According to a new study on human behavior, people can be classified into four basic personalities, which are optimistic, pessimistic, trusting and envious.
The study which was conducted by researchers from Universidad Carlos III de Madrid in Spain, took responses from 541 volunteers to hundreds of social dilemmas, with opinions of individuals leading to collaboration or conflict between each other.
“Those involved are asked to participate in pairs, these pairs change, not only in each round, but also each time the game changes,” said Anxo Sanchez, one of the authors of the study.
“So, the best option could be to cooperate or, on the other hand, to oppose or betray ….. In this way, we can obtain information about what people do in very different social situations,” said Sanchez.
“The results go against certain theories; the one which states that humans act purely rationally for example, and, therefore, they should be taken into consideration in redesigning social and economic policies, as well as those involved in cooperation,” said Yamir Moreno, from Universidad de Zaragoza in Spain.
After gathering the responses from the candidates, the researchers used special computer algorithm to analyze them and classify people. Reportedly, the algorithm was able to classify 90 % of them, with 30 % of them classified as Envious, making it the most common personality trait. The other groups stood at 20 % each.
Envious group were people were the ones that did not mind what they achieved as long as they were better than others.
The optimists were people who believed that they and their partners would make the right choice for both of them.
The trusting group were people who did not mind winning or losing and would easily cooperate with others.
Pessimists were the ones who will go for the lesser evil.
The algorithm was not able to classify 10 % of the participants into an category, as they did not have clear type of behavior.
