The term goody two-shoes is based on a children's story in which a poor orphan girl (Margery Meanwell) goes through life with only one shoe, but is eventually rewarded with a pair of shoes earning her the nickname Goody Two-Shoes. The phrase "goody two-shoes" refers to an excessively or annoyingly virtuous person, but has now come to include a connotation of insincerity (Wikipedia).
Commentary
A recent set of studies at Washington State University showed that not only are people who abuse a public good excluded from the group, but so are people who give too much toward the group, but use very little of that good. The fourth study in the set suggests that such behavior "is seen by some as establishing an undesirable behavior standard and by others as a rule breaker" (Parks & Stone, 2010). Regardless of the perception, people wanted this unselfish person removed from the group.
I'm assuming that "establishing an undesirable behavior standard" means something like "setting the bar too high" or "making me look bad." Alternatively, people might assume mixed motives and become wary of such behavior.
Meta
Do you remember a situation in which you felt someone was being too unselfish? How did you react? Have you ever noticed you were being excluded after you behaved unselfishly? What could you do differently?
See Also
- Goody Two-Shoes at Project Gutenberg for the full text of the 1766 edition of the classic children's tale.
- The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes at Wikipedia
- Do-Gooders Get Voted Off Island First at ScienceDaily for a longer discussion.
- Parks, C. D., & Stone, A. B. (2010). The desire to expel unselfish members from the group. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 99(2), 303-310.
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3 comments:
I wonder if the anti-do-gooder effect stems from an innate paranoia that we all have that others have ulterior motives. There is a certain degree of projection - we are all inherently selfish to whatever degree, so when we see other people behaving more altruistically than ourselves, we assume that it's fake, and they must have a hidden agenda.
I just read the Science Daily article, and while it's an interesting find, I think their attribution is faulty. The study they cited was of students playing a game with points. The subjects didn't want to play again with the do-gooders, saying things like, "he makes me look bad", or "he's not playing by the rules". But using the monopoly analogy, those are zero-sum situations. By being overly good to some, you are making the situation worse for others by increasing their competition. It bugs me when someone gives a player extra money to stay in the game of monopoly, not because he makes me look bad, but because that prevents me from being able to by the property that I could have purchased when I bankrupt the other guy.
I've always suspect some internal motive in goody -goody people -may be because they deeds are so in your face and you realize that you can not match them ( or do not want to do so). Those people appear to me as "fake" - best example and most annoying to me - stay home mothers with a lot of free time in they hands - always baking something or other. But i better not go where...
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