At the start of the tale the King Gilgamesh may appear to be the perfect hero in terms of his physical strength and courage, but he is also an arrogant tyrant who abuses his power, using his droits to seigneur to sleep with any woman who takes his fancy, and it is only after he is challenged by the stranger Enkidu that he ultimately learns the value of cooperation and friendship. The message for the audience should have been loud and clear: if even the heroic king has to respect others, so do you.

In his book On the Origin of Stories, Brian Boyd of the University of Auckland describes how these themes are also evident in Homer’s Odyssey. As Penelope waits for Odysseus’s return, her suitors spend all day eating and drinking at her home. When he finally arrives in the guise of a poor beggar, however, they begrudge offering him any shelter (in his own home!). They ultimately get their comeuppance as Odysseus removes his disguise and wreaks a bloody revenge.

You might assume that our interest in cooperation would have dwindled with the increasing individualism of the Industrial Revolution, but Kruger and Carroll have found that these themes were still prevalent in some of the most beloved British novels from the 19th and early 20th Centuries.

Asking a panel of readers to rate the principal characters in more than 200 novels (beginning with Jane Austen and ending with EM Forster), the researchers found that the antagonists’ major flaw was most often a quest for social dominance at the expense of others or an abuse of their existing power, while the protagonists appeared to be less individualistic and ambitious.

Consider Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. The conniving and catty Miss Bingley aims to increase her station by cosying up to the rich-but-arrogant Mr Darcy and establishing a match between her brother and Darcy’s sister – while also looking down on anyone of a lower social standing. The heroine Elizabeth Bennett, in contrast, shows very little interest in climbing their society’s hierarchy in this way, and even rejects Mr Darcy on his first proposal.