Kill them with kindness: preliminary evidence for women’s competitive altruism
Maryanne L. Fisher, Oriana Figueroa, Nohelia Valenzuela, Ferity Thorne, Pablo Polo, José Antonio Muñoz-Reyes, Nerea Aldunate, Simón Ramirez · 2026
Read Kill them with kindness: preliminary evidence for women’s competitive altruism by Maryanne L. Fisher, Oriana Figueroa, Nohelia Valenzuela, Ferity Thorne, Pablo Polo, José Antonio Muñoz-Reyes, Nerea Aldunate, Simón Ramirez (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-13597864.txt.
Description
Fisher and co-authors probe a sly form of rivalry: being kind in order to win. Their Competitive Altruism Survey asks 103 women about strategic generosity, alongside measures of Machiavellianism, the Big Five traits, and concern for appearances. The idea is that generosity aimed at rivals can buy reputation and status.
Competitive altruism ties strongly to Machiavellianism and low agreeableness, and women aim it more at other women than at men. Anxiety and frustration around it track with neuroticism instead. Surprisingly, the trait goes with less impression management, which the authors read as candor about strategic intent. Women's own accounts place the behavior in office hierarchies and on social media. The team calls the self-report evidence preliminary.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Maryanne L. Fisher, Oriana Figueroa, Nohelia Valenzuela, Ferity Thorne, Pablo Polo, José Antonio Muñoz-Reyes, Nerea Aldunate, Simón Ramirez |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 55 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |