While working on my first paper in an economics' class, questions relating to psychology came to me. I was surprised at how intertwined psychology is with economics.
My first paper ascertained the main factors determining how many environmental education classes universities can offer each semester. To discover the different numbers of environmental classes that are made available for students, the paper considered several factors such as the ranking and financial prowess of universities, and the number of faculty members. After finishing this paper, I still had several lingering questions. One of the questions that stayed with me was, 'even if students took the same classes and read the same materials, the implications of their curriculum, such as their personal decision making habits, differed from person to person. For example, what if one student, after taking the class, started recycling and composting more, while their classmates threw more recyclables in the trash. I hypothesized the main discrepancy came from personality traits, because people respond to the same circumstances based on their singular quirks.
With this question in mind, I conducted my masters thesis exploring the relationship between household debt and personality traits. My dependent variable was household debt. The paper assumed that the Big 5 personality traits could be a predictor of financial status. Traditional economists, when it comes to analyzing household debts, love to regularly consider demographics and socio-economic factors. I, however, took personality traits into account as a key factor. At the end of my research, I found that those who are more open to new experiences and more extraverted tend to have a greater debt, compared to those who are more introverted. Also, those who are high in conscientiousness tend to have lower household debts. It was stunning. If financial institutions have the capacity to incorporate these findings, they could tailor their financial programs to include individuals' singular characteristics.
Mesmerized by my masters research, I decided to study psychology further. Because even if everyone experiences some difficulties, I wanted to understand why some people flourish, while others flounder. As we all know, life is not easy. I think the predispositions, biases and expectations that individuals hold on to consciously or subconsciously affects their status. I want to identify the relationship between people's state of mind and their life outcomes.
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