Researchers Define Who We Are When We Work Together and Evolutionary Origins of the “Wait and See” Approach

According to an evolutionary psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, our success at cooperation results from three distinct personality types.

'In any given group of people, youl find three kinds of people: Cooperators, Free Riders, and what we call Reciprocators. Cooperators do the most work and Free Riders do as little as possible, but most of us are Reciprocators. We hold back a bit to determine the chances of success before devoting our full energy to a project,' said Robert Kurzban, an assistant professor in Penn's Department of Psychology. 'We found that these traits remained fairly stable among people, and you could reliably predict how a group might perform if you know the percentage of each type of person in that group.'

[...]"Our findings show that the vast majority of people, about 63 percent, are Reciprocators, and in any group you are likely to have a substantial number of Reciprocators," Kurzban said. "The simplest way to make use of a Reciprocator potential is to keep everyone apprised with information about the successful contributions of others within the group. This way you show them that there is something to gain from their efforts."