On Purpose [RR]

In this weeks Research Roundup we'll explore how purpose protect the brain; how incentives erode cooperation by turning purpose into anti-purpose; and how of these phenomena can coexist.

Clarity of Purpose

We spend billions on brain games, supplements, and biohacks to keep our minds sharp as we age. Here’s a better prescription: have a compelling reason to get out of bed in the morning.

A higher sense of purpose in life was linked to a stunning 28% lower risk of developing cognitive impairment.

And for those who believe genetics is destiny, the protective effect of purpose holds true even for people carrying the APOE E4 gene, a major genetic risk factor for Alzheimer's.

Purpose isn't just a "soft" psychological comfort—it's a biological force. A strong "why" in life acts as a kind of constant, low-grade cognitive engagement, a background process that builds and maintains the neural resilience to buffer against the inflammatory insults of time.

These findings lead to a rather pointed question for how we design our workplaces and our lives: Are we creating environments that foster purpose or just factories that output performance?

Anti-Purpose

How do you guarantee a cooperative culture will collapse? Start paying people to enforce the rules.

A series of economic game experiments found that when “third-party punishment is profitable, rates of cooperation decrease immediately and remain lower even when punishment outcomes are optimized to support cooperative behavior”. 

The signal conveyed by prosocial punishment gets corrupted by self-interest. It not only causes others to “perceive social norms in terms of self-interest”, actually endorses the very foundation of cooperation by inducing player leave cooperative games in favor of those “that pay punishers”.

That means people actively chose this broken system, not realizing that it actually costs them money. It's a powerful lesson for any leader designing an incentive system: are you rewarding the mission or are you accidentally poisoning the well?

Here’s a hint: if it’s short-term profitable, it’s probably not long-term purpose. It’s anti-purpose.

The Ends Justify The Mean

If you've ever found yourself watching a leader act with blatant, unapologetic self-interest and wondered, "How on earth do they get away with it?" It turns out, for a lot of people, that behavior isn't a character flaw; it’s proof of competence.

A person's appraisal of an "antagonistic” leader depends strongly on their own worldview. Those who see the social world as a cooperative, positive-sum venture also see selfish leaders as a liability.

But for those who see the world as a competitive, zero-sum jungle, that same antagonistic behavior is interpreted as a sign of strength, competence, and effective leadership.

In fact, for those high in “competitive worldview” the same antagonist behaviors they detested in a coworker are reappraised, posthoc, to explain a later rise to power. These differences in worldview affect "motivation and job satisfaction” under antagonistic leadership.

Bad actors get away with their antagonism by convincing a substantial portion of the population that this is exactly the kind of "savage" action necessary to win in a world they perceive as fundamentally broken.

In reality, many dimensions interact to affect people’s judgment of leadership:

• competitive worldview,
• trait agreeableness,
• positive-/negative-sum outlook
• authoritarian vs authoritative views of leadership

And nearly all are self-realizing.

What would it take to live in the tension that people need different things in their lives and that the best world is kind and just and every so often requires some asskicking?

Vivienne L'Ecuyer Ming