Seven Sins: There is not much cultural research on greed yet, says Karlijn Hoyer

Down To Earth (DTE) speaks to scientists and authors to take stock of what we know so far about the emotions of pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and sloth; the historical debates around them and the critical gaps in our understanding.

In the fifth part, DTE speaks to Karilijn Hoyer, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Amsterdam, Netherlands. Hoyer has worked on greed, bringing out the complexities of the emotion.

Q. Is greed good, bad or complicated?

A. I am not completely negative about greed. I think it can be because the pro-greed people often argue that it is good for economic development. So, for example, greedy people in their greed tend to be very creative and develop new products, hire more people, and, therefore, they drive the economy. So, I think that greed can definitely be a motivator or something related to ambition, for example, and can drive people to just go a little bit further than they would normally go.

That is the positive side of greed. But if you are too greedy, then it becomes something negative, not only for society, but also for the person. We often see that greed is related to lower life satisfaction, for example. So, if you are too greedy, then this generally has negative consequences for yourself and for society.

Q. What separates self-interest from greed?

A. Greed is an insatiable desire for more, and dissatisfaction with not having enough. So it is a twofold definition; on the one hand, the always wanting more part; and on the other hand, not being happy with what you have. Greed and self-interest are often intertwined because generally greedy behaviour is also self-interested behaviour, and the other way around. There are still subtle differences.

Self-interest is often a rational pursuit. So, people rationally want to strive for more and greed is not always rational. For example, always wanting more can lead to more consumer debt because you are so focused on getting more that you forget that you actually do not have the money to spend. You keep on spending and then at some point you have this large consumer debt.

Q. Studies suggest that greedy people typically engage in immoral behaviour or they are more likely to take bribes. Is the same sort of behaviour associated with self-interest as well?

A. Yes, we know from the literature that greed is associated with accepting bribes more often, and with unethical behaviour. Self-interest could also lead to such things. But in our study, “Greed: What is it Good for?”, published in 2024, we found that self-interest had a positive relationship with relationship length. So people who are self-interested have longer relationships,while greed has a negative association with relationship length.

There is also a difference between greed and self-interest with regards to household income. Self-interest has a negative relationship while greed has a positive relationship with household income. Our results show that self-interest and greed are not the same.

Q. Do some papers argue that greed and self-interest are the same?

A. Well there are some definitions of greed that include self-interest. But I think greed is an extreme form of self-interested behaviour. Philosophically, they are sometimes equated but empirically we can spot some differences. For example, if we look at the behavioural aspects in our studies, we see the difference between greed and self-interest and their influence on household incomes.

Q. Your 2024 study suggests greed correlates with household income and not with personal income. If greedy people are more ambitious and hardworking, how does it not translate into personal income?

A. We were a bit surprised about that as well because we expected a positive correlation between greed and personal income. If you would expect that greedy people are more motivated, they would get jobs that have higher incomes. We generally see that greedy people work in finance, for example, and then income would be higher than those who work in education. But we did not find it. We think our results are a bit weird.

This could be the case because measurement of personal income also includes tax benefits from the government. So, it is not only salary. If you look at the subset of greedy people, there are studies that find that these people have a higher personal income. But we did not find this in our studies. That was much unexpected.

The positive correlation with household income could be because greedy people are just smart and they look for partners that have a higher income, and then together, they have a higher income as well. So, that could be a reason, but we could not disentangle that in our study.

Q. Why do you think studies on correlation with personal income have produced mixed results?

A. Is it because of different methodologies used or different populations that were surveyed? I think, it is a methodological issue, like how do you define personal income? Who do you include? Do you include only people in the working force? It could also be a sample issue. But my hunch is it is a methodological issue.

Q. Do you see a difference in how greed is viewed in different cultures?

A. There is not much cultural research on greed yet. We know that generally, if you look at the Chinese samples, for example, the greed scores are a bit higher than the Dutch and American ones, but we do not know why that is the case. It could be that it is more accepted in China, and so they have less socially desirable answers on the greed scale (self-reported), or it could be that it is culturally determined that Chinese people are just more greedy. So we do not know that, but that is what the results show.

There is not much intercultural research yet. That is definitely something for future research. That could be interesting.

Q. You also talk about greed being relatively correlated with the number of children.

A. On the one hand, you could expect that people, if they want more, that would also translate to children, right? You also need a second person to get children and greedy people might not be the nicest people to have as partners because they are very focused on themselves and they are less involved with you, less empathic, for example.

And if you do not have partners, then the likelihood of having more children is also smaller. And that could be the reason why they do not have more children, even though they actually would have wanted it. That could be a mechanism, but we are not sure.

Q. Is there a link between greed and other emotions such as envy, pride or gluttony?

A. Gluttony is very close to greed. It is like greed for food. You can say that it is some form of greed. There is a relationship between greed and envy. Even though greed can also be focused on you and envy always requires another person, still they are often related. There are some links there, I think. I believe there will be a paper out soon about greed and pride from a different laboratory. There is some research attention on the links between them but I do not think someone has correlated all of them yet.

Q. There are reports suggesting that greedy traders triggered the 2008 financial crisis. What is your take?

A. In one of our studies, we see that in markets dominated by greedy people, traders have less bubbles in their market. This means less mispricing and more close to fundamental value trading. Why that is, we do not know yet. But it seems like, in this case, that greedy people act a little bit more rational. So that was a very interesting result.

These results were much unexpected because we know from the media that greed was always associated with the financial crisis. That was the narrative that was going on. The only thing is that greed can be experienced for everything. We did not know if greedy people were focused on getting more stocks in the market, or whether they were focused on making more money.

We have two sides in trading: the seller (trader) and the buyer. So, if prices are driven up, then the seller is very happy because he gets a lot of money. The buyer is less happy because he needs to pay a lot more.

Q. Your study was done in the Netherlands. Do you expect to see something similar in other countries as well?

A. The only difference I envision is that, for example, as I said in China, people generally score a little bit higher on greed, so the market might be a bit higher. So the results might be even a bit stronger if you divide people into low- and high-grade markets. But I do not have a clear reason why I would expect differences between the countries because I think trading at stock markets is quite similar in countries.

If you get similar results in other countries suggesting that greedy people are less likely to engage in overpricing and mispricing, does that mean that we need to redefine greed as something that can be rational?

Our study was done in a very experimental setting. And so it is a lot different than real-life trading. We cannot generalise conclusions so easily. But if they hold true in other countries, one could even argue that we need to hire greedy people for financial markets because they result in less bubbles.

But I do think that in this case, it seems that greedy people act a little bit more rational. So greed is not necessarily irrational. It sometimes results in rational behaviour.

Q. What are some of the major gaps in our understanding of greed?

A. One thing that distinguishes greed from materialism, for example, is that greed can be experienced for basically everything. So you can experience greed for sex, for partners, for food, for money, for cars. It is not only for material things and money, but also non-material things. And that is what I think is very interesting.

So, I currently have a paper on the review that looks at greed’s link to social relationships like friendships. For example, how do greedy people treat their friendships and how do they feel about them? And one thing we find is that greedy people objectify their friendships more. So instead of thinking, “I have some free time, let me drink a beer with someone,” they think, “I need to paint my house, who can help me?” They could be having very opportunistic friendships. And I think that is a big research gap because we know that greed leads to lower life satisfaction, but we do not know on which other fields in life it has a negative or positive effect.

(as told to Rohini Krishnamurthy)

This is the sixth of an 18-part series.

This was first published as part of the cover story of the 16-31 May, 2024 Print edition of Down To Earth