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Cognitive (Ir)reflection: New Experimental Evidence
Abstract
We study how cognitive abilities correlate with behavioral choices by collecting evidence from almost 1200 subjects across eight experimental projects concerning a wide variety of tasks, including some classic risk and social preference elicitation protocols. The Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) has been administered to all our experimental subjects, which makes our dataset one of the largest in the literature. We partition our subject pool into three groups depending on their CRT performance. Reflective subjects are those answering at least two of the three CRT questions correctly. Impulsive subjects are those who are unable to suppress the instinctive impulse to follow the intuitive – although incorrect – answer in at least two 2 questions. The remaining subjects form a residual group. We find that females score significantly less than males in the CRT and that, in their wrong answers, impulsive ones are observed more frequently. The 2D:4D ratio, which is higher for females, is correlated negatively with subjects’ CRT score. We also find that differences in risk attitudes across CRT groups crucially depend on the elicitation task. Finally, impulsive subjects have higher social (inequity-averse) concerns, while reflective subjects are more likely to satisfy basic consistency requirements in lottery choices.
... Even though elicited risk preferences are not significantly different across the real and hypothetical settings, cognitive ability is inversely related only with hypothetical choices but not when choices are real. Cueva et al. (2016) study the relationship of the original CRT and behavioural choices through analysing data encompassing eight different experimental projects that entail 1,180 participants. Out of these eight studies, five include a measure of risk preferences either using an MPL, or a random lottery pair protocol (RLP) 4 with 704 participants overall. ...
... Out of these eight studies, five include a measure of risk preferences either using an MPL, or a random lottery pair protocol (RLP) 4 with 704 participants overall. Cueva et al. (2016) classify participants as reflective when scoring 2 or more in the CRT. Additionally, they measure impulsiveness by creating an index of how many impulsive responses participants give to the CRT questions, and classify them as impulsive when scoring 2 or more. ...
... Finally, if scoring less than 1 in either index participants are classified as 'residual'. Cueva et al. (2016) find that more reflective individuals are less risk averse but only when studying choices in the RLP protocol and not using the MPL which hints at how different methods and procedures can easily produce varying results. As is clear given the few studies highlighted so far, when investigating the relationship between intelligence and risk attitudes, various methods have been implemented, thus, making direct comparisons across these studies not always straightforward. ...
The economics literature has increasingly been studying how intelligence relates to economic decision-making. This has developed a large literature that aims to understand how cognitive abilities and processes relate to both individual decision-making and strategic interactions. Such studies in the economics literature have predominantly used pattern recognition style tests like the Raven test and measures of cognitive reflection, namely the Cognitive Reflection Test. The literature has uncovered some consistent results, for example, intelligence allows for more patient attitudes and is related to behavior closer to equilibrium play in strategic interactions. There has so far been some mixed evidence in studies that link intelligence with biased decision-making. Meanwhile, there is an ongoing lively debate on how intelligence influences risk attitudes. A theme that appears to resonate in several studies is the link between cognitive ability and error-prone behavior. The key studies across these topics are reviewed and some interesting future avenues for research are outlined.
... Accordingly, exploring the differences between men and women in CR tests becomes a relevant matter for different disciplines (e.g., economy, organizational psychology, sociology, theology). To the best of our knowledge, four meta-analyses have been performed up to now to test the sex differences on CR (i.e., Brañas-Garza et al. 2019;Cueva et al. 2016;Primi et al. 2018;Sirota et al. 2021). All of them have reported differences between both groups (i.e., men and women) on CR, with these being in favor of men. ...
... All of them have reported differences between both groups (i.e., men and women) on CR, with these being in favor of men. For instance, Cueva et al. (2016) reported statistically significant differences between men and women on CRT scores (1.12 vs. 0.58: respectively, p < 0.001). Primi et al. (2018) found an observed effect size of d = 0.53: and Sirota et al. (2021) found an observed Hedges' G coefficient of 0.29. ...
