There is a positive relationship between prosociality and labor market success

See Prosociality predicts labor market success around the world by Fabian Kosse & Michela M. Tincani. Published in Nature Communications.

Adam Smith said when people act selfishly they are led, as if by an invisible hand, to make society better off. For example, if a business wants to make a profit, it is in their interest to make a good product at a reasonable price. But that is good for society.

But what if you are, say, altruistic and that makes you better off? Does that violate the invisible and or is it consistent with it?

Here is the abstract from the article. The authors say that elements of prosociality include reciprocity, altruism, and trust.

"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."