all on her bed, as I remember. So like, after she would wake up in the morning,

she'd like make her bed and like put all the animals back on it. So she loved these stuffed animals. And one day she comes home and they're gone. My mom had met some stranger and they had a child. And I think this is not a very wealthy family. And she immediately could see that the child didn't have anything to play with. And she gave away my sister's stuffed animal collection, which I thought was pretty terrible until it actually happened to me.

And then I really thought it was terrible. And what I mean by that is this one birthday, I think I was in third or fourth grade and all year I had asked my parents, begged them for this little handheld game called a Merlin. I don't think you're old enough to remember the Merlin. I don't know what that is. No. This is like several generations before the iPad or phones or whatever. Merlin. I don't think you're old enough to remember the Merlin. I don't know what that is, no. This is like several generations before the iPad or phones or whatever. There was this like red plastic, it kind of looked like a big phone, maybe 12 inches long. And it had

these like buttons on it. And you could play like tic-tac-toe on it. And not much else, honestly. This is like a very primitive version of a computer. It had just come out and there was this toy store called KB Toy and Hobby and it would be prominently displayed and I begged and begged. My parents were super frugal and so of course they would say no, no, no, no. But on my birthday, that's what I got. I got a Merlin. I was so happy that I would literally run home from school

so that I could like throw my book bag on the couch and play with my Merlin. So one day, not long after my birthday, I get home, I run into my bedroom, I'm looking everywhere for my Merlin. I think maybe my sister's taken it, maybe my brother's stolen it. This isn't even like years later, this is the-

No, no, no, this is like days after my birthday. I go and tell my mom that like either my brother or my sister must have taken my Merlin. And she's like, oh no, no. They didn't take it. I took it. And I gave it away. And I was like, what? Now my sister's pain at losing her entire stuffed animal collection meant something to me. And I was like, what do you mean you gave away my Merlin? And she was like, well, they didn't have a toy and you have so many. And then she turns around and continues stir-frying dinner. And I was bereft, but then I thought, well, they're going to get me a new Merlin.

Which she didn't. That was it. My birthday present that year, I guess, was just having a few days to play they're going to get me a new Merlin. Which she didn't. That was it. My birthday present that year, I guess, was just having a few days to play with a Merlin. So in a way, part of me, I mean, I am my mother's daughter. There's some part of me which just has this instinct, like give, give, give, give, give. What's wrong with the savior complex? Be as altruistic as possible. But what I have to say to Adam, honestly, I have come around to agree that you can be

a doormat, you know, to faith, I would say, yeah, in a way you can be too nice. But the nuance here is that it's not that you're too altruistic, it's just that you're being a giver in a way that is seeping something out of your own life, and you can't do that forever. Like, you can't bleed for other people forever. And I think in a way, if you can respect other people, then you can disagree with them and, like, have open conflict because you're not losing respect for them. You're just saying, I disagree.

And if you can respect yourself, right? Like, I love myself enough also to not get burnt out. So in a way, I think agreeableness is great as long as there's a bedrock of respect, respect for others, but importantly, like respect for yourself. I may have told you this before, but one of the most important things I have ever watched

in life came through a rare YouTube rabbit hole moment for me where I was just watching a bunch of random videos. That does not seem like you but go on I like rabbit holes that other people go down. That's what I'm saying very rare but I'm going through this YouTube rabbit hole and just watching whatever was popping up and suddenly an interview pops up between Kristen Bell and Harry Connick Jr. Did I know that Harry Connick Jr. had a talk show? I did not.

I did not. Have I ever seen another clip from it? I have not. No. Kristen Bell is married to the actor, Dak Shepard, who you recently were on his podcast. She's talking about early in their marriage and how they would fight so much

and she would get so mad. She would storm out of the room, storm out of the house, get in her car and drive away. Finally, Dax pulls her aside and says, Hey, I have too much respect for myself to let you continue to respond this way. Hmm. And so they worked out a deal. Next time they got in a fight, she could leave the room, but she couldn't leave the house. And so she's like, we got in this big fight, and I stopped talking, I grabbed the

car keys and I went to the door and I just stood in front of the door and I was so mad. She's like, but I love him so much. And I want to be part of this relationship forever that I wouldn't leave the house because she's like, I knew he said he had too much self respect to let this keep happening. And then they finally made the agreement that she could stop talking, but she couldn't leave the room. And they go through this process. But I remember watching that

because I had been in a situation with an individual work where I realized I had not had enough self-respect because of the toxicity of this individual and how situations were and working around him. And I remember thinking in one very specific situation of my three older brothers, the toxicity of this individual and how situations were in working around him. And I remember thinking in one very specific situation of my three older brothers, and I was like, not one of them would sit here and let someone treat them like this. Why am I doing this?

And when I watched that, I was like, man, I don't have enough respect for myself in that I'm letting people do this. And so I would just say to faith, I think there's a big difference between being a giver and to use the words that we've been using today, being a doormat. And I don't think it's about being meaner. I think it's about having more self-respect. You know, there's one item on the questionnaire

that we have up on our website, is respectful, treats others with respect. But I think what you're saying has so much more depth to it. Like really, really, really has a respect for other people and for oneself. If you stand on that firm ground, I think you can't be too agreeable. And it allows you to keep giving in the longterm, right?

And so faith, if I could end, it would be to harken back to what Adam and Alice and Grant talked about, the difference between self-sacrifice and generosity, then I think maybe that very famous book, The Giving Tree. Giving Tree, if you'll remember, the book is about this tree. I remember that book. I could almost quote it to you and draw the pictures. Did you read it growing up? Oh, of course. I think growing up, it was about, oh, this really generous tree that just gave and gave and gave until there was nothing left. This little boy would come and say, I'm hungry, I need an apple.

