So, this begs the question: if the data on the effects of workplace abuse are so clear, why do so many companies hire and promote manipulative and selfish people? University of Virginia business school professor Peter Belmi and I have given this question a lot of thought.

We carried out a series of experiments involving more than 900 participants. Some mimicked real world circumstances (for example, picking someone to work with on a task) and we found that if people’s rewards (what they expected to earn) depended solely on their own performance, they very strongly preferred to work with (or hire) someone who was described as being sociable (i.e., friendly, warm, nice) even if not that competent. But when their rewards depended at least partly on the other person’s performance, the importance of sociability went down and the emphasis on competence increased.

Simply put, when your own rewards depend on what others do, you evaluate and judge the people you work with more strongly on their competence rather than sociability and warmth.

This research suggests that one reason people downplay interpersonal warmth and interpersonal skills at work is because they instead choose to analyse the ability of others to do the job.

And there’s a further twist. Princeton University psychology professor Susan Fiske and Amy Cuddy, who teaches leadership at Harvard University, have identified warmth and competence as the two fundamental dimensions along which people describe others. They and other researchers have found that people often presume warmth and competence are negatively correlated—in part because if people are nice, it is presumed it is because they have to be. The feeling that if they were any good, they wouldn’t need to be as kind and supportive to others.

And now you see the problem. It’s not just that people downplay the importance of warmth and good behaviour at work when their earnings depend on the performance of others, they often equate “bad behaviour” with higher levels of ability.

Descriptions of CEOs not renowned for their friendly or warm leadership styles - leaders such as Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, or Elon Musk, to take just three - often emphasise their need to be demanding and difficult in order to disrupt an industry. And such descriptions invariably excuse or rationalise their tough methods by pointing to the great results these, and others like them, have achieved. People put up with and make excuses for bad behaviour if they think the bad actor is going to create a lot of economic value—particularly if they are going to benefit from that economic value creation personally.