Does working hard really make you a good person? | Azim Shariff (re-release)

Summary

Podcast Summary

Podcast: TED Talks Daily
Episode: Does working hard really make you a good person? | Azim Shariff (re-release)
Date: July 7, 2026
Speaker: Azim Shariff (Social Psychologist)
Host: Elise Hu

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Episode Overview

This episode features Azim Shariff’s insightful TED Talk exploring the deep-rooted societal belief that hard work is inherently virtuous. Shariff investigates how and why "effort" is often moralized, independent of its tangible outcomes. He challenges listeners to consider the origins and implications of equating hard work with goodness, particularly in contemporary culture where automation and shifting job identities are forcing a reevaluation of work's true purpose.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Moralization of Effort

• Study Scenario: The Case of Jeff
  • [03:54-05:00]: Shariff presents a hypothetical about “Jeff,” a medical scribe whose job is automated. Participants judged Jeff to be more virtuous if he continued working, despite not adding value.
    • “Even though Jeff added no extra value, people saw him as virtuous for choosing to keep plugging away. Why is it that we see mere effort as moral?” — Azim Shariff [00:20/03:54]
• Findings Across Cultures
  • The tendency to see "hard workers" as more moral appears globally, not just in North America.
    • “We replicated our original American result in South Korea... and in France... Even the Hadza people, hunter gatherers in Tanzania, show something like it.” — Azim Shariff [06:28]

2. Why Do We Value Effort?

• Partner Choice and Evolution
  • Investing effort signals reliability; we seek such qualities for collaborators and friends.
    • “The truth is, we're all in the market for finding the best collaborators in life. And we're trying to show others that we are that person as well.” — Azim Shariff [08:53]
• Personal Example
  • Shariff illustrates with his colleague Paul: seeing him persistently struggle through morning runs fostered admiration and trust, more so than effortless achievement.

3. The Dark Side: Societal Scale and Perverse Incentives

• Effort vs. Productivity
  • Societal focus on effort can inadvertently promote activity over genuine achievement, leading to inefficiency and burnout.
    • “When we start attaching worth to activity rather than to productivity, we start caring more about whether somebody is a hard worker than whatever it is that that work was supposed to achieve.” — Azim Shariff [10:38]
• Workism Culture
  • Describes “workism” (credit to journalist Derek Thompson), a system where job becomes not only a source of income but also of identity and self-worth. It creates competitive cycles of ever-increasing effort.
    • “Partner choice is not just about being a good cooperation partner, but a better cooperation partner than the next guy. Not just hard working, but harder working.” — Azim Shariff [12:36]
• Effort Porn
  • The notion that visible struggle and overwork are admired for their own sake, regardless of outcome.

4. Personal Anecdote: Incentivizing Performance vs. Perceived Industriousness

• Shariff shares a lab story where his students scheduled emails at odd hours to look more industrious, highlighting the pressure to signal effort instead of actual output.
  • “My student was willing to delay the work to make it seem like he was more industrious. It was literally bullshit work.” — Azim Shariff [13:53]
• He acknowledges the difficulty in changing such ingrained biases, suggesting awareness as the first step.

5. Cobra Effect: The Dangers of Rewarding the Wrong Signal

• Colonial India’s Cobra Bounty Metaphor
  • Tells an almost certainly apocryphal story where a bounty on cobra skins led to breeding more cobras, not fewer, due to a focus on the wrong measurement—dead snakes, not total population. This is paralleled to rewarding mere effort rather than meaningful, productive work.
    • “If all we ask from each other is the effort that we put in, we will create a world full of effort and of hard labor and of cobras. But if what we ask from each other is to produce something meaningful, we will create a world full of meaning.” — Azim Shariff [15:13]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the perils of misapplied effort:
  “How many Jeffs are out there taking time that could have been spent on love or on leisure and spending it on signaling effort? And how often are we, Jeff, wearing workaholism as a badge of honor?” — Azim Shariff [11:45]
• On moral intuition and self-awareness:
  “The mental circuit that connects effort to morality can be a stubborn one… but you can learn to notice them so that you can account for them when making important decisions.” — Azim Shariff [14:54]
• On rethinking value:
  “If all we ask from each other is the effort that we put in, we will create a world full of effort and of hard labor and of cobras. But if what we ask from each other is to produce something meaningful, we will create a world full of meaning. And what could be more moral than that?” — Azim Shariff [15:13]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:20: Introduction of Jeff and the “moralization of effort”
• 03:54: Opening of the main TED Talk
• 05:00-07:30: Global study results and cross-cultural findings
• 08:53-10:20: Personal anecdotes, partner choice, evolutionary context
• 10:38-12:30: Societal consequences of effort-worship; “workism”
• 13:53-14:54: Lab anecdote on signaling effort, recognition of bias
• 15:13-16:21: Cobra effect metaphor; redefining moral value in work

