If you are a giver, you’ll be able to spot a taker a mile away. It's as if they just don’t even know they are doing it… riding rough-shod over the vulnerable, being first in line for more, getting the credit for others work – always stacking the odds in their favor, getting their nose in front – it’s easy to despise this kind of person.

It might be good to know that they often never really make it big, or at least as big as smart givers. And from time to time, they find themselves going backwards.

In the book – Give and Take, author and researcher Adam Grant provides in depth insights into human behaviour on the topic of reciprocity. What follows is a very high-level summary of these social dynamics.

Along with Givers and Takers it turns out that there is a third type of person, the Matcher. The Matcher can play a significant role in the life of both, read on and you might recognize your self or others around you.

Here are the 2 main profiles according to the research:

Takers are typically interested in:

• Wealth (money, material possessions)
• Power (dominance, control over others)
• Pleasure (enjoying life)
• Winning (doing better than others)

Givers are typically interested in:

• Helpfulness (working for the well-being of others)
• Responsibility (being dependable)
• Social justice (caring for the disadvantaged)
• Compassion (responding to the needs of others)

Takers have a couple of quirks in addition to the ‘I, ME gene’. They can tend to have wide networks so that when they do burn bridges, there is someone else or some other situation they can work on. And they can also turn on the charm by using the trait of agreeable-ness, being warm, polite and friendly – to appear as a giver for the sole purpose of advancing their own interests.

Givers fall into two main categories, those that find it difficult to make the difference they intend, and those that are the highest performing of all 3 groups. At the unfortunate end of the scale there is blind faith, the overly trusting and gullible, while at the other end of the scale, smart givers do the opposite. They are highly aware of what they are doing, tend to look for reciprocal giving, but very often start from a position of generosity and no expectation, which shows they are willing to be smart about the risk they take up front.

So, what about the Matchers?

A matcher is somebody who tries to maintain an even balance of give and take, they believe in a just world. "If I help you, I expect you to help me in return". They tend to keep score of exchanges, so that everything is fair and really just. They tend to keep Takers honest.

When discussing the dynamic between the 3 types, Adam Grant says, “the success of givers and the fall of takers is often driven by matchers. Matchers will often go out of their way to promote and help and support givers, to make sure they actually do get rewarded for their generosity.”

And here’s an irony.

The selfless givers might be more altruistic in principle, because they are constantly elevating other people’s interests ahead of their own. But Grants data shows that they are actually less generous because they run out of energy, they run out of time and they lose their resources, because they basically don’t take enough care of themselves.   

Smart givers tend to end up achieving more because they are careful about how they use their resources and maybe they have matchers that help along the way! 

Lets keep an eye out for all of our givers, the research might show that they can give too much, but then there are so many ways that giving makes a difference that cant be measured -