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DR@W Forum - Michalis Drouvelis (Birmingham)
Michalis Drouvelis (Birmingham)
Personality and social preferences
Theories of social preferences remain silent about the role of individuals’ personality heterogeneity in predicting economic behaviour. We conduct a laboratory experiment which sheds empirical light on the causal impact of agreeableness on two measures of social preferences: aversion to advantageous inequality and cooperative behaviour. Our findings provide robust evidence that both measures are sensitive to the personality trait of agreeableness. In particular, agreeable individuals are more averse to advantageous inequality compared to disagreeable individuals. We also find that agreeable individuals are more cooperative in relation to disagreeable individuals. Our results provide novel evidence for inspiring theory development that can account for personality effects on economic preferences