... Despite the contributions of these meta-analyses, new quantitative integration is still needed because of the following reasons. First, the meta-analyses of Cueva et al. (2016), Primi et al. (2018), and Sirota et al. (2021) were carried out without doing an exhaustive literature review. These meta-analyses include a few studies developed by a reduced group of researchers. ...
The current study presents a meta-analytic review of the differences between men and women in cognitive reflection (CR). The study also explores whether the type of CR test (i.e., numerical tests and verbal tests) moderates the relationship between CR and sex. The results showed that men score higher than women on CR, although the magnitude of these differences was small. We also found out that the type of CR test moderates the sex differences in CR, especially in the numerical tests. In addition, the results showed that the length of numerical tests (i.e., number of items) does not affect the differences between men and women in CR. Finally, the implications of these results are discussed, and future research is suggested.
... Hence, it can be highly relevant for understanding motivation and the ability to process complex feedback and risky decisions. Studies found that cognitive reflection ability is negatively related to risk aversion (Benjamin et al., 2013;Carlos et al., 2016;Donkers et al., 2001;Frederick, 2005;Gill, 2015;Andersson et al., 2016). This is because individuals with high cognitive ability are likely to realize that risk aversion over small stakes is somewhat irrational (Rabin & Thaler, 2001); they have more cognitive capacity compared to others to deliberately evaluate about their choices. ...
... In other words, the manipulation of feedback was successful in participants with low rather than high cognitive reflection ability. These findings not only validated the existence of immediate feedback effects, but also supported previous studies on the relationship between risk aversion and cognitive reflection ability (Andersson et al., 2016;Benjamin et al., 2013;Carlos et al., 2016;Donkers et al., 2001;Frederick, 2005;Gill, 2015). ...
... This finding was consistent with that in Study 3 and proved again the regret effect and the "more important dimension" hypothesis. Nevertheless, previous studies have not found that participants with low CRT behave more rational in gambling tasks, even in the tasks with feedback (Andersson et al., 2016;Benjamin et al., 2013;Carlos et al., 2016;Donkers et al., 2001;Frederick, 2005;Gill, 2015). An explanation for this might be the difference in task feedback information. ...
Introduction:
Feedback on human choices is important because it can affect risk-taking and rationality in subsequent decisions. In daily life, choices are not always followed by immediate outcomes nor are they always followed by simple, single-dimensional feedback. Here, we seek to extend previous studies on the effects of feedback on subsequent risk-taking in three experiments.
Methods:
We examine whether (1) the effect of feedback immediacy on participants' risk-taking exists in tasks containing explicit probabilistic outcome values; (2) increasing feedback dimensionality from one dimension (only about the outcome) to include a second dimension (also about the "rationality" of prior choices) increases feedback effects on risk-taking; and (3) cognitive reflection ability moderates feedback effects on risk-taking.
Results:
Results showed that feedback reduced risk-taking in tasks containing explicit probabilistic outcomes (Studies 1 and 2). They further showed that two-dimensional feedback produces a stronger reduction in risk-taking compared to single-dimensional feedback (Study 3). Lastly, results suggested that cognitive reflection ability moderates the effects of feedback on risk-taking (Study 4).
Conclusion:
Taken together, the findings extended the understanding of risk-taking and mitigating mechanisms and pave the way for intervention studies aimed at changing risky behaviors.
... This is probably one of the reasons that the performance on the CRT is related to decision-making in real life situations (Juanchich et al., 2016: Toplak et al., 2017, since real-life situations also require to inhibit intuitive responses and further reflection to come to a correct answer. Studies have consistently reported that men perform better than women on the CRT and that this in turn affects differences in real-life outcomes (Cueva et al., 2016;Frederick, 2005;Primi et al., 2018). In sum, most mathematical tasks primarily assess the ability to understand and solve the problem, but the CRT also assesses the ability to suppress emotions. ...
... On the one hand, gender differences have been observed for basic computational tests such as arithmetic fluency (Lynn & Irwing, 2008). On the other hand, gender differences have been observed for higher order mathematical tests which measure reflection on the problem structure and strategy such as the cognitive reflection test (Cueva et al., 2016;Frederick, 2005;Primi et al., 2018). Furthermore, previous research has shown gender differences in working memory, math anxiety and gender-related stereotypes indicating that these factors might play a role in the relation between gender and mathematical performance. ...
