Based on David Hornik’s story, you might predict that givers achieve the worst results — and you’d be right. Research demonstrates that givers sink t… - Adam Grant

Young kids have wider circles of concern than adults. Adults expect people to enjoy the misfortune of groups they dislike. But 3-5-year-olds expect people to care about everyone's suffering. Compassion is an instinct—we don't have to learn it. We need to stop unlearning it.

So if givers are most likely to land at the bottom of the success ladder, who’s at the top — takers or matchers? Neither. When I took another look at the data, I discovered a surprising pattern: It’s the givers again.

To figure out what students were carrying with them from kindergarten into adulthood, Chetty’s team turned to another possible explanation. In fourth and eighth grade, the students were rated by their teachers on some other qualities. Here’s a sample: Proactive: How often did they take initiative to ask questions, volunteer answers, seek information from books, and engage the teacher to learn outside class? Prosocial: How well did they get along and collaborate with peers? Disciplined: How effectively did they pay attention — and resist the impulse to disrupt the class? Determined: How consistently did they take on challenging problems, do more than the assigned work, and persist in the face of obstacles? When students were taught by more experienced kindergarten teachers, their fourth-grade teachers rated them higher on all four of these attributes. So did their eighth-grade teachers. The capacities to be proactive, prosocial, disciplined, and determined stayed with students longer — and ultimately proved more powerful — than early math and reading skills.