Human beings love to classify themselves; whether it be via star sign, choice of car or favoured music, we love to define ourselves. Which is handy, because researchers love to define us too, and a new study has identified four basic types of people that you may identify with.
The study was based on data drawn from the Barcelona City Council. The researchers used council resources to gather responses from volunteers to hundreds of social dilemmas with options available that led to collaboration or conflict with others based on individual or collective interests. Based on the responses, the researchers identified four basic types of people with one type being more prevalent than the other three.
Based on subject responses, the researchers found they could be divided into four types of people. They found that there are optimists, pessimists, trusting people and envious people. If you want to see where you might be able to categorise yourself, here is how they describe the four ways of being.
Optimists are those who believe that they and their partner will both make the best choice for them. Pessimists are those who will always select an option that they see as the lesser of two evils. Trusting people are born collaborators who will always collaborate and don’t really mind if they win or lose. Lastly, envious people don’t mind what they achieve either so long as it is better than everyone else.
The analysis showed that one of these types was more prevalent than the rest. The results showed that 20 per cent of people fell into each of the optimistic, pessimistic and trusting categories but that 30 per cent of people were envious in their way of operating.
There was also 10 per cent of people who could not be classified.
So where do you fit? Or are you glad to be part of that 10 per cent who defy classification?
Source: Science Advances
