Inequality in society is legitimised through the ‘meritocracy myth’ and existing research claims that the affluence of the super-rich is the result of their superior traits. Discursive Social Psychology examines the ways in which psychological concepts such as personality traits function in talk. This research explores how entertainment documentaries construct the traits of the super-rich to legitimise their wealth. A corpus of 41.5 hours of terrestrial UK televised broadcasts that used the term, ‘super-rich’ was analysed. This explored how wealthy individuals are presented as having superior psychological qualities compared to the general public in relation to their greater drive and resilience. However, wealthy individuals also talk about the development of superior traits as a response to adversity. Entertainment documentaries draw upon individualistic ideology to present wealth inequality as a natural consequence of individual differences and as a result, the current distribution of wealth is ‘just’ despite its negative consequences for all.

社会上的不平等是通过“精英统治神话”合法化的，并且现有的研究声称，超级富豪的富裕是其优越性格的结果。话语社会心理学考察了人格特质等心理概念在谈话中的作用方式。这项研究探索了娱乐纪录片如何构建超级富豪的特征以使他们的财富合法化。分析了使用“超级富豪”一词的41.5小时英国地面电视广播的语料库。这探讨了富人在更大的驱动力和应变能力方面如何表现出比普通公众优越的心理素质。然而，有钱人也谈到了优越性格的发展，以应对逆境。