Economic Preferences and Personality Traits Among Finance Professionals and the General Population

Abstract

Since the financial crisis, the behavior and personality traits of finance professionals have come under scrutiny. As comprehensive scientific findings are lacking, we run artefactual field experiments with finance professionals and a sample of the working population to investigate differences across industryrelevant economic preferences and personality traits. We report that finance professionals are more risk tolerant, more selfish, less trustworthy, and show higher levels of narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism. However, we find that many of these differences disappear after adjusting for socio-economic characteristics, indicating that finance professionals are similar to employees in other industries with a comparable socio-economic background.

Motivated beliefs, social preferences, and limited liability in financial decision-Making

“…Moreover, some recent research has found that financial professionals are equally honest than the general population (e.g. Rahwan et al, 2019;Huber and Huber, 2020;Holmén et al, 2021), contrary to the early findings in this area (Cohn et al, 2014).…”

“…However, in treatment rounds the assigned partner is responsible for all eventual losses derived from the investment. Because we elicit the risk assessment of investors for 18 To be more precise, the literature has found that financial professionals are no more selfish (van Hoorn, 2015;Duchêne et al, 2021;Holmén et al, 2021), are equally altruistic (Holmén et al, 2021) and share similar social values with the general population (van Hoorn, 2015). Moreover, some recent research has found that financial professionals are equally honest than the general population (e.g.…”

Climate Crisis Attitudes among Financial Professionals and Climate Experts

“…Whether and how the finance industry will handle this role strongly depends on the behavior and attitudes of its main protagonists, i.e., finance professionals (Kirchler et al, 2018;Razen et al, 2020;Holmen et al, 2021). At the same time, the expertise (and attitudes) of climate experts will come into play, as scientific findings and associated consequences will impact public policy and the regulation of the economy in general (IPCC, 2021).…”

Correlates of stock market investment.

“…There is a great deal of interest in personality and individual difference correlates of moneyrelated behavior including financial literacy, spending and saving, wealth accumulation, and investing (Ben-Shahar & Golan, 2014;Exley et al, 2022;Fenton-O'Creevy & Furnham, 2020a, 2020b, 2023Holmén et al, 2021;Sesini & Lozza, 2023). These studies have identified certain traits like Conscientiousness, which is systematically related to a number of financial behaviors.…”