Look at how uncertainty shapes decisions to keep and share
Four statements consider keeping resources, maintaining a margin and deciding whether to share.
The mean describes overall agreement with these four statements. It does not mark a good or bad level.
What the four statements cover
- Traditional greed is described as excessive attachment to possessions. The source borrows that doorway to look at keeping a margin and sharing under uncertainty, without measuring greed.
- Observe arrangements for keeping and sharing time, possessions or a practical margin when their future availability is uncertain.
- The items cover keeping a margin under uncertainty, checking personal sufficiency before sharing, noticing when a loaned resource returns, and considering future needs before extra spending.
A four-response worked example
- Worked example, not your responses: 4, 2, 5, 2 add to 13; 13 / 4 = 3.25. All four responses retain their original 1–5 direction, without reverse scoring. Midpoint 3 is a numeric response, not an unanswered item. A sum ranges 4–20, and a mean 1–5. These are agreement summaries, with no threshold, percentile or progress target. A later attempt is not a before-and-after test of moral improvement.
- The mean describes overall agreement with these four statements. It does not mark a good or bad level.
Return to one concrete situation
- Ask which particular resource you are concerned about losing, how certain the risk is, and how the scope of sharing was set. Check the margin you actually had when recently agreeing or declining to share, including whether sharing affected basic needs. Was keeping more related to a practical risk or a familiar worry? The mean cannot decide that for you.
- Suppose a friend asks to borrow a camera before you need it for your own project. You consider the return date, the spare equipment and what happens if plans change. Keeping a margin could reflect a real deadline rather than reluctance to help. Agreeing to lend the camera might coexist with careful checking. The same mean cannot establish which resource is scarce, who has an alternative, or how freely a person agreed.
Keep different meanings separate
- Keeping a margin and making a sharing decision are not one generosity-or-stinginess dimension. The group contains both.
- For example, 1,1,5,5 and 3,3,3,3 both sum to 12 and average 3.00, despite different individual responses. The displayed mean cannot reveal which statement you agreed with. Read the exact statements privately before proposing an explanation, and leave reasons unknown when they cannot be checked. The example is arithmetic, not a validated pattern or a profile assigned to you.
One optional step or conversation
- If useful, set a clear, revisable limit for one act of sharing. Protect basic needs before deciding what is available to share.
- If useful, try a bounded reply: “I can lend it until Thursday; if my project moves earlier I will need it back.” A clear no is also an available choice. You may revise an arrangement when circumstances change, without giving another person a personality score. Compare the agreement with actual availability, not with an imagined standard that a generous person must always share.
What this number cannot establish
- It does not establish greed, selfishness, stinginess, generosity, financial capacity, moral character or an unwillingness to help.
- It does not define a greedy or selfish personality. Keeping resources is not a character judgment. Caution and willingness to share are not moral ranks. A larger number does not mean more selfishness. A smaller number does not mean more generosity.
A counterexample and a boundary
- Checking a return date is not proof of distrust, and declining a loan does not identify selfishness. Equally, saying yes does not prove that basic needs are protected. Those conclusions require direct facts about the arrangement; adding four agreement responses does not supply them.
- Resource concerns have practical functions. Time, possessions and a practical margin should not be stretched into a claim about a person's wealth or character.
Edition, source and validation limits
- This is a product-created framework for self-observation, without established reliability, validity, norms or fairness evidence.
- This guide preserves the scope of FermatMind's original twenty-eight-item Mini form and its seven separate four-item groups. The English prompts and this web presentation are new working adaptations, without independent validation. The source's cultural reference is not scientific support for a score. All seven complete public guides can be read before answering; they contain no private attempt or individual result.