Cryptocurrency is an industry notably rife with fraudsters, nutjobs, and criminals. Now, in a development that just makes sense, an academic team has published a study asserting that people who are really into fake internet money are more likely to display psychopathic tendencies.
Researchers at the University of Toronto and the University of Miami recently set out to answer the question: “How are cryptocurrency buyers different from those who do not purchase cryptocurrency?” To get to the bottom of this, they surveyed 2,001 American adults, asking them questions about themselves and about their interest in cryptocurrency. They found that crypto’s core demographic is a bunch of maladjusted young men who believe everybody’s out to get them.
“The results presented here suggest that cryptocurrency ownership is associated with several nonnormative and arguably maladaptive characteristics,” the report says. “Crypto ownership was associated with belief in conspiracy theories, ‘dark’ personality characteristics (e.g., the ‘Dark Tetrad’ of narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and sadism), and more frequent use of alternative and fringe social media platforms,” it continues.
Of the people surveyed, only 30 percent said they had ever owned crypto. In breaking down this demographic further, researchers found that those people tended to be male, have more education, have higher income, and be more religious. When it came to the crypto holders’ psychological makeup, the results weren’t great:
Crypto ownership is positively associated with several so-called “dark” personality characteristics including narcissism (r = .38, p < .001), Machiavellianism (r = .29, p < .001), psychopathy (r = .27, p < .001), and sadism (r = .27, p < .001). Relatedly, crypto owners also tend to score higher on measures of need for chaos (r = .35, p < .001), paranoia (r = .35, p < .001), schizotypal attributes (r = .35, p < .001), dogmatism (r = .23, p < .001), victimhood mentality (r = .18, p < .001), and psychological reactance (r = .11, p < .001).
What was most positively correlated with being a crypto owner was distrust of authority and belief in conspiracy theories. Crypto owners were generally seen to have “greater receptivity to epistemically weak claims and unwarranted beliefs,” and to regularly get their information from “alternative/fringe social media,” researchers write.
The validity of the study is obviously up for debate, though you have to admit that it just seems like common sense that people who are really into cryptocurrency might have something wrong with them.
It should also be noted that “psychopath” diagnoses are a highly imperfect science. They are typically based on the psychopathy checklist, or the “Hare checklist,” (developed by the Canadian psychologist Robert D. Hare), which tests for personality attributes that might fit the psychological profile of someone with a personality disorder. Like other personality disorders, psychopathy represents a broad spectrum, and many people can display traits without being a full-on Hannibal Lecter.
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