The Myth of Giver Burnout
Years ago, Dutch psychologists studied hundreds of health professionals. They tracked the amount of
time and energy that the health professionals gave to patients, and asked them to report how burned
out they felt. A year later, the psychologists measured giving and burnout again. Sure enough, the more
the health professionals gave, the more burned out they became in the following year. Those who gave
selflessly had the highest burnout rates: they contributed far more than they got, and it exhausted them.
Those who gave average (matchers) and that that gave little (takers) were far less burned out.
But strangely, in another study, the Dutch psychologists found evidence that some health care
professionals seemed immune to burnout. Even when they gave a great deal of time and energy, they
didn’t exhaust themselves. These resilient health care professionals were otherish givers:(those that give for a define purpose) they
reported that they enjoyed helping other people and often went out of their way to do so, but weren’t
afraid to seek help when they needed it. The otherish givers had significantly lower burnout rates than
the matchers and takers, who lacked the stamina to keep contributing. This study pointed to an
unexpected possibility: although matchers and takers appear to be less vulnerable to burnout than
selfless givers, the greatest resilience may belong to otherish givers.
Part of the reason for this is illuminated in fascinating work by Northwestern University
psychologists Elizabeth Seeley and Wendi Gardner, who asked people to work on a difficult task that
sapped their willpower. For example, imagine that you’re very hungry, and you’re staring at a plate of
delicious chocolate chip cookies, but you have to resist the temptation to eat them. After using up their
willpower in a task like this, participants squeezed a handgrip as long as they could. The typical
participant was able to hold on for twenty-five seconds. But there was a group of people who were
able to hold on 40 percent longer, lasting for thirty-five seconds.
The participants with unusually high stamina scored high on a questionnaire measuring “other-
directedness.” These other-directed people operated like givers. By consistently overriding their
selfish impulses in order to help others, they had strengthened their psychological muscles, to the
point where using willpower for painful tasks was no longer exhausting. In support of this idea, other
studies have shown that givers accrue an advantage in controlling their thoughts, emotions, and
behaviors. Over time, giving may build willpower like weight lifting builds muscles. Of course, we
all know that when muscles are overused, they fatigue and sometimes even tear—this is what happens
In Utah, a seventy-five-year-old man understands the resilience of otherish givers. His name is
Jon Huntsman Sr., Back in 1990, Huntsman was negotiating an acquisition with Charles Miller Smith, who was the president
and CEO of a chemical company. During the negotiations, Smith’s wife died. Huntsman empathized
with Smith, so he decided not to push any further: “I decided the fine points of the last 20 percent of
the deal would stand as they were proposed. I probably could have clawed another $200 million out
of the deal, but it would have come at the expense of Charles’ emotional state. The agreement as it
Was a CEO’s emotional state really worth $200 million to Huntsman? Believe it or not, this wasn’t the first time Huntsman gave away a fortune during a negotiation. Just four years earlier, in
1986, he made a verbal agreement with a CEO named Emerson Kampen. Huntsman would sell 40
percent of a division of his company to Kampen’s for $54 million. Due to legal delays, the contract
wasn’t written until six months later. By that time, Huntsman’s profits had skyrocketed: that 40 percent
of the division was now worth $250 million. Kampen called with a matcher’s offer to split the
difference, proposing to pay $152 million instead of the original $54 million. Huntsman was poised
to bring in nearly triple the original agreement. But he said no. The $54 million was good enough.
Kampen was incredulous: “That’s not fair to you.”
Huntsman believed in honoring his commitment to Kampen. Even though the lawyers hadn’t
drafted the original purchase agreement, he had shaken hands six months earlier on a verbal
agreement. He signed for the $54 million, walking away from an extra $98 million. What type of
businessman would make such irrational decisions?
