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

Abstract Based on artefactual field experiments, we investigate whether finance professionals differ from a sample of the working population in terms of industry-relevant preferences and personality traits. When adjusting for socioeconomic characteristics, we find only few and less marked differences: finance professionals are less risk averse, less trustworthy, show higher levels of psychopathy and are more competitive than participants from the general population. In an additional survey, experts with hiring experience consider industry selection, self-selection and imprinting by industry norms as explanatory for the observed subject pool differences.