Collaborate or oppose
The study, carried out by researchers from Carlos III University of Madrid (in collaboration with researchers from the universities of Barcelona, Rovira I Virgili and Saragoss), was carried out on 541 people. To identify these four personality types, the researchers asked participants to resolve hundreds of dilemmas for two. For each situation, several options were offered to them: solutions that led to collaboration and others that brought to the conflict. The dilemmas were based on individual or collective interests. The objective was to see if each individual acted in his own way in front of a dilemma or s “he presented a behavior similar to that of other people.
These works have based on game theory. It is a set of tools that allows you to analyze situations in which individuals must make decisions. Each person knows that their own choice depends on that of others.
The envious would be the most numerous
After testing the participants in different situations, the authors of the study developed an algorithm to classify people according to their behavior. Result, 90% of people can be classified in four groups:
The envious : They represent 30% of the population. These are those who do not care about what they do as long as they do better than others. They always want to have more than the others.
Optimists : they represent 20% of the population. These are those who know that they will always make the best decision for themselves and their partners.
Pessimists: They represent 20% of the population. These are those who choose the “minus worse” solution from two bad solutions.
Confidents : they represent 20% of the population. These are the ones who were born to be collaborators. They will always agree with their partners, whether the decision is good or bad.
A fifth group that does not enter the boxes
There are a fifth group (which represents 10% of the population) for which the algorithm has failed to define a type of personality. According to the researchers, the existence of this group makes it possible to assert that some individuals do not always react the same way in the face of a problem.
For researchers, these results “go against the theory that human beings act in a purely rational way “. According to them, this kind of study makes it possible to go further in existing theories on human behavior, by bringing an experimental basis.
“This classification makes it possible to better understand what is going on between two people during a negotiation for example“Explains Angel Sanchez, co-author of the study.