In 1970, Huntsman started a chemical company that reigns today as the world’s largest. He has
been named Entrepreneur of the Year and earned more than a dozen honorary doctorates from
universities around the world. He’s a billionaire, one of the Forbes one thousand richest people in the
As his deal-making choices show, Huntsman is also a giver, and not just in business. Since 1985,
he has been involved in serious philanthropy. He is one of just nineteen people in the world who have
given at least $1 billion away. Huntsman has won major humanitarian awards for giving more than
$350 million to found the world-class Huntsman Cancer Center, and made hefty donations to help
earthquake victims in Armenia, support education, and fight domestic violence and homelessness. Of
course, many rich people give away serious sums of money, but Huntsman demonstrates an uncommon
intensity that sets him apart. In 2001, the chemical industry tanked, and he lost a sizable portion of his
fortune. Most people would cut back on giving until they recovered. But Huntsman made an
unconventional decision. He took out a personal loan, borrowing several million dollars to make
good on his philanthropic commitments for the next three years.
Huntsman sounds like a classic example of someone who got rich and then decided to give back.
But there’s a different way of looking at Huntsman’s success, one that might be impossible to believe
if it weren’t backed up by Huntsman’s experience and by science. Maybe getting rich didn’t turn him
into a giver. What if we’ve mixed up cause and effect?
Huntsman believes that being a giver actually made him rich. In his giving pledge, Huntsman
writes: “It has been clear to me since my earliest childhood memories that my reason for being was to
help others. The desire to give back was the impetus for pursuing an education in business, for
applying that education to founding what became a successful container company, and for using that
experience to grow our differentiated chemicals corporation.” As early as 1962, Huntsman told his
wife that he “wanted to start his own business so he could make a difference” for people with cancer.
Huntsman lost both of his parents to cancer, and had survived three bouts of cancer himself. Curing
cancer is so deeply ingrained in Huntsman’s fiber that he has even prioritized it above his political
ideology. Although he worked in the Nixon White House and has been a longtime supporter of the
Republican party, Huntsman has been known to favor Democratic candidates if they demonstrate a
stronger commitment to curing cancer.
There’s little doubt that Huntsman is a skilled businessman. But the very act of giving money
away might have contributed to his fortune. In Winners Never Cheat, he writes, “Monetarily, the most satisfying moments in my life have not been the excitement of closing a great deal or the reaping of
profits from it. They have been when I was able to help others in need . . . There’s no denying that I
am a deal junkie, but I also have developed an addiction for giving. The more one gives, the better
one feels; and the better one feels about it, the easier it becomes to give.”
This is an extension of the idea that otherish givers build willpower muscles, making it easy to
give more, but is it possible that Huntsman actually made money by giving it away? Remarkably,
there’s evidence to support this claim. The economist Arthur Brooks tested the relationship between
income and charitable giving. Using data from almost thirty thousand Americans in the year 2000, he
controlled for every factor imaginable that would affect income and giving. He adjusted for
education, age, race, religious involvement, political beliefs, and marital status. He also accounted
for the number of times people volunteered. As expected, higher income led to higher giving. For
every $1 in extra income, charitable giving went up by $0.14.*
But something much more interesting happened. For every $1 in extra charitable giving, income
was $3.75 higher. Giving actually seemed to make people richer. For example, imagine that you and I
are both earning $60,000 a year. I give $1,600 to charity; you give $2,500 to charity. Although you
gave away $900 more than I did, according to the evidence, you’ll be on track to earn $3,375 more
than I will in the coming year. Surprising as it seems, people who give more go on to earn more.
Jon Huntsman Sr. may be on to something. Research shows that giving can boost happiness and
meaning, motivating people to work harder and earn more money, even if the gift isn’t on the colossal
scale of Huntsman’s. In a study by psychologists Elizabeth Dunn, Lara Aknin, and Michael Norton,
people rated their happiness in the morning. Then, they received a windfall: an envelope with $20.
They had to spend it by five P.M., and then they rated their happiness again. Would they be happier
spending the money on themselves or on others?
Most people think they’d be happier spending the money on themselves, but the opposite is true. If
you spend the money on yourself, your happiness doesn’t change. But if you spend the money on
others, you actually report becoming significantly happier. This is otherish giving: you get to choose
who you help, and it benefits you by improving your mood. Economists call it the warm glow of
giving, and psychologists call it the helper’s high. Recent neuroscience evidence shows that giving
actually activates the reward and meaning centers in our brains, which send us pleasure and purpose
signals when we act for the benefit of others.
