Quiz: Are you really as nice as you think you are?
Most of us like to think we’re nice people. We might not be Mother Theresa, but if we saw someone in trouble (and obviously, we weren’t late for a meeting/trying to get to happy hour on time/going through a personal crisis) we’d stop to help.
A new study from Goldsmiths University sums up just how generous-spirited we think we are: 98 per cent of British people consider themselves to be among the nicest 50 per cent of the population.
Only, their perceptions of their own niceness aren’t always backed up by the data.
While most people classed themselves as nice, two thirds said they rarely if ever helped people carry heavy shopping bags, and only one in six frequently gave money to strangers. Just a quarter gave blood often or helped someone in need cross the road.
“We observed a really interesting result in relation to people’s ratings of how nice they are, and how they scored on validated measures of individual differences,” said Jonathan Freeman, who led the study. “For example, more than half of participants who rated themselves as the second-highest level of nice scored below the sample average on agreeableness — so people think they’re nicer than they really may be.”
It’s time to put it to the test. Are you really as nice as you think you are? Take our quiz to find out.
