On what basis do people select others as friends and collaborative partners? What causes one to prioritize collaboration with certain potential partners over others? If we could design ideal collaboration partners, what characteristics would we give them and why would those characteristics emerge as more important than others? These questions follow logically from the observation that people are selective in whom they associate with and do not equally accept all others as partners in collaborative ventures like friendships, coalitions, or alliances (collectively known as “partnerships”). Given that particular groups and relationships involve different tasks and require different behaviours from individuals, the personality traits associated with successful and mutually beneficial outcomes in a given task should be especially important when selecting partners for that task. In this study, which is part of the existing PACO dataset, previously-unacquainted participants were given a description of the cooperative task that they would have to perform in a series of dyads with other participants, and were asked to select partner(s) with whom they would like to perform this task. Half of participants performed a task that involved sharing monetary rewards and thus required traits such as trustworthiness, fairness, and sincerity in order to achieve a mutually beneficial outcome (trust-based task), while the remaining half performed a task that involved solving an intelligence test problem and thus required traits such as intelligence, competence, and skillfulness (competence-based task). Every participant then rated the perceived personality of each one of their interaction partners in a round-robin manner. We examined which personality traits are linked with partner selection in the two types of cooperative decision tasks, using effects derived from the Social Relations Model (SRM).

Vasiliki Kentrou is a PhD Candidate in the Work and Organizational Psychology Department at the VU Amsterdam.