If you are putting blood, sweat and tears into work or personal projects to deliver them ahead of schedule and surpassing expectations, hear this: Nobody cares all that much about your above-and-beyond efforts.
A study from researchers at the University of California in San Diego and the University of Chicago found that people respond positively to someone exceeding a promise—but no more positively than to someone who simply kept the promise. Meanwhile, people respond pretty negatively to someone who breaks a promise.
The study was motivated by one study author’s online shopping experience. “I was ordering things from Amazon and they promised delivery in seven to 10 days,” says Ayelet Gneezy, associate professor of behavioral sciences and marketing at the University of California in San Diego’s Rady School of Management. “It always came a bit earlier than promised. And then once it came late, and this was the only time I noticed.”
In other words, Amazon was exceeding expectations most of the time, but Gneezy wasn’t overjoyed. It was one late package that raised her ire.
Killing yourself to over deliver? Not worth it. (Photo credit: Jonah G.S.)
So Gneezy and her co-author, Nicholas Epley of the University of Chicago, set up a multi-part study. In the first experiment, participants read scenarios in which they imagined being on the receiving end of a promise that was exceeded, kept or broken.
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In the hypothetical scenarios, a friend read their term paper and promised to give them ample feedback. Some participants then read that the friend returned the paper with fewer comments than promised and uninformative feedback—a broken promise. Other participants read that the friend returned the paper with comments exactly as promised, or far more extensive and helpful feedback than promised. They then forecast how happy they would be and how likely they would be to trust the promise maker in the future.
As the researchers expected, study respondents viewed breaking a promise more negatively than keeping a promise, but they didn’t view exceeding a promise any more positively than just keeping it.
“All you need to know is if someone is reliable or not reliable,” Gneezy says. “If someone falls short they are unreliable. It’s a binary correlation.”
Further experiments yielded similar results. In a second setup, respondents were asked to remember promises that had been broken, kept or exceeded for them personally and rated their happiness with that person’s behavior. People remembered being happier for exceeded versus kept promises—but they were far happier with a kept promise versus a broken promise.
In the third setup, participants were a part of actual promise making and receiving, in an experiment involving solving puzzles for cash—and another person’s promise to help solve more puzzles to earn more money. The promise makers then solved fewer puzzles than promised, the exact number of puzzles promised or solved more than promised. In this scenario, broken promises were viewed negatively, but exceeded promises were viewed no more positively than kept promises.
“The news is that you really, really want to keep a promise, and anything beyond that is marginal, if anything,” Gneezy says. “Don't kill yourself trying to over deliver.”
