In order to settle an argument over whether loyalty in the workplace is a virtue or merely a distorting bias towards one’s tribe, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley and Harvard Business School carried out some
experiments.
In one study of the 2014-15 investigation, students, recruited from college fraternity houses, received good luck notes from their presidents, requesting them to take a puzzle-solving task seriously. Initially camp loyalty was ahead — students who described themselves as loyal cheated less than their more disloyal peers. But when the importance of beating rival houses to win a cash prize was stressed, a darker side to loyalty emerged. Now, it was the loyalists who proved to be the biggest cheats, and by a wide margin.