Personal Worldview Conviction and Financial Behavior

This paper explores worldview conviction as a critical but underexamined variable in financial decision-making and education. While traditional financial literacy programs improve knowledge, their long-term impact on financial behaviors remains limited. Emerging research in financial psychology highlights the influence of cognitive biases, emotional factors, and social dynamics on financial well-being. Building on this, we introduce worldview identification as a novel tool to better understand financial behavior, proposing that worldview convictions shape value systems, life goals, and financial priorities. Experimental evidence suggests that engaging in a worldview identification intervention significantly increases the adoption of intrinsic life goals, which are strongly linked to financial well-being. This paper examines the application of worldview identification across education, policy, research, and financial services, offering a new approach for integrating worldview analysis into financial education and planning to enhance financial well-being.