Whereas takers accumulate large networks to look important and gain access to powerful people, and matchers do it to get favors, Rifkin does it to create more opportunities for giving. In the words of Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam, “I’ll do this for you without expecting anything specific back from you, in the confident expectation that someone else will do something for me down the road .” When people feel grateful for Rifkin’s help, like Stephanie, they’re more likely to pay it forward. “I have always been a very genuine and kind-hearted person,” Stephanie says, “but I had tried to hide it and be more competitive so that I could get ahead. The important lesson I learned from Adam is that you can be a genuinely kind-hearted person and still get ahead in the world.” Every time Rifkin generously shares his expertise or connections, he’s investing in encouraging the people in his network to act like givers. When Rifkin does ask people for help, he’s usually asking for assistance in helping someone else. This increases the odds that the people in his vast network will seek to add value rather than trade value, opening the door for him and others to gain benefits from people they’ve never helped—or even met. By creating a norm of adding value, Rifkin transforms giving from a zero-sum loss to a win-win gain.
When takers build networks, they try to claim as much value as possible for themselves from a fixed pie. When givers like Rifkin build networks, they expand the pie so that everyone can get a larger slice. Nick Sullivan, an entrepreneur who has benefited from Rifkin’s help, says that “Adam has the same effect on all of us: getting us to help people.” Rouf elaborates: “Adam always wants to make sure that whoever he’s giving to is also giving to somebody else. If people benefit from his advice, he makes sure they help other people he gives advice to—it’s creating a network, and making sure that everybody in his network is helping each other, paying it forward.”
Cutting-edge research shows how Rifkin motivates other people to give. Giving, especially when it’s distinctive and consistent, establishes a pattern that shifts other people’s reciprocity styles within a group. It turns out that giving can be contagious . In one study, contagion experts James Fowler and Nicholas Christakis found that giving spreads rapidly and widely across social networks. When one person made the choice to contribute to a group at a personal cost over a series of rounds, other group members were more likely to contribute in future rounds, even when interacting with people who weren’t present for the original act. “This influence persists for multiple periods and spreads up to three degrees of separation (from person to person to person to person),” Fowler and Christakis find, such that “each additional contribution a subject makes . . . in the first period is tripled over the course of the experiment by other subjects who are directly or indirectly influenced to contribute more as a consequence.”
When people walk into a new situation, they look to others for clues about appropriate behavior. When giving starts to occur, it becomes the norm, and people carry it forward in interactions with other people. To illustrate, imagine that you’re assigned to a group of four. The other three people are strangers, and you’ll each make anonymous decisions, with no opportunity to communicate, during six rounds. In each round, each of you will receive $3 and decide whether to take it for yourselves or give it to the group. If you take it, you get the full $3. If you give it to the group, every group member gets $2, including you. At the end of each round, you’ll find out what everyone decided. The group is better off if everyone gives—each member would end up receiving $8 per round, for a maximum total over six rounds of $48. But if you give and no one else does, you only get $12. This
When takers build networks, they try to claim as much value as possible for themselves from a fixed pie. When givers like Rifkin build networks, they expand the pie so that everyone can get a larger slice. Nick Sullivan, an entrepreneur who has benefited from Rifkin’s help, says that “Adam has the same effect on all of us: getting us to help people.” Rouf elaborates: “Adam always wants to make sure that whoever he’s giving to is also giving to somebody else. If people benefit from his advice, he makes sure they help other people he gives advice to—it’s creating a network, and making sure that everybody in his network is helping each other, paying it forward.”
Cutting-edge research shows how Rifkin motivates other people to give. Giving, especially when it’s distinctive and consistent, establishes a pattern that shifts other people’s reciprocity styles within a group. It turns out that giving can be contagious . In one study, contagion experts James Fowler and Nicholas Christakis found that giving spreads rapidly and widely across social networks. When one person made the choice to contribute to a group at a personal cost over a series of rounds, other group members were more likely to contribute in future rounds, even when interacting with people who weren’t present for the original act. “This influence persists for multiple periods and spreads up to three degrees of separation (from person to person to person to person),” Fowler and Christakis find, such that “each additional contribution a subject makes . . . in the first period is tripled over the course of the experiment by other subjects who are directly or indirectly influenced to contribute more as a consequence.”
When people walk into a new situation, they look to others for clues about appropriate behavior. When giving starts to occur, it becomes the norm, and people carry it forward in interactions with other people. To illustrate, imagine that you’re assigned to a group of four. The other three people are strangers, and you’ll each make anonymous decisions, with no opportunity to communicate, during six rounds. In each round, each of you will receive $3 and decide whether to take it for yourselves or give it to the group. If you take it, you get the full $3. If you give it to the group, every group member gets $2, including you. At the end of each round, you’ll find out what everyone decided. The group is better off if everyone gives—each member would end up receiving $8 per round, for a maximum total over six rounds of $48. But if you give and no one else does, you only get $12. This
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