The personality traits of self-made and inherited millionaires

Marius Leckelt, Johannes König (), David Richter, Mitja D. Back and Carsten Schröder
Additional contact information
Marius Leckelt: University of Mainz
Johannes König: German Institute for Economic Research/SOEP (DIW)
Mitja D. Back: University of Münster

Palgrave Communications, 2022, vol. 9, issue 1, 1-12

Abstract: Abstract Very wealthy people influence political and societal processes by wielding their economic power through foundations, lobbying groups, media campaigns, as investors and employers. Because personality shapes goals, attitudes, and behaviour, it is important to understand the personality traits that characterize the rich. We used representative survey data to construct two large samples, one from the general population and one consisting of individuals with at least 1 million euros in individual net wealth, to analyse what personality traits characterize the wealthy and why their traits differ from those of the general population. High wealth was associated with higher Risk tolerance, Emotional Stability, Openness, Extraversion, and Conscientiousness. This “rich” personality profile was more prominent among individuals who had accumulated wealth through their own efforts (“self-mades”) than among individuals who had been born into wealth (“inheritors”). Thus, our evidence is suggestive of a unique configuration of personality traits contributing to self-made millionaires’ economic success.

Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1057/s41599-022-01099-3 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palcom:v:9:y:2022:i:1:d:10.1057_s41599-022-01099-3

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/palcomms/about

DOI: 10.1057/s41599-022-01099-3

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Palgrave Communications from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().