Twit’s true! Tweets show bankers and car dealers really are selfish

IT’S a suspicion many of us have harboured for a long time.

Now a study of Twitter activity has found the least agreeable people in society include bankers, car dealers, landlords and mortgage brokers.

They appear to lack compassion and are reluctant to co-operate compared with people in other jobs.

Top scientists, including TV host Brian Cox and leading atheist Richard Dawkins, were also found to be less agreeable based on their tweets.

Researchers created personality profiles for 128,000 people in ,500 jobs based on their Twitter posts.

Investment bankers were in the bottom 20 per cent for ‘agreeableness’ – which means the ‘tendency to be compassionate and co-operative towards others’.

Wedding planners and executive chefs were in the top five per cent for extroversion, while computer programmers were in the bottom third.

Teachers were among the most conscientious, making them more likely to act in an organised or thoughtful way. Researchers also looked at ten values such as tradition, helping others, success, excitement and pleasure-seeking. Entertainment managers ranked highly for seeking success, with accountants scoring lowly for helping others. Each value was given a rating so that someone with a score of 0.25 was in the bottom 25 per cent.

Dr Peggy Kern, of Melbourne University, who led the study, said: ‘It’s long been believed that different personalities align better with different jobs. Never before has there been such large-scale evidence of the distinctive personality profiles that occur across occupations.’

She added that the findings could help people starting out in work or changing career.