Prosociality predicts labor market success around the world

Abstract

A large literature points to the importance of prosociality for the well-being of societies and individuals. However, most of this work is based on observations from western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) societies, questioning the generalizability of these findings. Here we present a global investigation of the relation between prosociality and labor market success. Our analysis uses experimentally validated measures of prosociality and is based on about 80,000 individuals in 76 representative country samples. We show a sizable and robust positive relation between prosociality and labor market success around the world that does not systematically differ across continents or by countries’ economic development. These findings generalize the positive relation between prosociality and labor market success to a wide geographical context.