... Results showed gender differences for the arithmetic fluency test and cognitive reflection test. These findings reveal that men and women differ in mathematical performance for both basic and complex mathematical tests, a finding which has also been consistently demonstrated in previous research (Cueva et al., 2016;Else-Quest et al., 2010;Lindberg et al., 2010;Lynn & Irwing, 2008;Miller & Bichsel, 2004;Primi et al., 2018). Subsequently, results revealed that arithmetic fluency was predicted by performance on the Digit Span Forward task, math anxiety and explicit gender-related stereotypes about masculine items and that gender differences were present for math anxiety and explicit genderrelated stereotypes. ...
... These authors argue that the impact of cognitive abilities on risky choices is in fact related to low-ability subjects making noisier choices rather than differences in risk preferences. 29 Cueva et al. (2016) also find that differences in risk attitudes across CRT groups depend on the choice of the elicitation task. In a similar vein, Amador-Hidalgo et al. (2021) recently showed that cognitive abilities do play a role in the errors made by subjects during the complex tasks of lottery choices. ...
... Another question is the relationship between gender and the different measures of cognitive ability. Several papers show that men have better CRT scores than women (e.g., Frederick, 2005;Oechssler et al., 2009;Hoppe and Kusterer, 2011;Brañas-Garza et al., 2012;Cueva et al., 2016;Brañas-Garza et al., 2019). As noted by Bosch-Domènech et al. (2014, p. 2) "While many reasons can account for this result, including differences in upbringing and education of males and females, the sex differences in CRT answers may suggest a role for prenatal organizational hormones, particularly testosterone". ...
... Indeed, the link between testosterone and cognitive abilities and risk preferences is well documented. For example, taking the second-to-fourth digit ratio (2D:4D) as a biomarker of prenatal (in utero) testosterone exposure, recent research concludes that higher exposure to testosterone (lower 2D:4D) may be associated with better cognitive abilities (Brañas-Garza and Rustichini, 2011;Cueva et al., 2016), higher risk-tolerance (Sapienza et al., 2009;Brañas-Garza and Rustichini, 2011;Garbarino et al., 2011;Stenstrom et al., 2011), and success in real financial markets (Coates et al., 2009). Brañas-Garza and Rustichini (2011) show that the negative relationship between testosterone and risk aversion is partially mediated by cognitive abilities. ...
... Thus, high CRT scores are associated with a reflective (often referred to as "analytic", e.g., Pennycook et al., 2012;Pennycook et al., 2015) cognitive style. Regarding gender differences in cognitive styles, it is now well documented that men tend to give more reflective/analytic answers than women on the CRT (Frederick, 2005;Oechssler et al., 2009;Hoppe & Kusterer, 2011;Bosch-Domènech et al., 2014;Campitelli & Gerrans, 2014;Cueva et al., 2016; see Brañas-Garza et al., 2019 for a meta-analysis). These results suggest that women tend to show comparatively more reliance on intuition vs. reflection than men. ...
... That is, inducing reflective decision making, using a response time delay, prompted more efficient allocations, whereas inducing intuitive thinking using time pressure prompted more egalitarian and spiteful allocations. In line with previous findings, Cueva et al. (2016) found that low CRT individuals were more egalitarian and less self-interested than high CRT ones. Czerwonka et al. (2017) also found that high CRT scores were associated with self-interested behaviour in the dictator game. ...
... These results suggest that the biological and environmental factors (hormonal, cultural or socio-ecological) that prompt women to rely more on intuition vs. reflection compared to men can account for a sizeable part of gender differences in social preferences. Disentangling the relative importance of evolutionary biological and socio-cultural pressures (for a review, see Hyde, 2014), including the potential role of hormonal influences (e.g., Bosch-Domènech et al., 2014;Cueva et al., 2016), for the current findings is an interesting avenue for future research. ...
