Greed and adolescent financial behavior

- A reliable and valid short version of the Dispositional Greed Scale was developed.
- This short version of the Dispositional Greed Scale predicted financial behavior in adolescents.
- Dispositional greed is associated with more income, more expenses, less savings, and more debt.

Financial problems in adolescents have increased over the last decades. We investigated if individual differences in greed relate to financial behavior. Greed is an important motive for economic behavior and refers to the tendency to never be satisfied and to always want more. We developed a short version of the Dispositional Greed Scale (Seuntjens, Zeelenberg, Van de Ven, & Breugelmans, 2015), which we then used in a large survey with adolescents (N = 3899). Dispositional greed is associated with them having more income, spending more, saving less often, and having debt more often. Identifying what personality characteristics influence financial behavior at a young age is important, as the financial habits that people learn during adolescence persist in adulthood. We find that greed has both positive effects (having a higher income), but also negative effects with the greedy being less likely to save and being more likely to have a debt.