The year of 2012 is coming to an end and Christmas is around the corner. After a couple of economically challenging years, economical analysts will be paying close attention to trends in Christmas shopping. But, the question it all comes down to is: to spend or to save? We conducted a study on how different personality traits respond to the recession and our results suggest that personality may determine whether you’ll be spending or saving this Christmas.
Here’s what we discovered:
Anxiety: Our study reveals that people who score high on Anxiety spend less money than people who are unworried; this has applied to everything from shopping and entertainment to food and utilities since the beginning of the recession. People who have an anxious personality have worried more about their financial stability since the beginning of the recession than people with a calm personality. In fact, calm people report feeling just as confident in their job situation as they did before the crisis.
Sensitivity: A very similar pattern has been found for people who are sensitive. Our research shows that people with a sensitive personality felt more threatened by the recession than people with a more tough-minded personality. Again, people’s attitudes guide their spending behaviours; the more sensitive their personality, the less likely the person is to spend money on shopping.
Our study shows interesting results on how personality traits affect individual behavior such as spending money, which, in the end, affects larger economical tendencies. Gaining insight in personality is therefore not only valuable for understanding yourself, but also for understanding how psychology plays a crucial part in the recession. Plus it might even give an indication as to whether you’ll be getting a large or small Christmas present from your friends and family!
Discover more about your personality and compare it to your friends and family by signing up to PersonaBubble and taking the free personality test today.