Previous studies have shown that women tend to be more egalitarian and less self-interested than men whereas men tend to be more concerned with social efficiency motives. The roots of such differences, however, remain unknown. Since different cognitive styles have also been associated with different distributional social preferences, we hypothesise that gender differences in social preferences can be partially explained by differences in cognitive styles (i.e., women rely more on intuition whereas men are more reflective). We test this hypothesis meta-analytically using data from seven studies conducted in four countries (USA, Spain, India, and UK; n=6,910) where cognitive reflection and social preferences were measured for men and women. In line with our hypothesis, differences in cognitive reflection scores explain up to 41% of the gender differences in social preferences. The mediation is barely affected by variables such as cognitive ability or study-level characteristics. These results suggest that the socio-ecological or cultural pressures that influence gender differences in cognitive styles are also partially responsible for gender differences in social preferences.
... Thus, high CRT scores are associated with a reflective (often referred to as "analytic", e.g., Pennycook et al., 2012;Pennycook et al., 2015) cognitive style. Regarding gender differences in cognitive styles, it is now well documented that men tend to give more reflective/analytic answers than women on the CRT (Frederick, 2005;Oechssler et al., 2009;Hoppe & Kusterer, 2011;Bosch-Domènech et al., 2014;Campitelli & Gerrans, 2014;Cueva et al., 2016; see Brañas-Garza et al., 2019 for a meta-analysis). These results suggest that women tend to show comparatively more reliance on intuition vs. reflection than men. ...
... That is, inducing reflective decision making, using a response time delay, prompted more efficient allocations, whereas inducing intuitive thinking using time pressure prompted more egalitarian and spiteful allocations. In line with previous findings, Cueva et al. (2016) found that low CRT individuals were more egalitarian and less self-interested than high CRT ones. Czerwonka et al. (2017) also found that high CRT scores were associated with self-interested behaviour in the dictator game. ...
... These results suggest that the biological and environmental factors (hormonal, cultural or socio-ecological) that prompt women to rely more on intuition vs. reflection compared to men can account for a sizeable part of gender differences in social preferences. Disentangling the relative importance of evolutionary biological and socio-cultural pressures (for a review, see Hyde, 2014), including the potential role of hormonal influences (e.g., Bosch-Domènech et al., 2014;Cueva et al., 2016), for the current findings is an interesting avenue for future research. ...
Previous studies have shown that women tend to be more egalitarian and less self-interested than men whereas men tend to be more concerned with social efficiency motives. The roots of such differences, however, remain unknown. Since different cognitive styles have also been associated with different distributional social preferences, we hypothesise that gender differences in social preferences can be partially explained by differences in cognitive styles (i.e., women rely more on intuition whereas men are more reflective). We test this hypothesis meta-analytically using data from seven studies conducted in four countries (USA, Spain, India, and UK; n=6,910) where cognitive reflection and social preferences were measured for men and women. In line with our hypothesis, differences in cognitive reflection scores explain up to 41% of the gender differences in social preferences. The mediation is barely affected by variables such as cognitive ability or study-level characteristics. These results suggest that the socio-ecological or cultural pressures that influence gender differences in cognitive styles are also partially responsible for gender differences in social preferences.
... These answers, although incorrect, may have been selected by those subjects who do not think carefully enough. Following Cueva et al. (2016), we partition individuals into three groups. Impulsive subjects answer the erroneous intuitive value at least in two questions, reflective ones answer correctly at least two questions, and others are the residual group. ...
... From Table C.1 we also notice that the sample distribution over the CRT categories has a strong gender component: while 48% of the male sample is categorized as "reflective" (and the remaining 52% is approximately equally distributed across the other categories), the same percentage of females are classified as "impulsive" and only 13% as "reflective". This evidence is in line with previous findings in the literature (take, e.g., Frederick, 2005 andCueva et al., 2016). With respect to the education field, the majority of our players is enrolled in an economic/business degree at a master level and expect to continue studying further. ...
