A series of studies in the Journal of Personality found that greedy people briefly feel proud when they acquire something new, but this feeling fades quickly, leading them to keep wanting more.
Psychologists define greed as an insatiable desire to acquire more, paired with persistent dissatisfaction, regardless of what one already possesses. This paradox suggests that greedy individuals are trapped in a relentless cycle of acquisition that fails to fulfill their needs. In this work, Eric J. Mercadante and Jessica L. Tracy explored this phenomenon by examining how pride—both authentic and hubristic—responds to new acquisitions among the greedy.
The research consisted of four studies using a mix of correlational, longitudinal, and daily-diary methods to capture participants’ emotional responses to new acquisitions.
Study S1 involved 197 American adults, all recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk). Participants completed the Dispositional Greed Scale and the Authentic and Hubristic Pride Scales, as well as the positive and negative Affect Schedule and Current Mood Questionnaire, focusing on their most recent non-essential purchase. They provided ratings at the time of acquisition and several weeks afterward.
Building on this, Study 1 expanded the sample to 400 adults from MTurk and followed a similar protocol, asking participants to reflect on their emotional responses immediately after acquisition and at follow-up intervals up to four weeks later. This approach was designed to observe how feelings of pride evolve over time after a purchase.
Study 2 shifted the demographic focus to younger individuals, recruiting 346 undergraduate students. Participants completed the same measures in addition to the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale. They recorded their immediate emotional reactions to qualifying purchases and then again one and two weeks post-purchase. This setup provided a diary-like view into the emotional impacts of acquisitions over time.
Study 3 began with 3,580 participants recruited through MTurk, with 1,082 making a qualifying purchase during the study period. The study continued to use the Greed and Pride Scales and introduced a daily tracking system over one week. Participants reported on any qualifying purchases and their feelings at the time, along with their activities that might also elicit pride, like achieving personal goals. This design tested whether the emotional responses were specific to acquisitions or could be observed in other rewarding situations.
The results consistently demonstrated that individuals with high levels of dispositional greed experienced significant but brief increases in authentic pride immediately following new acquisitions. This surge of pride was not long-lasting; it quickly declined over the follow-up periods. Importantly, these findings were observed across multiple studies with varying methodologies and participant demographics, indicating a robust pattern.
Additionally, while hubristic pride also increased following acquisitions, it did not show the same pattern of rapid decline as authentic pride. This distinction suggests different emotional processes are at play between these two facets of pride in response to new acquisitions. Overall, the results highlight the transient nature of the emotional rewards that acquisitions bring to greedy individuals, highlighting a potential cyclical pattern of acquisition driven by fleeting emotional satisfaction.
While Study S1 and Study 1 found some evidence suggesting that self-esteem could influence the intensity of pride responses, the largest and most statistically robust Study 3 did not find an interaction between greed and self-esteem. This raises questions about the generalizability of the earlier findings or whether the specific sample characteristics in Study 3 (e.g., demographic differences) might have influenced the results.
The research, “How does it feel to be greedy? The role of pride in avaricious acquisition”, was authored by Eric J. Mercadante and Jessica L. Tracy.