Gold digging is strongly linked to psychopathy and dark personality traits, study finds

A recent psychological study suggests that gold digging is not merely a gender-based stereotype, but rather a calculated social strategy linked to traits like psychopathy and narcissism. The findings provide evidence that people who engage in this behavior actively sacrifice emotional intimacy to extract financial resources from their partners. This research was published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences.

Scientists Lennart Freyth and Peter K. Jonason designed this study to understand the psychological motivations behind highly materialistic dating behaviors. Freyth is affiliated with the Behavioral and Social Sciences Institute in Austria and HSD Hochschule Döpfer University of Applied Sciences in Germany. Jonason is affiliated with the Behavioral and Social Sciences Institute and the University of Human Sciences in Poland.

Freyth previously published research analyzing dating apps like Tinder as “digital leks,” a biological term for environments where individuals display themselves to attract mates without providing emotional investment. That earlier work provided evidence that people with highly opportunistic, short-term mating strategies find the most success on these platforms. Building on those findings, he wanted to explore how some people use dating to actively exploit others.

“Following up on my research on dating, I became interested in people who prefer highly exploitative dating strategies, going beyond a simple preferences for resourceful partners (e.g., money or status),” Freyth told PsyPost. “After discussing with a friend and colleague about how to capture gold digging, I developed a decision-based online survey. Participants chose between an intimacy-focused (or relationship-oriented) option and an option focused on gaining some kind of benefit from the partner.”

In biology and psychology, exploitative dating is often viewed as a “fast life history strategy.” This concept describes how an individual adapts to their environment by seeking immediate, selfish rewards rather than investing in slow, mutually beneficial relationships. The scientists suspected that gold digging represents a specific, reckless version of this fast life strategy.

To test these ideas, the researchers collected data from 351 participants through an online German university course. After excluding ten people who completed the survey too quickly, the final group consisted of 105 men and 236 women. The volunteers were about thirty years old on average.

The survey required participants to make repeated forced choices, a method known as ipsative testing. They had to choose between a hypothetical partner focused on emotional support and one focused entirely on material benefits. This format forced participants to reveal if they would readily sacrifice a supportive relationship for financial gain.

The researchers also measured the “Dark Tetrad” of personality traits, which includes narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and sadism. Narcissism involves extreme vanity, while Machiavellianism features the cynical manipulation of others. Psychopathy involves impulsive and callous behavior, and sadism involves enjoying the suffering of others.

Participants also provided demographic details, such as their political orientation and the population size of their hometown. They also rated their own “mate value,” which is a self-assessment of how attractive and desirable a person believes they are on the dating market.

When analyzing the results, the scientists found that women scored higher on the gold digging measure than men. However, the behavior was present in both sexes and consistently linked to dark personality traits. Freyth outlined the primary takeaways from these findings.

“First, gold diggers do not only prefer resourceful partners, they trade-off characteristics of a happy relationship to extract resources from their partner,” Freyth said. “Second, gold digging is strongly linked to psychopathy, which confirms the reckless component mentioned in pop culture.”

The researchers found that other demographic elements also played a role. “Third, there are linked factors, like big cities, being a student, being non-heterosexual, and high self-described mate value, which do not differ between men and women (except for female students scored higher than males),” Freyth noted.

Because these factors were amplified similarly across genders, the researchers view this as a broad behavioral pattern. “This confirms a general human sexual strategy which is not uniquely used by women,” Freyth explained. “Still: Four, female gold diggers were also sadistic.”

The research suggests this materialistic approach requires a deeply callous mindset that surprised the researchers. “Some results were so clear or expected to theory, that as a psychologist this is a surprise within the discipline,” Freyth noted. “For instance, the link to psychopathy – there was no noise in the data on this.”

Freyth elaborated on how these traits manifest equally under the right circumstances. “Also, gold digging tendencies are amplified in men and women in certain conditions, but not stronger amplified in women,” he added. “Again, this makes it a human behavior, not a sex-specific one.”

Freyth suggests specific political links might be highly strategic for some demographics. “There was a group of right-wing, female students with elevated levels of gold digging,” he noted. “Besides being in their reproductive prime, right-wing individuals tend to be more industrious, thus this link could be a consequence or a motivation.”

Another distinct pattern emerged among left-leaning men, who reported the highest self-perceived mate value but did not score high on gold digging. “Interestingly, those with the highest self-described mate value (associated with gold digging) were left-wing males- not right-wing women-, which might be the complementary behavior to present themselves as vulnerable and empathic,” Freyth said.

The researchers propose these men might be engaging in a deceptive mating tactic to attract partners. “To do so and to improve their chances in the mating market this group labels themselves as left-wing,” Freyth concluded. “To our knowledge, this is the first empirical observation of the performative male (i.e., kleptogamy).”

While the study offers new insights into dating strategies, the researchers acknowledge some limitations. “Of course, as a scientist I always think about what to improve: The sample was predominantly left-wing and young, maybe some other effects were underestimated,” Freyth said. “Also, the study was cross-sectional.”

A cross-sectional design means the research only captured a single moment in time and cannot prove that specific traits directly cause gold digging. “I would like to see further experiments on the topic and more facets of the observed effects,” Freyth added. “But overall, the decision task, the used scales, and the sample size allow a first glance into the principle of gold digging.”

Moving forward, Freyth plans to investigate how these exploitative strategies impact broader aspects of society. “I am currently switching into a more fundamental line of research, capturing evolutionary and theoretical frameworks of social decision making,” he said. “For instance, in this study I distinguish adaptive mate preferences for resourceful partners from potentially maladaptive exploitative strategies such as gold digging.”

He hopes to expand this framework to understand wider behavioral trends. “By doing so, I have started to investigate broader group-related and societal research questions,” Freyth said. “As a young scientist I am especially interested in connecting with labs working on evolutionary psychology, social decision-making, and related societal outcomes.”

The study, “Mercenary predators: Individual characteristics of gold diggers,” was authored by Lennart Freyth and Peter K. Jonason.