[crimsonalucard]

There's a psychology book that researches this phenomena. I forgot the title but it starts out by saying people in general can be grouped into three categories. Givers, exchangers and takers. Givers tend to care about people, takers tend to care about themselves and exchangers try to be fair.

I don't know all the quantitative and qualitative parameters used for the study but they found out that in general the types of people who were least successful (in companies and other structured organizations) were the givers. The surprising result was that the most successful people were also givers while takers and exchangers generally hovered in the center. You'd have to read it to know more.

Unlikely you'll ever read the book but I just recalled the name, it's called Give and Take for anyone interested.