And then it's, well, you, I mean, I don't have it memorized. He wants to swing from the branches and, you know, when he gets older, he wants to make a boat. And so he's like, can I cut you down and like make a canoe? And the tree says, yes. And he cuts down the tree and he goes on his adventures and then he grows up and he's like now an older man. And you remember the end, right? Yeah, at the very end, he just says, I need a place to sit. And I think for a long time, we thought of this

as this really beautiful giving tree because it's called the giving tree. Right, like the whole idea was that there is no limit to what you should give, that you should be as giving as possible. The editor of the book, a woman named Phyllis Fogelman, later said that she had qualms about her part in the publication of the book and said,

Oh my gosh. I think it is basically a book about a sadomasochistic relationship. If Dax Shepard and Kristen Bell rewrote the end of the giving tree, how do you think they would end it? Maybe the boy apologizing for stealing way too much from the tree

because then there really is nothing left. Whereas if the tree had continued to blossom, it would have been able to continue to bless generations of people with apples and with shade and with swings and joy, versus, oh, I selfishly used everything up, so now there's nothing left to give to anybody else. How about this? When the boy asks for the apple, that's fine. When the boy needs shade to read under, that's fine. When the boy wants to put two ropes hanging from a branch and, you know, a piece of wood in between so he can swing, that's fine. When the boy wants to put two ropes hanging from a branch and, you know, a piece of wood in between so he can swing, that's fine. But maybe when the boy

comes to the tree and says, can I cut you down and make a canoe out of your trunk? Maybe that's where the giving tree has to say, no, I have too much respect for myself and I have too much respect for you. I'm going to teach you a lesson that's going to be more important than a canoe. Do not cut me down. And now, here's a fact check of today's conversation. In the first half of the show, Angela expresses her enthusiasm for Amazon's leadership principle, disagree but commit completely. The principle is actually half backbone, disagree and commit.

The phrase disagree and commit has also been attributed to former Intel CEO, Andrew Grove, and to Sun Microsystems co-founder, Scott McNeely. Later, Angela shares her short-lived experience with the Parker Brothers handheld electronic game Merlin, also known as Merlin the Electronic Wizard. Angela says that the device was pretty much only good for tic-tac-toe. However, Merlin fans will recall that the original device, released in 1978, offered

a total of six games, including Mindbender, similar to Mastermind, and Blackjack. Finally, Mike and Angela speculate about what the plot of Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree would look like if the tree were less self-sacrificing and agreeable. We should note that the playwright and screenwriter Topher Payne has already rewritten the story as part of his Topher Fixed It series, which provides alternate endings to beloved but problematic children's literature. In his version of the tale, titled The Tree Who Set Healthy Boundaries, the boy and the tree experience a more equitable relationship.

The tree gets her certification in small business management, the boy and the tree open a pastry shop together, and the boy goes on to have children and grandchildren who also adore the tree. That's it for the fact check. Before we wrap today's show, let's hear some thoughts about last week's episode on extroversion. Hi Mike and Angela. Katrina from London here. One observation I had is that how extroverted we tend to act in a social setting is heavily influenced by what we are lacking in our working or other life. For example, my job is fairly solitary, usually with eight out of nine hours

working spent alone, whereas my flatmate spends pretty much all of his working time chatting to other people and presenting. By the end of the day, he is absolutely desperate for some alone time, whereas I'm excited to talk to literally anyone about literally anything. An outside observer would probably see me as being the more extroverted one, but really I think we're both just leaning towards what we've been missing in the day. Hi Angela and Mike, this is Natasha from North Carolina. Although my extroversion has served me well professionally, what many of my introverted friends don't get is that extroversion has served me well professionally, what many of my introverted friends don't get is that extroversion is not what I would choose in most other instances.

I'm in my mid-40s and like Mike, as I've aged, I find myself choosing what some might view as the introverted choice, for example staying home on the weekends or finding some quiet during a conference, since it takes time to deflate the energy I get from simply being around others. Plus, I don't need or want energy at 10pm. I want to sleep. Whereas my husband, an introvert, can fall asleep the second we pull into the driveway after a night out. I was one of those extroverts who thrived during the slowdown of the pandemic, despite the memes on Facebook that suggested only introverts were enjoying life at home all day. I'm thankful to have found some balance between what occurs in me naturally

and what might be best for me. That was, respectively, Katrina Murray and Natasha Gore. Thanks to them and to everyone who shared their stories with us. And remember, we'd love to hear your thoughts on agreeableness. Send a voice memo to nsq at Freakonomics.com and you might hear your voice on the show. Coming up next week on No Stupid Questions, are there any upsides to neuroticism? If you have some of this negative emotionality, it can lead to a great stand-up routine. That's next week on No Stupid Questions. No Stupid Questions is part of the Freakonomics Radio Network, which also includes Freakonomics Radio, People I Mostly Admire, and the economics of everyday things.

All our shows are produced by Stitcher and Runbud Radio. The senior producer of the show is me, Rebecca Lee Douglas, and Leric Baudich is our production associate. This episode was mixed by Greg Rippon. We had research assistance from Daniel Moritz-Rapson. Our theme song was composed by Luis Guerra. You can follow us on Twitter at NSQ underscore show and on Facebook at NSQ show. If you have a question for a future episode, please email it to NSQ at Freakonomics.com. To learn more or to read episode transcripts, visit Freakonomics.com slash NSQ. Thanks for listening. Wait, is that the Midwest?

I can't even tell you. Oh, Angela. The Freakonomics Radio Network, the hidden side of everything.