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Updated: Dec 5, 2025

The Social Dimension of Stress: Experimental Manipulations of Social Support and Social Identity in the Trier Social Stress Test
Published on: November 19, 2015
Prosociality predicts labor market success around the world
Fabian Kosse1, Michela M Tincani2
1Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1, 80539, Munich, Germany. fabian.kosse@econ.lmu.de.
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.
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