Greed and Social Preferences: How Dispositional Greed Shapes Positional, Absolute, and Egalitarian Choices

Abstract

This study examined how dispositional greed relates to individuals’ preferences for positional, absolute, and egalitarian outcomes across multiple life domains. Using an extended choice paradigm that allowed for egalitarian options, 137 participants made decisions concerning 11 goods spanning economic, personal, and basic-needs related domains. Overall, higher dispositional greed was associated with a stronger tendency to favor outcomes that maximized personal advantage, either in absolute or relative terms, whereas lower greed was linked to a greater preference for egalitarian outcomes. These effects were descriptively most pronounced in domains carrying strong personal or social significance – such as intelligence, education, and health - particularly when decisions concerned one’s child. Economic goods showed weaker but consistent patterns, and preferences for sleep (basic-needs domain) were least sensitive to greed. Importantly, the findings indicate that greed does not promote a single, uniform evaluative orientation; instead, it systematically shifts the balance between absolute, positional, and egalitarian considerations depending on domain meaning. By demonstrating that greed operates as a domain-sensitive motivational disposition whose expression depends on the social meaning of the domain, the study advances theoretical understanding of how individual differences influence distributive judgments and has implications for research on inequality, social comparison, and decision-making across contexts.