Imagine a “crypto bro” and what do you see? Well, according to a new study, cryptocurrency zealots are more likely to be argumentative guys who spend a lot of their time in fringe social media communities and reading up on conspiracy theories. As for their personality, the findings suggest crypto investors are more likely to display “Dark Tetrad” personality traits, including narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and sadism.
Political scientists from the University of Toronto and the University of Miami took a deep dive into the political, psychological, and social make-up of cryptocurrency owners From a poll of over 2,000 American adults in 2022, the researchers found that around 30 percent owned some form of cryptocurrency. That’s a significant proportion of people and the researchers were keen to stress that these individuals held a diversity of political allegiances and identities.
“Our results here suggest that crypto purchasers, on average, share an eclectic mix of political attitudes, identities, and predispositions. This finding contrasts with past claims that cryptocurrencies are some sort of financial shibboleth of the far-right,” the researchers write in their study.
That said, the team was able to pick up some clear trends among the cryptocurrency fanatics. People who had purchased crypto were more likely to be men with a slightly higher than average income. These individuals, on average, are more likely to believe conspiracy theories, support extremist groups, and have a taste for populist sentiments.
They were also more closely associated with the “Dark Tetrad” of personality traits: narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and sadism (it used to be widely known as the “Dark Triad” but due to the correlation of sadism with Dark Triad traits, it has been added to the group).
Another major trend among cryptocurrency owners was distrust of mainstream media outlets and a tendency to get information from “fringe” online sources.
“Though our results certainly do not apply to every crypto user out there, on average, we found that crypto investment and ownership tends to appeal to people who are more argumentative, anti-authoritarian, and prefer to get their news from non-mainstream social media sites,” the study authors said in a statement.
It’s trickier to understand why these associations exist, although the study does float some ideas. Cryptocurrencies aren’t produced or controlled by any central bank or government entity, allowing trading to be unregulated and anonymous.
Given these qualities, crypto tends to attract people who are suspicious of institutions and mainstream authorities. As the researchers note, this type of distrust is “strongly associated with characteristics such as conspiracy thinking, low levels of analytic and scientific reasoning, anti-science attitudes, the ‘need for chaos,’ and nonmainstream political orientations.”
The study is published in the journal PLOS ONE.
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