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

Arbeitspapier

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 random sample of the working population to investigate differences across industry-relevant 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 socioeconomic characteristics, indicating that finance professionals are similar to employees in other industries with a comparable socio-economic background.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: Working Papers in Economics and Statistics ; No. 2021-03

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Field Experiments ; Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions ; Behavioral Finance: Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making in Financial Markets‡
• Subject: Experimental finance ; economic preferences ; personality traits ; finance professionals ; general working population

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Holmen, Martin ; Holzmeister, Felix ; Kirchler, Michael ; Stefan, Matthias ; Wengström, Erik
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): University of Innsbruck, Research Platform Empirical and Experimental Economics (eeecon)
• (where): Innsbruck
• (when): 2021

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/238261
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:44 AM CET