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Have you ever wondered why you have so much left of the month at the end of the money, while others just seem to get rich?

You are not alone in this.

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Psychologists from the Universities of Mainz and Münster, together with economists from the German Institute for Economic Research, tackled the question: What distinguishes millionaires from people from the average German population - apart from their bank account balance?

Do you act or think differently?

They published their results in 2018 in the British Journal of Psychology.

The researchers found that rich people, for example, are more emotionally stable but also more narcissistic than others.

Source: Getty Images / Stock4B Creative / Kay Blaschke


But how do the researchers come up with this?

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To this end, the team around the psychologist Marius Leckelt submitted a questionnaire to 130 wealthy Germans who own at least one million euros, and people from the population average.

In it, the study participants were asked to provide a self-assessment of certain personality traits.

The study author says:

Studies that investigate such personality differences on a representative empirical basis and in real millionaires have not yet been carried out.

Dr.

Marius Leckelt, Junior Professor for Personality Psychology and Diagnostics in Mainz

The study participants were asked to answer questions about the “Big Five”, among other things.

This is a well-known personality model in psychology.

According to this, our character is based on only five characteristics, which differ depending on the person: the "Big Five".

This means that every person can be described by the following five attributes: how open a person is to new experiences, how conscientious a person is, how extroverted a person is, how compatible a person is with others and how emotionally stable a person is.

The researchers also measured how narcissistic the study participants think they are and whether they believe they have control over their lives.

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The psychologists came to the conclusion that rich people are on average more emotionally stable, more performance-oriented, more extroverted and more narcissistic than everyone else.

Millionaires are also less prone to stress and are more likely to feel in control of their own lives.

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The researchers see this confirming the stereotypes that prevail in society about millionaires.

An additional survey showed, however, that differences from the normal population do exist - but are clearly overestimated.

In other words, rich people are actually more narcissistic than the rest of Germans, for example, but not as much as the respondents suspect.

But if you thought we could tell you the magic recipe for getting rich, we will unfortunately have to disappoint you: We cannot - yet - do that.

So far, psychologists have been able to establish a connection between wealth and certain characteristics, but they do not know how these aspects are connected.

So: is a person particularly narcissistic and therefore becomes rich - or does wealth make you narcissistic?

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Study author Marius Leckelt can only speculate in this regard, he told us:

One indication could be that a good 60 percent of the sample of the wealthy stated that a main source of their wealth also came from self-employment.

Dr.

Marius Leckelt, study author

That could mean that people who are particularly conscientious, extroverted, or open are also more likely to get rich.

Especially since there are studies that assign the same characteristics to successful entrepreneurs.

But more research is needed to be able to say with certainty.

And then we might be a whole lot closer to a magic recipe for getting rich!

This article was first published in November 2018.