Does working hard really make you a good person? | Azim Shariff (re-release)

**Elise Hu** (0:04)
You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu.
Does working hard automatically make you a good person? Most of us would probably say no, but our behavior tells a different story.

**Azim Shariff** (0:20)
Even though Jeff added no extra value, people saw him as virtuous for choosing to keep plugging away. Why is it that we see mere effort as moral?

**Elise Hu** (0:31)
That's Azim Shariff, a social psychologist who studies morality. In his talk from 2023, he turns that lens on something most of us take for granted. The idea that hard work is inherently virtuous.
He calls this effort moralization, and his research suggests it runs deeper than any one culture or religion.

**Azim Shariff** (0:52)
If all we ask from each other is the effort that we put in, we will create a world full of effort and of hard labor and of cobras. But if what we ask from each other is to produce something meaningful, we will create a world full of meaning.

**Elise Hu** (1:10)
In an age where automation is forcing us to rethink what work is actually for, it might be worth asking what we really value and whether our instincts are leading us somewhere we actually want to go. That's coming up right after a short break.
And now, our TED Talk of the day.

**Azim Shariff** (1:36)
Imagine for a second that your job was made redundant by an advanced piece of software that could do the work at the same level of quality for free.
But you happen to have three years left on a guaranteed contract, and so your employer gives you two options. Either you can keep getting paid as per your contract, but stay home as the software does your job, or you can keep going in and doing the work that could have been automated for the same money. What would you do? Now, most of you, I'm sure, this is a no-brainer. Take the money, go home, watch TED Talks.
But there's always some who would choose to keep working. What do you think of those people? What does it say about their character?
This is the scenario about a hypothetical medical scribe named Jeff that we gave to our research participants. For half the people in the study, the story ends with Jeff choosing to go home, and for the other half, it ends with him choosing to keep working. And then we asked everybody what they thought of Jeff. Those who heard about the Jeff who kept working saw him as less competent. He does seem like a bit of a chump.
But they also saw him as warmer and more moral, somebody who could be trusted to do the right thing. They saw him as a good person. Even though Jeff added no extra value, people saw him as virtuous for choosing to keep plugging away.
Why is it that we see mere effort as moral? I am a psychology professor at the University of British Columbia, where I study morality. I've worked on religion and morality. I've worked on driverless cars and morality. But recently, my collaborators and I have been working on work itself. And in study after study, we find that people attach moral worth to effort, regardless of what that effort produces. So in another study, we asked people about two widget makers. They produce the same number of widgets in the same amount of time, at the same level of quality, but for one of them, it takes a lot more effort to do so. People see that harder-working widget maker as, again, less competent, but again, more moral. And if you had to choose just one of those two as a cooperation partner, you would choose the one who struggles.
We call this effort moralization, and it doesn't appear to just be a North American thing. Work norms, of course, differ around the world, but we replicated our original American result in South Korea, which is known by the numbers to be one of the hardest-working countries in the OECD, and in France, which is known for other strengths.
In all of these places, the harder-working person was seen as more moral and a better cooperation partner, even though they added no extra value. And it looks like this is something broader than, say, the Protestant work ethic. Even the Hadza people, hunter-gatherers in Tanzania, show something like it. When asked what qualities contribute to good character, they didn't agree on very much, but they did agree on two things, generosity and hard work.
So this intuitive connection between effort and morality doesn't appear to be the quirk of any one culture, but potentially something very deep indeed. Now, effort moralization makes sense at the individual level. Somebody who's willing to show that they will put effort into even meaningless tasks, maybe even especially into meaningless tasks, is somebody who's more likely to help you out. So I have a friend from work, Paul. Paul is an uncommonly charismatic man. Paul wears stylish pairs of raw denim jeans, and Paul buys expensive bars of soap, $60 bars of soap. And Paul is one of those types who wakes up every morning and goes running. And when I first heard this, I sort of rolled my eyes at this being one of those Mr. Perfect things. Actually, Dr. Perfect in this case. But then one day, I saw Paul on one of his morning runs. And instead of seeing a sleek, type A personality confidently striding through life, I saw Paul struggling in an inelegant hobble, with a grotesque grimace of something between annoyance and agony on his face. Running was hard for him. Every morning was effort. And the person who's willing to wake up for that day after day, is the kind of person you want in your corner. And Paul is in mine. He's not just the inspiration behind some of the studies in this research, he is a collaborator on them as well. And he's a good man.