Socio-economic conditions and the calibration of human personality: A meta-analytic review

Empirical and theoretical work shows that poverty has a wide range of effects on psychological and behavioral outcomes such as temporal discounting and risk taking. However, much less attention has been given to the relationship between socio-economic conditions and personality traits. To address this gap, we conducted a cross-classified meta-analysis of 141 effect sizes from 84 independent studies, examining the relationship between socio-economic conditions and Big Five personality traits. We relied on two types of measures: parental socio-economic status at the individual level, and regional or national indicators, such as GDP per capita, at the aggregate level. Building on a behavioral-ecological framework informed by life history theory, which treats socio-economic conditions as ecological inputs involved in the calibration of psychological traits, we hypothesized that people living in resource-rich ecologies would score higher on Big Five personality traits (extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, conscientiousness and emotional stability). Consistent with these predictions, more favorable socio-economic conditions during childhood predicted greater extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, and emotional stability at the individual level, as well as higher extraversion and emotional stability at the aggregate level. Although the underlying evidence is correlational, the observed pattern of associations is consistent with the hypothesis that resource availability plays a systematic role in the calibration of personality traits.