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Episode Takeaways

• Effort is deeply linked, across cultures, to perceptions of goodness and moral character—even when that effort does not produce value.
• While this heuristic serves social cooperation, on a societal scale it can lead to wasted time, unhealthy competition, inefficiencies, and hollow forms of self-worth.
• True progress may require us to shift from rewarding effort for effort's sake to valuing meaningful contributions and outcomes.
• Recognizing and challenging our internal biases about work and morality is vital, especially as technology changes what “work” means.

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Final Reflection

Azim Shariff’s talk compellingly uncovers the hidden biases that shape our work ethic, alerting us to the pitfalls of a culture that prizes effort over meaning. He urges listeners to be mindful of what—and why—they value certain kinds of work, proposing a subtle but profound shift: less admiration for empty busyness, more for genuine purpose and impact.

Transcript

[Elise Hu]

You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. Does working hard automatically make you a good person? Most of us would probably say no, but our behavior tells a different story.

[Azim Sharif]

Even though Jeff added no extra value, people saw him as virtuous for choosing to keep plugging away. Why is it that we see mere effort as moral?

[Elise Hu]

That's Azim Sharif, a social psychologist who studies morality. In his talk from 2023, he turns that lens on something most of us take for granted, the idea that hard work is inherently virtuous. He calls this effort moralization, and his research suggests it runs deeper than any one culture or religion.

[Azim Sharif]

If all we ask from each other is the effort that we put in, we will create a world full of effort and of hard labor and of cobras. But if what we ask from each other is to produce something meaningful, we will create a world full of meaning.

[Elise Hu]

In an age where automation is forcing us to rethink what work is actually for, it might be worth asking what we really value and whether our instincts are leading us somewhere we actually want to go. That's coming up right after a short break. This episode is brought to you by Dell. Back to School starts now. Get long lasting battery life on the Dell XPS laptop powered by Series 3 Intel Core so you can work from anywhere now starting at $699 with exclusive student pricing starting at $599. And it's lightweight, portable and packed with enough processing power to make multitasking a breeze. So say goodbye to distractions and hello to more free time because you finished your work faster, complete your setup with savings on select monitors and more. Must have electronics and accessories, limited time deals and free shipping on PCs and more await [e-mail] deals that's Dell.com deals. This message is brought to you by Apple Card Apple Card puts the power of Titanium in the palm of your hand. What does that mean? It means the power to earn unlimited daily cash back on your purchases every day. It means a materially different credit card accepted anywhere in the world. MasterCard is accepted. Ditch the plastic, upgrade to Titanium, apply in the Wallet app on iPhone today, subject to credit approval. Apple Card is issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City Branch terms and [e-mail] this episode is brought to you by Gusto. For a lot of small business owners, the challenge isn't just growing the business, it's everything that comes with it. Hiring, payroll, benefits, the work that happens behind the scenes, but still takes real time and energy. That's where Gusto makes a difference. Gusto is an online payroll and benefits software built for small businesses. It's all in one remote, friendly and incredibly easy to use so you can pay, hire onboard and support your team from anywhere. With built in automated tools, your team spends less time on paperwork and more time focused on growth. And Gusto has options for nearly every budget you get. Unlimited payroll runs for one monthly price. No hidden fees, no surprises. Getting started is easy. Transfer your existing data and get up and running quickly. Try gusto [e-mail] TedTalks and get three months free when you run your first payroll. That's three months of free [e-mail] Tedtalks One more time Gusto.com TedTalks. And now our TED Talk of the Day.

