A new mom at Mr. M's school (she's also my new neighbor) wandered over the other day to lament the fact she'd volunteered for every single position at the school.
Yes, you read that right.
I told her to throttle back. "People will hate you, you know" I said.
Turns out . . . science backs me up.
Four studies are reported in an article called, "The Desire to Expel Unselfish Members from the Group." The article appears in the current Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
The press release for the article opens with,
"You know those goody-two-shoes who volunteer for every task and thanklessly take on the annoying details nobody else wants to deal with?Ha. I love to be right. And now I can feel good about not constantly volunteering at Mr. M's school. Heck, they'll like me even more.
That's right: Other people really can't stand them."
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4 comments:
No one likes a self-righteous snob, which is what many of these "volunteers" are. Do you really think your neighbor was "lamenting" that she made the choice she did, or bragging about it? My guess would be the latter. Many volunteers--not all,of course--do what they do for the accolades, so they're really not being generous and unselfish. They want the attention, the thanks, and the limelight. These people are disliked not because they make us feel bad about ourselves, but because we can't stand the holier-than-thou attitude.
Did we REALLY need a study to tell us that these women are annoying?
Gosh, I thought that that spine jerking feeling we got every time we ran into one was more than adequate.
stoke!!! Finally, my desire to stay out of it all has been validated. Thank you!
I'm so winning Ms. Popular this year.
Those PTA ladies scare me.
Really.
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