It's not likely to win you any popularity contests, but it seems being selfish at work can be good for your career.

自私自利也许不能让你受到众人的欢迎，但在职场中似乎自私一些对你的事业发展有好处。

New research has found that those with more selfless, kind personalities¹ were the most well-liked, but were simultaneously² seen as less attractive candidates for leadership and were overlooked for promotion³.

It found that aggression⁴ implied strength, while altruistic⁵（利他的） tendencies were perceived as a sign of weakness.

The study, from the Kellogg School of Management, Stanford Graduate School of Business and Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business, aimed to discover the personality types we associate with leadership.

In a series of three experiments, participants were placed into groups. Researchers then analysed their behaviour as they managed tokens representing money; how some chose to keep them, and others contributed them to a group pool.

The results showed that those with the kinder personalities were the most popular in the groups, but they were also considered weak or gullible⁶（易受骗的） .

Those with more dominant⁷ and aggressive behaviour were seen as 'alpha' personalities.

Co-author Robert Livingston, of the Kellogg School, told Today.com: 'As humans we are wired to respond to dominance.'

He explained: 'Being selfish makes you seem more dominant and being dominant makes you seem more attractive as a leader, especially when there’s competition.

'On a subconscious⁸（潜意识的） level this is the conclusion people are coming to: Kindness equals weakness.'

Dr Livingston believes that this tendency to associate aggression with leadership' is an explanation on why we get corruption⁹.

'People who are more likely to be moral, kind and pro-social are least likely to be elected to these leadership roles,' he said.

'That increases the likelihood of corruption and malfeasance（渎职，不正当） because we’ve got the wrong people in positions of leadership.'