Like most people, I watched the tragedy of the Titan submersible unfold with horror. We talked about it in cafes, jumped when news reports came in on our phones, and wondered why people would ever actually pay money to experience such risk. Are billionaires like this ultimately just vain or stupid? Or is reckless risk-taking in their DNA?
It turns out there is a good deal of research on why rich people take risks that encompasses a number of areas of psychology. One paper, published in Nature, investigated how the personalities of 1,125 people in Germany with a net wealth of at least €1 million (so not everyone was “super rich”) differed from the rest of us.
