On Receiving Credit

Give credit where credit is due

Figure composed by Rebecca Clements

Over the course of our lives, we learn many virtues: justice, courage, temperance, love, and so on. A handful of them rise to the top, but few are regarded as highly as humility— which strikes a special kind of irony. If someone is humble, they are to be revered, bringing to mind the very opposite of what humility intends.

One attribute that is seen as humble is not caring who receives the credit for good work or good deeds. President Harry Truman is quoted as saying “it is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.”  This invokes the idea of an army of humble, industrious people who constantly do good deeds and receive no reward. This might seem like a good ideal to which we should aspire, but in practice it fundamentally neglects aspects of human nature, and works in service of perpetuating an unjust system.

The ultimate purpose of any action should be to do good.  As Marcus Aurelius says in Meditations:

Do not act as if you were going to live ten thousand years.

Death hangs over you.

While you live, while it is in your power, be good.

This should be done without expectation of praise or reward.  If there is external pressure to do good, is it truly as good as it could be? Good, then, should not be executed reliant upon external factors. Instead, internal motivation and virtue should be the guiding principles.

But the human brain has a say here, too. One of the biggest motivating factors, physiologically, is the neurotransmitter dopamine being released by your brain. It rewards you for actions taken and makes them pleasurable. 

In his book Atomic Habits, James Clear discusses how dopamine production moves from reward to anticipation after a neural pathway has been wired (106). The first time an action is completed, the dopamine spikes immediately after completion. In subsequent iterations, the dopamine spike occurs before the action is completed, meaning that the most pleasurable experience is no longer the reward itself, but rather the anticipation of that reward. This means that, once an action has been repeated and becomes a habit, the biggest motivation for continued action is the anticipation of the reward.

Ultimately, the process of cultivating virtue is the process of cultivating a habit of virtuous actions. Who is good? The person who does good— repeatedly. But starving the act of goodness of acknowledgement, of credit, of reward works counterintuitively against the neurology of motivation. Eventually, the brain will begin to wire away from actions that are no longer rewarded, as the crash after the height of the anticipation will not be worth undertaking.

How, then, can these things be rectified? The solution is twofold. On one hand, the ideation of what constitutes a reward can be altered. Instead of being praise or payment, the reward can be found in the happiness generated by the act itself. You do something good for someone and they do not thank you, but you see that you have helped them. You see their peace of mind, or happiness, or freedom return in that moment. That can be a reward in itself.

On the other hand, maybe it’s time we discarded this elevation of humility.  For every action, someone deserves the credit. Someone made it happen.  Too frequently, statements like those of Truman are used to attack others, freeing yourself from having to identify and properly acknowledge some else’s labor. This contributes to injustice. If someone seeks the credit they deserve, they can be put down by these statements and denied what is rightfully theirs. Credit that could aid in their advancement. We live in a world fueled by praise and notoriety; not acknowledging that is foolish.

As with many of the wise sayings that have been handed forward through history, a critical eye is needed and thoughtful balancing must occur.  “Wisdom” should never be used to put others down, or take away their agency.  Rather, it should help to elucidate virtues and help us find our way.  We must reflect on these sayings and integrate what we identify as truth. We must not weaponize them and use them to cement faulty power structures.

In the case of receiving credit, this is the balanced attitude:

I should do good because it is the right thing to do, and because it offers its own kind of reward, but I must not expect credit in the form of praise or payment. At the same? I must seek out the person who is deserving of credit when good is done to me, and adequately praise and/or reward them for their goodness.

Through this balance, we can act with goodness, check the box for humility, form our own reward system and acknowledge that people are deserving of credit when they do good and important things.

Edited by Jeremy Harr and Abigail McKay Cherry

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