Are you as tired as I am of all the nastiness going on in the world? I’m not just talking about the U.S. presidential race — although that’s depressing enough — but about the me-first attitude that seems to permeate our world.

If you adhere to the feeling that “nice guys finish last,” I’m pleased to report that a column in the Wall Street Journal shows otherwise. Arthur C. Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute, writes that if you think it looks like the worst behavior is being publicly rewarded and that the world now belongs to jerks, you are wrong. (Read the column here.)

“Nice people, rejoice: Notwithstanding the prominent examples today in political and popular culture, the best available research still clearly shows that in everyday life the nice people, not the creeps, do the best at work, in love and happiness,” Brooks writes.

Follow the Golden Rule

I’m glad to hear that. When I was 28 and became the editor of the features department at the Bradenton Herald in Florida, I got some good advice from a former boss. This was my first management job, and I was green enough that I didn’t know what I didn’t know. But one thing I did know: I wanted to be respected by my new staff (most of whom were older than me) but I also wanted them to like their jobs and excel at them. So the advice that I got from a former boss when I told her about my challenges in helping certain staffers improve their performance: “Be a human being” in working with your staff. “Follow the Golden Rule: Treat others as you want to be treated.”

I know I didn’t always succeed at that as a young manager or even as I got more experienced. But I think I achieved a good balance: expecting high quality work while understanding a person’s challenges of getting there.

So back to that Wall Street Journal column. Here are a few research findings:

• A 2015 study published in the Journal of Applied Psychology showed that nice employees were seen as being natural leaders and they got significantly higher marks on performance reviews.
• A 2010 study published in the Journal of Social Psychology showed “that kind acts, systematically deployed, raised the participants’ self-judged happiness,” according to the WSJ column.

Mr. Nice Guy

My dad, Joe Sutter, was known for being a nice guy. When I wrote my family memoir, Sutter’s Sodas Satisfy: A Memoir of 90 Years of Sutter Drug Co., I heard from many former employees who liked working for my dad, a pharmacist who ran the business when my grandfather grew old. And when my dad passed away in 2013, one of my mother’s sisters wrote in a card to me: “I don’t know anyone who didn’t like your Dad.”

My dad was quiet and unassuming, but he certainly had high standards and expected us kids to live up to them. I like to think we have.

Whom do you admire for being nice?