These benefits are not limited to giving money; they also show up for giving time. One study of
more than 2,800 Americans over age twenty-four showed that volunteering predicted increases in
happiness, life satisfaction, and self-esteem—and decreases in depression—a year later. And for
adults over sixty-five, those who volunteered saw a drop in depression over an eight-year period.
Other studies show that elderly adults who volunteer or give support to others actually live longer.
This is true even after controlling for their health and the amount of support they get from others. In
one experiment, adults either gave massages to babies or received massages themselves.
Postmassage, those who gave had lower levels of stress hormones—such as cortisol and epinephrine
—than those who received. It seems that giving adds meaning to our lives, distracts us from our own
problems, and helps us feel valued by others. As researchers Roy Baumeister, Kathleen Vohs,
Jennifer Aaker, and Emily Garbinsky conclude in a national survey of Americans, “meaningfulness
was associated with being a giver more than a taker.”
There’s a wealth of evidence that the ensuing happiness can motivate people to work harder, longer, smarter, and more effectively. Happiness can lead people to experience intense effort and long
hours as less unpleasant and more enjoyable, set more challenging goals, and think more quickly,
flexibly, and broadly about problems. One study even showed that when physicians were put in a
happier mood, they made faster and more accurate diagnoses. Overall, on average, happier people
earn more money, get higher performance ratings, make better decisions, negotiate sweeter deals, and
contribute more to their organizations. Happiness alone accounts for about 10 percent of the variation
between employees in job performance. By boosting happiness, giving might have motivated Jon
Huntsman Sr. to work harder and smarter, helping him build up his fortune.
Huntsman is not the only influential businessperson who has come to view giving as a source of
energy. In 2003, Virgin mogul Richard Branson set up a council called The Elders to fight conflict and
promote peace, bringing together Nelson Mandela, Jimmy Carter, Kofi Annan, Desmond Tutu, and
other leaders to alleviate suffering in Sudan, Cyprus, and Kenya. In 2004, Branson launched Virgin
Unite, a nonprofit foundation that mobilizes people and resources to fight deadly diseases like AIDS
and malaria, promote peace and justice, prevent climate change, and support entrepreneurs with
microloans and new jobs in the developing world. In 2006, he pledged to donate all $3 billion of the
profits from the Virgin airline and train businesses over the next decade to fight global warming. In
2007, he offered a $25 million prize for innovations to fight climate change. Was this string of events
caused by a midlife crisis?
Actually, Branson was giving long before he became rich and famous. At age seventeen, a year
after starting Student magazine and five full years before launching Virgin Records, Branson started
his first charity. It was the Student Advisory Centre, a nonprofit organization that helped at-risk youth
with a range of services. He made a list of problems that young people faced, from unwanted
pregnancies to venereal disease, and convinced doctors to offer free or discounted services. He spent
many nights on the phone at three A.M. consoling people who were contemplating suicide. Looking
back, he notes that early in his career, he “had been interested in making money only to ensure
Student’s continuing success and to fund the Student Advisory Centre.” Today, giving continues to
energize him. The “thing that gets me up in the morning is the idea of making a difference,” Branson
writes, “to help safeguard our future on this planet. Does that make me successful? It certainly makes
These energizing effects help to explain why otherish givers are fortified against burnout: through
giving, they build up reserves of happiness and meaning that takers and matchers are less able to
access. Selfless givers use up these reserves, exhausting themselves and often dropping to the bottom
of the success ladder. By giving in ways that are energizing rather than exhausting, otherish givers are
more likely to rise to the top. In two studies of employees in a wide range of jobs and organizations,
psychologist David Mayer and I found that otherish employees made more sustainable contributions
than the selfless givers, takers, or matchers. Employees who reported strong concern for benefiting
others and creating a positive image for themselves were rated by supervisors as being the most
helpful and taking the most initiative.
Ironically, because concern for their own interests sustains their energy, otherish givers actually
give more than selfless givers. This is what the late Herbert Simon, winner of the Nobel Prize in
economics, observed in the quote that opened this chapter. Otherish givers may appear less altruistic
than selfless givers, but their resilience against burnout enables them to contribute more.
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