... In many cases, men are less in contact with zoonotic diseases than women and women are more concerned about livestock health than men (Kristjanson, et al., 2010). While in some studies it is demonstrated that gender has no effect on risk situations (Cueva, et al., 2016), in the case of animal disease risk, there is a knowledge gap about the effect of gender on farmers, which we discovered in our model. Moreover, education is significant for farmers' adoption and decision-making, while farming experience is not significant (Adeogun, Ajana, Ayinla, Yarhere, & Adeogun, 2008). ...
... This means that whether they are a man or woman, there is no difference in reporting behavior. Gender is not a barrier for farmers' reporting, which positively relates with the result of Cueva, et al (2016). However, the results of the logit model contrast with the results of Kristjanson (2010), which report that women are more concerned about livestock health than men. ...
Zoonotic diseases are a continuously significant threat to global human and livestock health (causing millions of deaths yearly). Zoonotic diseases are not only a human health threat, but also a threat to animal health and welfare. Moreover, they have a high impact on national economies and food security due to productivity and production reduction. Expanding worldwide travel and global trade increases the importance of the threat of zoonotic diseases. The increase in global meat consumption contrasts with the escalating instability of the global meat market, which is affected by the increase of livestock densities, changes in production intensity, and slaughtering systems, causing animal disease outbreaks to spread widely. This study focuses on the animal disease surveillance system in Thailand as an important world meat exporter. In 2014, the Participatory One Health Disease Detection project, or PODD was set up by the veterinary inspection authorities to test animal epidemic control systems using smartphone applications in the Chiang Mai province in northern Thailand The main objectives of this study are (i) to evaluate the economic impact of the PODD system on farmers by impact assessment (n = 177) (ii) to demonstrate the impact of monetary and non-monetary incentives on the PODD reporters by the experimental approach (n = 17), (iii) and to present the effect of the socioeconomic factors and behavioral bias on farmers animal disease reporting behavior with the logit model (n = 467). Focusing on the first objective, the results of this study concluded that there is an impact on the farmers. The technology alone cannot improve animal health security in the short-term. In the second objective, the results concluded that, in the case of the PODD reporters, the decision of using monetary incentives to motivate most of the PODD reporters has a negative impact in the long-term. Losing reporter motivation and effort reflected to the low efficiency of the digital surveillance system of PODD and no impact on farmers. Concerning In the last objective, the results concluded that the optimistic bias of farmers has a very high impact on their decision making about reporting animal diseases on their farm. Just one infected farm in the case of dairy milk farmers can spread the foot-and-mouth disease to other farms. The new digital animal health surveillance system alone is not enough to reduce the impact of animal diseases of farmers. Suitable motivation for the reports and awareness of farmers optimistic bias in animal disease reporting cannot be neglected in digital animal disease surveillance system improvement. Overall, it can be concluded that the digital animal disease surveillance system is a powerful instrument for reducing the impact of animal diseases and increasing food safety and security. However, application of this advanced technology still needs time to demonstrate the impact and to be broadly adopted by users. In terms of motivation, the monetary incentive can increase the effort of report in the short run but it comes at a high cost and has a negative impact in the long-term. While the social incentive costs less and is more effective in the long-term. Where farmers animal disease reporting behavior is concerned, the optimistic bias is the highest influential factor on the farmers reporting decisions, in an inverse correlation.
... This is not surprising because this effect of gender on risk and ambiguity attitudes has already been reported by the literature (see, among others, Eckel & Grossman, 2008). As for cognitive ability, there is a positive and significant effect for subjects under TR1 and TR0 on ρ and γ, telling us that those subjects classified as reflective, are more risk and uncertainty averse than the residual group (see Cueva et al., 2016). ...
We report the evidence of a multi-stage lab experiment on individual decision making under ambiguity, where the latter is characterized by the (partial or) absence of information on some monetary values in the support of the lottery distributions. This complements the standard treatment of uncertainty where decision makers know the monetary prizes, but probabilities are uncertain. We use both a structural and a non-structural approach when analyzing subjects’ behavior under risk, compound risk, and outcome ambiguity. Our main finding is that subjects are risk-averse and ambiguity lovers in that they evaluate more optimistically uncertain payoffs under ambiguity compared to compound risk. We also study how subjects evaluate scenarios with uncertain outcomes: 60% of choices are consistent with the Expected Utility paradigm, while 40% of them are better described by a heuristic we label as “naïve,” in which the order of integration of Expected Utility is reversed (that is, they first form a point estimate of the uncertain payoffs, and then they evaluate the lotteries’ expected utility). Finally, we also find that risk and ambiguity aversion are positively correlated.
