If she’s made of money, he’s sticking like honey — can ya dig it?
Cash often acts as the ultimate adhesive binding a wealthy tycoon to a financially motivated opportunist. These calculated, parasitic “gold diggers” — the ones Kanye West and Jamie Foxx melodically called out in their 2005 banger — are people who deliberately pursue rich romantic partners purely for personal financial gain.
But fresh 2026 data flips the script entirely: ladies aren’t the only ones chasing wallets — gentlemen are equally guilty of the grubbing game.
“Gold digging, long stereotyped as female behavior, is actually not exclusive to women,” confirmed researchers from the Behavioral and Social Sciences Institute in Vienna, Austria, in their newly published findings.
Lead psychologist Lennart Freyth and his team even nodded to West and Foxx’s iconic track in their analysis, citing the lyric: “She takes my money when I’m in need.”
“This line captures three core elements of how the public perceives gold diggers,” the scientists wrote. “Exploiting others financially, avoiding less wealthy partners, and being female.”
The real bombshell, however, was this: men with left-leaning political views registered the highest gold-digging rates of any group — behavior the researchers classify as a “partly psychopathy-linked social tactic.”
“In both sexes, gold digging correlates with narcissism, psychopathy, elevated dating expectations, and perceived mate value,” investigators noted — adding that “sadism,” interestingly, appeared exclusively among women engaging in this lifestyle.
The research team surveyed 351 men and women — averaging around age 30 and spanning various sexual orientations — measuring individual preferences for financial advantage versus genuine emotional connection.
This self-assessment tool examined personality markers (narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, sadism), social factors (sexual orientation, political leaning), and demographic indicators including city size, student status, and perceived dating-market value.
Participants weighed choices like: “A wealthy but emotionally unavailable partner” versus “An emotionally devoted but financially struggling partner?” — across 15 probing survey items.
The verdict: non-heterosexual, left-leaning men scored highest on gold-digging behavior across all groups. Mid-left, non-heterosexual women ranked above their heterosexual counterparts, while right-leaning non-heterosexual women actually scored lowest of all.
“Overall, non-heterosexuals and political leftists scored higher than heterosexuals, centrists, and conservatives,” specialists confirmed.
“Narcissism, psychopathy, higher perceived mate value, and dense urban environments all correlated with gold-digging tendencies,” they continued — noting these opportunistic romantics gravitate toward major cities and are disproportionately likely to be students.
Both male and female moochers also tend to be “reckless” narcissists who weaponize their physical attractiveness to reel wealthy targets into their elaborate webs of manipulation, per the study.
Freyth’s team specifically cautioned wealthy women against “performative males” — men who project sensitivity and progressive values to lower romantic defenses, while privately calculating financial returns.
“These men strategically elevate their romantic appeal by presenting as compassionate, caring, and deeply empathetic,” Freyth explained. “This makes women far less likely to see them as a threat.”
