Several studies have suggested that the rank-order stability of personality increases until midlife and declines later in old age. However, this inverted U-shaped pattern has not consistently emerged in previous research; in particular, a recent investigation implementing several methodological advances failed to support it. To resolve the matter, we analyzed data from two representative panel studies ...
We propose a broadly applicable empirical approach to classify individuals as time-consistent versus native or sophisticated regarding their self-control limitations. Operationalizing our approach based on nationally representative data reveals that self-control problems are pervasive and that most people are at least partly aware of their limited self-control. Compared to naifs, sophisticates have ...
Decades of studies identify personality traits as an important predictor of life outcomes. However, previous investigations of personality-outcome associations have not taken a principled approach to covariate use or other sampling strategies to ensure the robustness of personality-outcome associations. The result is that it is unclear (1)...
Declining response rates have made traditional, probability-based sampling methods more resource-intensive and thus more expensive. Studies of population subgroups are particularly vulnerable to this trend, as smaller group sizes as well as other factors often make these groups "hard-to-reach" or "hard-to-survey". In response, researchers have increasingly relied on network...
Risk preference impacts how people make key life decisions related to health, wealth, and wellbeing. Yet the evolutionary roots of human risk taking behavior remain poorly understood. I will present two studies on risk preferences in chimpanzees, one of our closest living relatives.In the first study, we investigated whether chimpanzees (N=13) differentiate between social...
Economists increasingly recognise the importance of personality traits for socio-economic outcomes, but little is known about the stability of these traits over the life cycle. Existing empirical contributions typically focus on age patterns and disregard cohort and period influences. This paper contributes novel evidence for the separability of age, period, and cohort effects for a broad range of personality ...
Women have been found to be, on average, less interested in politics and less politically active than men, which might reduce the representation of women’s interests in a democracy. In order to enhance the understanding of these gender gaps, this preregistered study analyzes the role of personality differences for gender gaps in political interest and activity.I use a large representative sample of ...
As the policy debate on entrepreneurship increasingly centers on firm growth in terms of job creation, it is important to understand whether the personality of entrepreneurs drives the first hiring in their firms. Using the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), we analyze to what extent personality traits influence the probability of becoming an employer. The results indicate that personality matters. ...