... Many studies report associations between CRT performance and a large variety of economic decisions and preferences. These include risk taking and time discounting (Frederick, 2005;Oechssler et al., 2009), a higher tendency to play according to Nash Equilibrium (Brañas-Garza et al., 2012;Grimm and Mengel, 2012), and social preferences (e.g., Cueva et al., 2016). Yet the literature relies primarily on student samples and relatively small-scale laboratory experiments, making it difficult to assess whether published results can be observed in general population samples or whether they can be generalized to real-life phenomena. ...
... Insights into the cognitive underpinnings of economic behavior can have far-reaching implications, from designing more effective economic policies and interventions to improving consumer experiences and predicting market trends. Therefore, over the past two decades, economists and psychologists alike have become increasingly interested in better understanding this interplay in a variety of decision contexts, both in routine and specific economic decisions, like consumer decisions (see Krajbich et al., 2012;Zuschke, 2020), and in more complex and abstract situations ranging from prosocial (Millet & Dewitte, 2007;Corgnet et al., 2015;Cueva et al., 2016;Jarke-Neuert & Lohse, 2022) to intertemporal (Frederick, 2005;Dohmen et al., 2010;Benjamin et al., 2013), risky (Andersson, Holm, Tyran, & Wengström, 2016Benjamin, Brown, & Shapiro, 2013;Frederick, 2005;Olschewski & Rieskamp, 2021;Drouvelis and Lohse, 2020), and strategic decision-making choices (Gill & Prowse, 2016;Alaoui & Penta, 2016Alaoui et al., 2020;Proto et al., 2019Proto et al., , 2022. This research agenda no longer focuses only on the choices made but uses sophisticated methods to reveal the underlying choice process (see Schulte-Mecklenbeck et al., 2017;Schulte-Mecklenbeck, Kühberger, & Johnson, 2019 for an overview). ...
In recent years, there has been growing interest in capturing, manipulating, and analyzing the effects of decision-making processes that underlie economic choice. This editorial discusses these recent developments by contextualizing the six contributions to the special issue “Cognition and Economic Behavior” within the broader scope of the existing literature.
... Experiments 1 and 2, with relatively large sample sizes, both found a significant correlation between gender differences and CRT scores, which is consistent with previous studies. Studies with adults [4,53,54] found that males scored higher on the CRT than females, and females gave more intuitive responses than males. Campitelli and Gerrans (2014) [4] also showed that women struggled with inhibiting the intuitive response, especially in the case of the "bat and ball" problem. ...
The cognitive reflection test (CRT) is an experiment task commonly used in Western countries to test intuitive and analytical thinking styles. However, the validity of this task for Chinese participants has not been explored. Therefore, this study recruited Chinese college students to finish CRT tasks with various experimental designs. To gauge the accuracy of the CRT tasks, 438 Chinese college students first completed online questionnaires. Participants were then invited to participate in an offline laboratory with the same experimental settings. Finally, time pressure was used to strictly control intuition and analytical thinking to explore the performance of Chinese college students on CRT tasks. The results show that of the three experiments, Chinese college students had the highest accuracy in the offline test, and the CRT’s intuitive conflict problem still applies to Chinese students under the time-limited condition. This study demonstrates the validity of the CRT in China and proves that time pressure is an effective method for identifying individuals with strong logic ability.
... This imbalance was expected based on the research already conducted on the subject, which identified that men tend to perform better in the CRT (e.g. [16], [26], [27], [28], [29]). ...