[Azim Sharif]

Imagine for a second that your job was made redundant by an advanced piece of software that could do the work at the same level of quality for free. But you happen to have three years left on a guaranteed contract. And so your employer gives you two options. Either you can keep getting paid as per your contract, but stay home as the software does your job, or you can keep going in and doing the work that could have been automated for the same money. What would you do now? Most of you, I'm sure this is a no brainer. Take the money, go home, watch TED Talks. But there's always some who would choose to keep working. What do you think of those people? What does it say about their character? This is a scenario about a hypothetical medical scribe named Jeff that we gave to our research participants. For half the people in the study, the story ends with Jeff choosing to go home. And for the other half, it ends with him choosing to keep working. And then we asked everybody what they thought of Jeff. Those who heard about the Jeff who kept working saw him as less competent. He does seem like a bit of a chump. But they also saw him as warmer and more moral, somebody who could be trusted to do the right thing. They saw him as a good person, even though Jeff added no extra value. People saw him as virtuous for choosing to keep plugging away. Why is it that we see mere effort as moral? I am a psychology professor at the University of British Columbia, where I study morality. I've worked on religion and morality. I've worked on driverless cars and morality. But recently my collaborators and I have been working on work itself. And in study after study, we find that people attach moral worth to effort, regardless of what that effort produces. So in another study, we asked people about two widget makers. They produce the same number of widgets in the same amount of time at the same level of quality, but for one of them, it takes a lot more effort to do so. People see that harder working widget maker as again, less competent, but again, more moral. And if you had to choose just one of those two as a cooperation partner, you would choose the one who struggles. We call this effort moralization. And it doesn't appear to just be a North American thing. Work norms, of course, differ around the world, but we replicated our original American result in South Korea, which is known by the numbers to be one of the hardest working countries in the oecd, and in France, which is known for other strengths. In all of these places, the harder working person was seen as more moral and a better cooperation partner, even though they added no extra value. And it looks like this is something broader than, say, the Protestant work ethic. Even the Hadza people, hunter gatherers in Tanzania, show something like it. When asked what qualities contribute to good character, they didn't agree on very much, but they did agree on two things, generosity and hard work. So this intuitive connection between effort and morality doesn't appear to be the quirk of any one culture, but potentially something very deep indeed. Now, effort moralization makes sense at the individual level. Somebody who's willing to show that they will put effort into even meaningless tasks, maybe even especially into meaningless tasks, is somebody who's more likely to help you out. So I have a friend from work, Paul. Paul is an uncommonly charismatic man. Paul wears stylish pairs of raw denim jeans, and Paul buys expensive bars of soap, $60 bars of soap. And Paul is one of those types who wakes up every morning and goes running. And when I first heard this, I sort of rolled my eyes at this being one of those Mr. Perfect things. Actually, Dr. Perfect in this case. But then one day, I saw Paul on one of his morning runs. And instead of seeing a sleek type A personality confidently striding through life, I saw Paul struggling in an inelegant hobble with a grotesque grimace of something between annoyance and agony on his face. Running was hard for him. Every morning was effort. And the person who's willing to wake up for that day after day is the kind of person you want in your corner. And Paul is in mine. He's not just the inspiration behind some of the studies in this research, he is a collaborator on them as well. And he's a good man. The truth is, we're all in the market for finding the best collaborators in life. And we're trying to show others that we are that person as well. The evolutionary psychologists call this partner choice. Just as we're trying to be and select the best romantic partners, we're also trying to be and select the best cooperation partners. We're all trying to surround ourselves with people who will help us out in a pinch, who won't slack off, who will share things fairly. And as a result, any quality which makes you a better cooperation partner, say generosity or self control or hard work, is seen as a moral quality. And so we have this simple heuristic. People who work hard are good. It's why you're more likely to donate to your friend who pledges to run a marathon or for cancer research than your other friend who pledges to watch a sex and the city marathon for the same cause. But what makes sense at the individual level can still become very problematic when scaled up to the societal level. Our intuition that effort is good for its own sake, regardless of what it produces, has created a work environment with perverse incentives. So when we start attaching worth to to activity rather than to productivity, we start caring more about whether somebody is a hard worker than whatever it is that that work was