There is an apocryphal tale about an exchange between two of America’s most famous novelists on the nature of wealthy individuals. F Scott Fitzgerald, author of The Great Gatsby, is reputed to have said: “The rich are different from you and me.” In reply, Ernest Hemingway is quoted as saying: “Yes, they have more money.”
As it happens, the quote attributed to Fitzgerald seems to be a corruption of a line in The Rich Boy, his 1926 short story: “Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me.” Either way, Fitzgerald raises an important question: are the very rich different from everyone else besides the fact that, by definition, they have a lot more money?
Thanks to advances in behavioural finance it has become possible to answer whether the wealthy do indeed think differently from the rest of us.