About A Third Of People Have A Fundamental Desire To Manipulate Others

[FarCenter]

The way people act towards others is controlled by a set of social preferences.

Some tend to be greedy, and others altruistic. There's a third group of people that does not care how their payoff compares to others. They focus instead on changing other's fortunes as much as possible.

A recent paper from Abdolkarim Sadrieh and Marina Schröder of the Otto von Guericke University found, based on experiments where participants control what others receive, that the population splits neatly into thirds. About one third try to make the most for themselves, another third are altruistic, and the final third, as the authors put it, have a "desire to influence others."


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/a-third-of-people-manipulate-others-2012-12

[anarch]

1. I propose a fourth way, wherein you do all three at the same time

[Fridays Child]

2. Interesting study, right? But I doubt that there are bright lines.

Given the right circumstances, humans are probably capable of exhibiting all three behaviors and, at times, maybe even simultaneously, as you suggest. Plus, the categories are pretty broad and subject to interpretation, in the real world.

[Flabbergasted]

3. The study uses the word influence....

Which is a fair word to use but it doesn't mean manipulate in the way that we would use the word. Upon reading the study I'm not convinced that this really works out in the real world in a discernible way and does not correlate to manipultation.