Author Archives: Lisa Rydstad

To spend or save? How different personality types respond to the recession.

by Lisa Rydstad 07/12/2012

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.

personality test

 

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.

What fraud and mountain biking have in common – the risk taking personality

by Lisa Rydstad 23/11/2012

Recently, a man was jailed seven years for causing one of the biggest frauds in British history. The man lost 1.4 billion of a Swiss bank’s money, risking the entire future of the bank. To others he was known as a knowledgeable, sensible and responsible trader, but behind the façade he was losing control and taking huge financial risks on a daily basis.

Interestingly, research has shown that certain personality traits are associated with risk taking and we have explored this relationship further in our own study. For people like you and me, fraud might not belong to our everyday activities, but we might certainly take other, more legal, risks. In our study we investigated which personality traits that were displayed in people who did extreme sports such as mountain climbing, mountain biking and extreme skiing. This is what we found:

risk personality

Unworried

One of the things we found was that people who are drawn to adventurous sports score low on Anxiety, which means that they tend to be calm and relaxed. These people scored low on tension, indicating that they do not easily get upset about things.

Influence

The adventurers tended to score high on Influence which means that they are likely to be assertive, competitive and that they like challenges. They scored high on Social Boldness which means that they tend to be bold, daring and adventurous. The results also revealed that they scored higher on Openness to Change which indicates that they like to think freely, apply new ideas and enjoy experimenting with different solutions to problems.

Losing control…

Finally, our results showed that people who like taking risks in sports score lower on Self Control than others, meaning that they tend to be carefree, spontaneous and nonconforming. The risk takers scored high on Liveliness, meaning that are enthusiastic and have an overall high energy. They also scored lower on Rule-Consciousness than others.

These results are similar to what research has shown before; risk takers are usually more socially bold and lively than others. Are you also a risk-taker behind the façade? Find out what sort of risk taker you are by signing up to PersonaBubble and taking our latest test.