Are you REALLY as nice as you think you are?

You might think you're nicer than you really are, according to new research.

And you're not alone in deluding yourself. The study found that 98 per cent of people consider themselves in the nicest 50 per cent if the population, the Daily Mail reports.

People who thought they were nice - even if they weren't - were generally richer and happier, research showed.

The study was carried out by psychologists from Goldsmiths University in London.

It found people who thought they were "nice" were generally more relaxed, happy and successful - but not necessarily more agreeable.

"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," Jonathan Freeman, who led the study, told The Times. 

"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." 

Those who were most likely to consider themselves "nice" people did things such as gave directions to strangers, held the door open for a stranger and gave their seat to an elderly or pregnant person on a train. 

Two in three people considered themselves nice if they bought "charity" Christmas cards because they knew it was a good cause and donated time and money to charitable causes more generally. 

However - it turns out that being "nice" is often skin deep.  

Dealing with rude people can make 73 per cent of people stop being nice.

Losing an important document such as wallet or keys also throws 59 per cent of people off-course.

Less than one in three people have helped someone with heavy bags and just 28 per cent of people have helped someone cross the road. 

The study broke down what "nice" meant in terms of emotional intelligence (EI).

This commonly describes how capable a person is of reading other people's goals and emotions, awareness of their own emotion and their ability to support the goals and interactions of other people.

People who have higher emotional intelligence are also more able to deal with stressful situations.

For example, previous research showed that people who have higher EI scores had a calmer cardiovascular response when their hands were submerged in icy water.

The current research, which was carried out for Monarch Airlines, included a bespoke questionnaire filled out by 100 people.  

Some of the participants were also asked to respond to specifically stressful stimuli and special software for analysing facial expressions could gauge the emotional response of volunteers. 

The camera showed that when presented with a five-minute video of traffic, confrontations, children's tantrums and awkward situations participants showed fear, anger and disgust. 

This was supported by the questionnaire -  47 per cent of people cease to be nice if a child is screaming or an alarm is going off, while arguments and disagreements stopped 45 per cent of being nice.

HOW NICE ARE YOU?