Greed Test: Stinginess, Thrift and Generosity

Online test of how you handle money in front of other people. It measures seven separate traits — generosity, fair share, pain of paying, insatiability, frugality, withholding things that are not money, and generosity for show — and then builds the verdict only from the ones that actually describe taking from others. Alongside the statements you make real allocation choices, so the result compares what you say about yourself with what you pick when there is something to divide.

How to take the test

1
Answer the statements

Rate how well each one describes you. The full version is 45 screens, about 8 minutes; the short one is 22. There are no right answers, and nobody but you sees them.

2
Make the allocation choices

Split a sum with a stranger — once when everybody can see the number and once when nobody ever will — and work through six slider choices between your payoff and theirs.

3
Read the profile, not just the score

You get the index and its band, an archetype, seven axis bars, your SVO angle, the say-do gap and a validity read on your own answers.

Find out where careful spending ends and stinginess towards other people begins

Loading the test…

Features

Seven separate axes instead of one number
A person who repairs their shoes and always picks up the check is not the same as one who takes and never gives back. Ordinary quizzes score both as "cheap"; here they get different profiles.
Frugality and pain of paying are excluded from the verdict
They are measured and shown, but they never raise your score. Being hard on your own wallet is not meanness towards other people, and the result says so explicitly.
A behavioural part you cannot flatter yourself through
Six Social Value Orientation slider items (Murphy, Ackermann and Handgraaf, 2011; test-retest r = .915) yield a real SVO angle in degrees with the published category boundaries.
Your allocation against 20 813 real decisions
How much you hand to a stranger is read against Engel's 2011 meta-study of 616 dictator-game treatments: mean 28.35%, most common 0%, exactly half 16.7% of people.
The say-do gap, measured on you
People predict they will give far more than they do (Epley and Dunning, 2000). The test shows both numbers side by side and names the distance between them.
A validity block, not a flattering verdict
Impression management and careless-responding indices — long strings, even-odd consistency, an infrequency item, elapsed time — are reported back to you instead of hidden.

What the test gives you

  • One index from 0 to 100 with a band, built only from stinginess towards other people
  • Seven axes measured apart, including the two that deliberately do not count towards the verdict
  • Your Social Value Orientation angle in degrees with the four published categories
  • The distance between how generous you describe yourself and how you actually allocated
  • A visibility check: how much more you give when the amount is public

How the verdict is built

The index takes 35% from generosity, 30% from fair share, 20% from withholding non-money things and 15% from giving for show; insatiability and the behavioural rail shift it further. Frugality and pain of paying contribute nothing to it on purpose — they describe how you treat yourself, not other people. Weights, bands and the 0-100 mappings are our display conventions anchored on published boundaries, not population norms, and the method block says exactly which is which.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between being frugal and being stingy?

Frugality is about the resources you spend on yourself: repairing instead of replacing, planning purchases, seeking value. Stinginess is about other people: not returning a favour, letting somebody else cover you, keeping the useful part of an answer to yourself. Research treats them as separate constructs, and this test scores them on separate axes — a high frugality score never raises your index.

What is the SVO slider and why is it here?

The Social Value Orientation Slider Measure (Murphy, Ackermann and Handgraaf, 2011) is six choices between payoffs for you and for an unknown other person. It produces an angle in degrees which classifies you as competitive, individualistic, prosocial or altruistic against published boundaries, with test-retest reliability of r = .915. It is here because choices are much harder to flatter than statements.

Can I fake a good result?

You can, and the test tells you when it looks like you did. Over-claiming items catch answers that are too clean to be literally true, and the behavioural part is scored separately from the statements — if the two disagree by 20 points or more, the result reports the gap instead of averaging it away.

Is a low income counted as stinginess?

No. Every money item asks about your behaviour relative to what you have — offering before being asked, returning a treat, paying above the minimum you could get away with — not about amounts. The allocation tasks are hypothetical shares of the same sum for everyone.

How long does it take?

The full version is 45 screens, roughly 8 minutes. The short version is 22 screens and about 4 minutes, with fewer items per axis, so the result page marks it as a rougher read. Answers are saved on this device, so you can stop and come back.

Is this a psychological diagnosis?

No. It is a self-knowledge instrument built on published scales, not a clinical assessment, and the bands are our display convention rather than population norms. Nothing here should be used to judge anybody but yourself.

Why does the test ask the same allocation twice?

Once the amount is public and once it is private. Image motivation — being generous mainly when it is visible — is a documented effect (Ariely, Bracha and Meier, 2009), and the difference between your two numbers measures it directly instead of asking you to admit to it. The public version is asked first, which if anything makes the measured gap smaller than it really is.

Where do my answers go?

They stay in this browser and you can wipe them with "Start over" and "Clear history". A share link carries the numeric scores only, never the individual answers.

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Who is this tool for?
🎓 Students 🧘 Wellness & Meditation
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