The resource allocation decisions are the foundation of corporate strategies and are made by individuals susceptible to cognitive biases. Given that execution is potentially where strategic management fails, the research aims to investigate the relationship between the degree of cognitive reflection, indicative of a predisposition to employ heuristics, and decision biases under conditions of uncertainty in resource allocation. Employing an ex-post facto methodology, an online survey was conducted using convenience sampling, characterized by its non-probabilistic and unrestricted nature. The research focused on evaluating resource allocation decisions within a case featuring two distinct commitment levels. The individual's cognitive reflection level emerges as a significant factor contributing to decision biases, while the magnitude of resource commitment influences cognitive dedication and the decision-making process. Consequently, there exists a discernible risk of resource allocation decisions deviating from the formal strategy, particularly when decision-makers exhibit lower cognitive reflection levels or demonstrate a diminished commitment of resources. This study sheds light on the intricate dynamics of resource allocation shaping strategy and emphasizes the importance of cognitive considerations in fostering strategic alignment.
... Aarts & Dijksterhuis, 2000;Louis & Sutton, 1991) such that individuals are more inclined to engage in cognitive reflection for all decisions regardless of the perceived implications for others. Research shows that some people are more likely to engage in cognitive reflection overall regardless of the decision topic (Campitelli & Labollita, 2010;Cueva et al., 2016), and other-orientation creates the reflective cognitive patterns and skills that would precipitate this cognitive style. ...
Servant leadership's unique focus on care and concern for multiple stakeholders has caught the attention of academic and practitioners alike. Its theoretical novelty, however, remains underutilized as a means to contribute unique insights to the leadership literature. We draw on servant leadership's moral foundation—utilitarian consequentialism—and social learning theory to identify cognitive mechanisms (follower other‐orientation and cognitive reflection) through which servant leadership affects employee behavior benefiting two stakeholder groups: a community nonprofit organization and the employing organization. Furthermore, we evaluate the degree to which an employee's moral identity internalization acts as a boundary condition of servant leadership's effects. Data were collected from 274 employee‐supervisor dyads across three waves with objective cognitive reflection scores and objective measures of workplace charitable giving and employee performance. Results supported all hypothesized predictions even after accounting for three alternative mediators. In particular, servant leadership had a positive indirect effect on workplace charitable giving through follower other‐orientation; it also had a positive indirect effect on objective follower financial performance through other‐orientation and cognitive reflection. Both indirect effects were significant at low levels of moral identity internalization but not at high levels. We discuss the implications of these findings and delineate directions for future research.
... We mentioned earlier that openness, which was related to measures of need for cognition (Sadowski & Cogburn, 1997), intelligence (Anglim et al., 2022) and cognitive reflection (Borghans et al., 2008;Cueva et al., 2016), was consistently linked to vegetarianism. Consistent with that, IQ is also related to vegetarianism. ...
The Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) is a widely used measure of individual propensity to rely on analytic thinking. This measure is consistently related to decision-making tasks, beliefs and real-life decision outcomes and also inversely related to conformist and mindless decision making. Drawing from previous studies showing that food choices are related to cognitive style, we hypothesised that an analytic cognitive style would be inversely related to meat consumption and beliefs supporting meat eating. In two highly powered studies (total N = 7,283), we investigated the relationship between the CRT and meat consumption and associated beliefs, controlling for relevant demographics. Our results showed that a higher CRT score predicted self-identification as vegetarian, exclusion of meat and fish from diet and lower belief that meat consumption is normal and necessary for health (study 1). This link remained when need for cognition and self-esteem were introduced as concurrent predictors (study 2). Despite a small observed effect size, these results confirm the relevance of the CRT for investigating consequential decision making and habits.
... The correct answer requires more deliberation and reflection than it initially seems. The CRT has been widely used and, although it has wide acceptance as a measure of cognitive reflection (Brañas-Garza et al., 2015;Cueva et al., 2016), there are different ways of approaching the cognitive reflection measure (Erceg and Bubić, 2017). ...
