Diary of a Telepathic Solipsist

We live in the twenty-first century, which witnessed by far the most intensive marketing of politics, and traditional approaches (The Great Man Theory, situational, relational) to the process of emergence of political le- adership are simply not enough. Cooperation between leaders and their follo- wers is determined by cultural and social context, specific political situation of the time, patterns of social behavior. Development of new information technologies and dissemination of the means of mass communication have introduced another factor to the analyzed process, forced by civilisational changes. These changes initiated the processes shaping the emergence of a fo- urth approach to political leadership, which we may call reactive. Reactivity is an active process of management of the changing image of the leader, responding to the evolving social preferences, and subsequently dissemina- ted through the media.

Trust is an important element of many financial transactions. Yet, the financial industry has been struggling with public mistrust. One explanation for this could be the selection of individuals who wish to work in and get job offers from the financial industry. In this paper, we examine the selection into the financial industry based on social preferences. We identify the social preferences of business and economics students, and, for more than six years, follow up on their early career choices and their job placement after graduation. Students eager to work in the financial industry behave in a substantially less trustworthy manner and show less willingness to cooperate than those with other career plans. The job market does not alleviate this selection. Those subjects who find their first permanent job in finance behave in significantly less trustworthy manner in a trust game than those working in other industries. This paper was accepted by Yan Chen, behavioral economics and decision analysis. Funding: Financial support was provided from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation) under Germany’s Excellence Strategy [Grant EXC 2126/1–390838866], the University of Cologne [Hans Kelsen Prize], and the Center for Financial Studies. Supplemental Material: The data files and online appendices are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.4562 .