Photo: weheartit
This makes so much sense, actually.
By Higher Perspective — Written on Aug 08, 2016
Log onto a Facebook page, click on the comments section, and count how many seconds it takes before you stumble upon a mean comment. Not very long, right? The internet is a breeding ground for people to let out their uncensored stupidity, racism, sexism, and just plain awful thought processes. In fact, the internet can be the last place you want to go because of all the assh*les inhabiting it.
Even in real life, we encounter assh*les every single day. The woman in front of you in line who is harassing the cashier, the man who didn't say thank you for holding the door for him, the acquaintance who tries to one-up you at a party — it seems like these people are never too far from sight.
People can be such assh*les, and now, psychologists at Yale University have stumbled upon why some people are dicks and some people are very nice.
Adam Bear and David Rand developed a special study where participants played games that had two options: to be selfish or to be helpful. The payoff was sometimes higher depending on the game. In some games, it paid to cooperate. In others, it paid to be self-interested.
Their study was based off a model which "incorporates ideas from the evolutionary game theory of cooperation and the behavioral economics of intuition and deliberation." Basically, this means it looks at how we evolved to channel intuition and decide whether or not to work with people.
As it turns out, being an assh*le has more to do with the people you're surrounded by than anything else. It's definitely nurture, not nature. People who came from supportive, friendly environments tended to be nicer. Those who came from colder environments, well... they are not so nice.
The big lesson to take away here is that, if someone's a dick, chances are the people in their lives are dicks, too. Try not to take it too personally. After all, it's not their fault that their upbringing turned them into someone not-so-nice.
This article was originally published at Higher Perspective. Reprinted with permission from the author.