When it comes to work and money, people are more likely to be greedy than generous . This is the suggestion of new research published in the American Psychological Association's Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, which found paying it forward - a term used to describe being generous after receiving help - is not as common as repaying greed with greed.

Investigators from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and Harvard University asked 100 people to play an economic game and asked a further 60 individuals to complete and split additional tasks  in order to collate their results.

Kurt Gray, an Assistant Professor of Social Psychology at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, noted being nice does not always create a chain of goodwill.

Mr Gray stated: "The idea of paying it forward is this cascade of goodwill will turn into a utopia with everyone helping everyone. Unfortunately, greed or looking out for ourselves is more powerful."

He added people should focus more on treating others equally in order to promote positive behaviour.

Chartered Psychologist Dr Peter Martin comments:

"This is a useful study, but perhaps limited by a fairly low sample size,and a design which is necessarily contrived. Its finding appears to be predicated by the assumption that many people believe generosity will lead to generosity.

"An alternative, ubiquitous construction of generosity or greed is that they are ends in themselves. Darwin and one of his many heirs, Freud, would concede an overwhelming drive towards the need for dominance so would not be surprised by these findings.

"On the other hand, the persistent phenomenon of constant fluctuation between humankind’s capacity for generosity and for greed certainly does continue to surprise and provide a possible source of inspiration to those who hold a scientific agnosticism about humankind’s basic nature."