Are risk takers more likely to be self-employed?

Abstract

What does an individual’s desire to be self-employed say about them? The current study sought to understand if self-employed people differed from the general working population on personality and risk-taking propensity dimensions. A personality assessment called the Risk Type Compass was administered to a sample of twenty thousand participants representing a broad subsection of the UK general working population, including 596 who identified their role as ‘self-employed’. Findings indicated that the self-employed group varied significantly on several aspects of riskrelevant personality characteristics, the most notable of which concerned lower scores on the assessment’s ‘risk stability index’. Further variations were observed at the subtheme level, including lower scores on ‘conforming’ and higher scores on the ‘hasty’ subthemes. These significant differences suggest that people’s dispositional tendencies influence their propensity to seek the relative freedom and flexibility self-employment can offer. Implications of these findings are discussed.