The Lure of Greed Beyond the Business School Popular Wall Street Narratives and Future Work Selves

Abstract

Popular Wall Street narratives displaying greed and wealth, such as The Wolf of Wall Street, have become large box-office successes, reaching wide audiences. In three exploratory mixed-method experiments, this study investigates how popular Wall Street narratives relate to students’ and sales employees’ future work selves - who they aspire to become in their future job or career. The findings indicate that, for business school students as well as sales professionals, characters in greedy Wall Street narratives are considered more desired future work selves in comparison to characters in critical or realistic narratives. Participants perceived morally ambiguous characters in greed narratives through a “winner frame” of self-made success and wealth. Greed narratives were also associated with lower levels of empathy, indicating an activation of the psychological mechanism of “self-reliance”. In contrast, narratives adopting a “victim perspective” – in which the main characters suffer as a result of financial malpractice – were associated with higher levels of empathy. This study demonstrates the appeal of greedy characters on the future work selves of people who (aspire to) work in the field of financial sales. It sheds new light on the underlying mechanisms with which popular narratives can perpetuate a culture of greed in Wall Street.