I think -A LOT- about the study that showed the people who took the greatest risks to protect Jews during the Holocaust had nothing at all in common (class, race, geography, sex) except a single trait: they were considered odd.

It was the crazy lady at the end of the street, the farmer who wore the same overalls in all seasons, the vegetarian clerk, the religious, the promiscuous - anyone different, they were the people found to have been taking overwhelming chances to protect others from the Nazis.

As @HeidiLiFeldman and subsequent others correctly guessed, the study I was thinking of is by the sociologist Nechama Tec. In my notes I see as well that there was a shared tendency to downplay their actions, both during the war and afterward.