The Relationship between Economic Preferences and Psychological Personality Measures

By Anke Becker, Thomas Deckers, Thomas J. Dohmen, Armin Falk, Fabian Kosse. Social Science Research Network, 2012

540 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Although both economists and psychologists seek to identify determinants ofheterogeneity in behavior, they use different concepts to capture them. In this reviewwe first analyze the extent to which economic preferences and psychological conceptsof personality - such as the Big Five and locus of control - are related. We analyze datafrom incentivized laboratory experiments and representative samples and find onlylow degrees of association between economic preferences and personality. We thenregress life outcomes - such as labor market success, health status and life satisfaction- simultaneously on preference and personality measures. The analysis reveals that thetwo concepts are rather complementary when it comes to explaining heterogeneity inimportant life outcomes and behavior.

Subfields: General Decision Sciences, Safety Research, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e352e16caf05d218ae0f17ed5da36efe551c0d08

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Citations in the corpus

Laboratory Measure of Cheating Predicts School Misconduct (2018, unknown): “Our paper also links to an emerging literature on the relationship between economic preferences and noncognitive skills (Becker et al. 2012; Almlund et al. 2011).”
Investors' Personality Influences Investment Decisions: Experimental Evidence on Extraversion and Neuroticism (2018, background): “[2008], Becker et al. [2012], and Pan and Statman [2013].”
Other Regarding Preferences: A Selective Survey of Experimental Results (2012, background): “Becker et al. (2012) investigate the effect of the Big Five personality characteristics on”
Locus of control and the labor market (2015, unknown): “…correlated with negative reciprocity, trust, risk and time preferences, and altruism in the German population as a whole, but continues to explain life satisfaction, educational attainment, health, and labor market outcomes even accounting for these economic preferences (Becker et al. 2012).”
Fostering and Measuring Skills: Improving Cognitive and Non-cognitive Skills to Promote Lifetime Success (2014, background): “F or p er so na l u se o nl y. Source: Becker et al. (2012).”
How the Perception of Control Influences Unemployed Job Search (2015, background): “Another possibility that my study cannot address is that the estimated effects of locus of control might result from its correlation with economic preferences and personality traits unobserved in my data (becker et al. 2012).”
Parental Beliefs About Returns to Educational Investments - The Later the Better? (2015, result): “43 These results are consistent with the findings in the literature which document that parents with lower socio-economic status have a lower locus of control (Becker et al. 2012).”
Personality and marital surplus (2012, background): “Though the relationship between personality traits and preference parameters such as risk aversion is a priori unclear, Becker et al. (2012) report weak associations between personality traits and a range of economic preference measures and find that they are complementary factors in explaining…”
The psychometric and empirical properties of measures of risk preferences (2017, unknown): “Proponents of this approach argue for the integration of individual-difference psychology into economics (Almlund et al. 2011; Becker et al. 2012; Ferguson et al. 2011; Borghans et al. 2008) and for a sustained effort to learn more about the properties of the measures of preferences that are…”
Trust: An Integrative Review from a Person–Situation Perspective (2015, background): “…Ruigrok, 2011), cooperation in the prisoner’s dilemma game (Pothos, Perry, Corr, Matthew, & Busemeyer, 2011), and trustworthiness in the trust game (Becker et al., 2012; Ben-Ner & Halldorsson, 2010)—although these effects are not entirely robust and null-findings have also been reported…”
Bentham or Aristotle in the Development Process? An Empirical Investigation of Capabilities and Subjective Well-Being (2015, background): “…research has established the correlation between capabilities and SWB (Anand & van Hees, 2006; Anand et al., 2005, 2009; Van Ootegem & Spillemaeckers, 2010; Veenhoven, 2010) and the link between freedom of choice/locus of control and well-being (Becker et al., 2012; Veenhoven, 2000; Verme, 2009).”