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Working Paper
Personality Traits and Financial Outcomes
The Big Five personality traits—openness to experience, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism—are widely used in understanding human behavior. Using data collected from a survey and diary of consumer payment choice, we investigate how the Big Five traits affect three financial outcomes: being unbanked, holding a credit card, and carrying credit card debt. Although each personality trait is correlated with each of the financial outcomes we examine, they mostly become statistically insignificant when we control for demographics and income in regressions. Carrying ...
Report
Personality Traits and Financial Outcomes
Surveys indicate that about 4.5 percent of US households do not have a bank account and about one-quarter do not own any credit cards. Among credit cardholders, revolving credit card debt (carrying unpaid balances) is common. Using data from the 2021 Survey and Diary of Consumer Payment Choice and the University of Southern California’s Understanding America Study, this paper looks at whether self-reported personality traits have a significant effect on these financial outcomes when the analysis considers consumers’ income, demographics, and financial literacy. Specifically, it studies ...