supposed to achieve. And this can come at a very steep human cost. So you'll remember our example of Jeff, the medical scribe who chose to throw his time into the volcano as a sacrifice to the gods of hard work. That was just a contrived scenario. But how many Jeffs are out there taking time that could have been spent on love or on leisure and spending it on signaling effort? And how often are we, Jeff, wearing workaholism as a badge of honor, A way to reassure people that we are a good person, Even if the person that you're just trying to reassure is yourself. The anthropologist David Graebert wondered how capitalism could sustain so many of what he bluntly called bullshit jobs. These are jobs in which even the people doing the work see it as pointless, accomplishing nothing of societal worth. A capitalistic system should root out those inefficiencies. But it doesn't. And the reason it doesn't is because alongside capitalism, we also operate under another system, what the journalist Derek Thompson calls workism. Workism is about your job not just being the source of your paycheck, but the source of your identity and your pathway to self actualization. Now, that works for some people, but what makes workism a culture is that we all get forced to participate. Partner choice is not just about Being a good cooperation partner, but. But a better cooperation partner than the next guy. Not just hard working, but harder working. And this can create these arms races of workism. So you can imagine two office workers both keen to show how industrious they are, both keen to be the first car in the parking lot in the morning. And so they start one upping each other by arriving earlier and earlier and earlier in the morning. And everybody else just seems like more of a slacker every day. The culture punishes us for not keeping up. And so we end up putting more and more in, regardless of what comes out the other side. And the culture maintains the most laborious aspects of our jobs because it most appreciates us when it sees us putting in that labor. And as a consequence, every other aspect of our job and our lives, however great, is made just a little less important. Now, this is not an argument against hard work. It's not. Hard work can be extremely meaningful when it serves a purpose. Hard work built civilization. But how much of the effort we spend now is done to build nothing but our own moral reputations? To just convince other people that we are hard workers and how much of what we admire in others is just effort porn. In one of his more candid moments, one of my graduate students said that he noticed I would send emails out at all hours of the day. 1am, 2am, 3am now, this was because being a professor allowed me to maintain an adolescent sleep schedule deep into my 30s. But what he then did was he got some apple, which scheduled his replies to come to me at one or two in the morning so as to make it seem like he was also working all hours of the day. I clearly sent the wrong message, so much so that my student was willing to delay the work to make it seem like he was more industrious. It was literally bullshit work. I had to change my lab's culture. I had to convince my students that we weren't just about the show of work, but what we're actually producing. And it's not such a simple thing to do. The mental circuit that connects effort to morality can be a stubborn one. When I teach about psychological biases to my intro psych students, I tell them that you can't always learn to resist a bias. They can be very deeply ingrained, but you can learn to notice them so that you can account for them when making important decisions. We may not be able to break that mental circuit, but we can learn to recognize our biases so they don't run our lives. There is a story almost certainly apocryphal about perverse incentives. In the era of British rule in India, desperate to deal with the cobras that were overrunning colonial Delhi, a bounty was put up for every cobra skin that was brought in. But the plan backfired because enterprising Indians started breeding more cobras to kill them, bring in the skins, and collect the bounty. And when the government finally abandoned the plan, as the story goes, the breeders then released their cobras into the city, and the snake problem was worse than ever. Oops. The plan went awry because of the distance between what they wanted, which was fewer cobras, and what they asked for, which was an imperfect signal of fewer cobras. Dead cobras. But I fear we've done something very real and very similar with work. We have built a culture that asks for the wrong thing. If all we ask from each other is the effort that we put in, we will create a world full of effort and of hard labor. End of cobras. But if what we ask from each other is to produce something meaningful, we will create a world full of meaning. And what could be more moral than that? Thank you.

[Elise Hu]

That was Azim Sharif at TED at Destination Canada in 2023. This talk was originally published in May of that year. If you're curious about Ted's curation, visit Ted.comCurationGuidelines and that's it for today. Ted Talks Daily is a podcast from Ted. This episode was fact checked by the TED research team and produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Lucy Little, Emma Tobner, and Tanzika Songmarnival. Additional support from Daniela Ballaraizo, Christopher Faizy Bogan, Valentina Bohanini, Banban Chang, Brian Greene, and Lainey Lott. Learn more at Podcasts. I am Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening.

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