New Drivers of Selfishness and Collaboration Discovered

New studies shed more light on some contradictions and drivers of selfishness and collaboration

Show babies of only a few months old scenes of nice behaviour, such as helping another person, and bad behaviour, not helping or being selfish and they have a clear preference. They almost unanimously like the good behaviour, pro-social behaviour as psychologists call it. So that seems settled.

Well, no, it is not quite settled. Yes we human beings in general like pro-social behaviour but there is also a lot of interpretation of what is good behaviour not to mention to whom (a friend or an enemy for example) this happens.

Well, a couple of newly published pieces of research gives us some more refined research and insights into selfish & generous behaviour, and also collaborative behaviour. This is important for society and business and can also help explain some contradictions like why some people actually seem to like selfish people or selfish behaviour. This seems to go against our natural instincts as illustrated by extensive research I alluded to in babies.

One theory which seems to make sense is that our social development and situation defines this - if we have grown up with selfishness as the norm then we would consider this normal - seems to make sense. Well, some surprising insights have come from a series of studies recently published by Paul Bogdan et al. of the University of Illinois.