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Personality, Economic Behavior, and Aging
Brent W. Roberts
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
APS Workshop on Opportunities for Advancing Behavioral andSocial Research on Aging, Chicago, IL 5/22/08
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Personality, Economic Behavior, and Aging
• “Despite the divergent worldviews of contemporary psychologists and economists, the two disciplines are essentially siblings separated at birth.”
Loewenstein et al (2008)
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Recent Convergence of Personality Psychology and Economics
• “Non-cognitive” skills strongly predict schooling decisions, school performance, & wages (Heckman et al., 2006).
• Personality traits predict wages (Nyhus & Pons, 2005).
• Neuroticism and Extraversion predict saving less money (Nyhus & Webley, 2001).
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Personality Traits Predict
• Mortality, Divorce, & Occupational Attainment as well or better than IQ and SES (Roberts et al., 2007).
• Conscientiousness is negatively associated with tax evasion behavior (Meints & Roberts, 2008).
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Personality traits
• Also predict economic behaviors that might explain relations to larger issues such as wages and occupational attainment.
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Personality Traits and Economic Behaviors
• Agreeableness predicts higher sharing in dictator games (Ben-Ner, Kong, & Putterman, 2004; Knafo et al, 2007).
• Tough-Mindedness and Independence predict demanding more and Neuroticism rejecting more offers in ultimatum bargaining decisions (Brandstatter & Konigstein, 2001).
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Personality Traits and Economic Behaviors
• Impulsivity and Sensation Seeking predict risk taking (Zaleskiewicz, 2001).
• Self-Control predicts delay discounting behavior independent of IQ and SES (de Wit et al., 2007).
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Age, Personality, and Economic Behavior
• Different personality traits may predict at different ages (Nyhus & Pons, 2005).
• Different economic behaviors have important age associations:– Retirement savings– Risk taking– Intertemporal choice
• Personality changes with age (Roberts et al., 2006).• Confluence of age changes in personality and economic
behavior.• Economic behaviors and personality may be reciprocally
related over time.