Research into ancient personalities shows how personality increasingly trumps money

about the episode

In our search for love, we look more and more at personality and less and less at someone’s financial situation. At least: in prosperous countries.

The researchers studied characters that were published in newspapers between 1950 and 1995 in Canada, the United States, France and India. They analyzed word choice and came up with four themes that came up most often: personality, financial situation, appearance, and taste.

They saw that personality played an increasingly important role in the period and the financial situation became increasingly smaller, especially after the 1960s. Except for India. There, someone’s financial situation became increasingly important after the 1970s, while desires about the character remained the same. This trend was more pronounced in ads posted by women than in ads written by men.

According to the researchers, this trend fits perfectly with Hierarchy of needs The theory that material needs must be satisfied before non-material needs can become important. In India, these primary needs may not have been adequately met.

If in retrospect this is the case, the researchers predict that the character will also be high on India’s wish list.

Read more about research here: An AD study of lonely hearts finds that personal finances increasingly play a secondary role after personality.