The Cognitive Reflection Test or CRT is a popular measure designed to distinguish the intuitive thinking processing from the analytical one. Sex differences in the CRT have been found in multiple studies. In this research, the influence of the mathematical component on sex differences is studied by using two different instruments to measure cognitive reflection: the original CRT and one extended version of the original one, both with a high arithmetic component and, on the other hand, a set of five classic heuristic tasks, called CHT, with a lower numeracy content. The results show that these sex differences disappear when the mathematical nature of the tasks is reduced. Finally, in this work a more elaborate way of scoring the intuitive responses is addressed in relation to the meaning of these differences.
La prueba de reflexión cognitiva o CRT (Cognitive Reflection Test) es una medida popular diseñada para distinguir el procesamiento del pensamiento intuitivo del analítico. Se han encontrado diferencias de sexo en el CRT en múltiples estudios. En esta investigación se estudia la influencia del componente matemático en las diferencias de sexo utilizando dos instrumentos diferentes para medir la reflexión cognitiva: el CRT original y una versión ampliada del original, ambos con un alto componente aritmético y, por otro lado, un conjunto de cinco tareas heurísticas clásicas, denominadas CHT, con un contenido numérico más bajo. Los resultados muestran que estas diferencias de sexo desaparecen cuando se reduce el carácter matemático de las tareas. Finalmente, en este trabajo se aborda una forma más elaborada de puntuar las respuestas intuitivas en relación con el significado de estas diferencias.
... Consistently with existing evidence, we find that female subjects tend to be more risk-averse (Croson & Gneezy, 2009) and score worse in the CRT (Frederick, 2005) than male subjects. We also detect a positive correlation between BRET and CRT scores implying that subjects that correctly answer relatively many questions in the CRT are less risk-averse, which is also in line with previous results (Cueva et al., 2016) , and identify no age effects (see Ta-ble S18 in the supplement.) Therefore, a potential issue in our experiment could given by the fact that subjects in the ABS treatment chose in a safer way than subjects in the CBS treatment, simply because of gender imbalances across treatments. ...
We propose a novel experimental design aimed at investigating whether inducing individuals to use certain choice procedures has an effect on the outcome of their decision. Specifically, by implementing a modification of the mouse-tracing method, we induce subjects to use either alternative-based or characteristic-based search procedures in a between-subject lottery-choice experiment. We find that encouraging subjects to search by characteristic systematically makes them choose riskier options. Consistently with existing literature, our evidence indicates that individuals typically look up information within alternatives. However, when induced to search by characteristic, high prizes receive more attention, leading individuals to switch to non-compensatory heuristics and – consequently – make riskier choices. Our findings are robust to variations in the complexity of the choice problem and individual differences in risk-attitudes, CRT scores, and gender.
... Esse desequilíbrio era esperado com base nas pesquisas já realizadas sobre o tema, que identificaram que homens tendem a ter um desempenho melhor no CRT (e.g. FREDERICK, 2005, HOPPE;KUSTERER, 2011, CUEVA-HERRERO et al, 2015, HOLT et al, 2015, BRAÑAS-GARZA et al 2015. ...
Introdução
As decisões de alocação de recursos são a base das estratégias corporativas e são tomadas por indivíduos suscetíveis a vieses cognitivos. Dado que a execução é onde normalmente falha a administração estratégica, o propósito desse trabalho é avaliar se há relação entre o nível de reflexão cognitiva (tendência ao uso das heurísticas) e os vieses na decisão sob incerteza na alocação de recursos estratégicos.
Problema de Pesquisa e Objetivo
Há vários obstáculos à execução de uma estratégia, entre eles as decisões de alocação de recursos. Dados a importância da estratégia para o desempenho, o grande número de estratégias que falham em sua execução, e a importância das decisões de alocação de recursos para a estratégia, o problema analisado nesta investigação é: a tendência aos vieses cognitivos podem impactar as decisões de alocação de recursos e afetar a execução da estratégia? O objetivo, portanto, é analisar a influência dos vieses cognitivos nas decisões de alocação de recursos.
Metodologia
A pesquisa foi conduzida online com o objetivo de avaliar se há relação entre o nível de reflexão cognitiva dos indivíduos e os vieses na decisão de alocação, e se o nível de comprometimento de recursos afeta esses vieses. A variável independente será a tendência aos vieses cognitivos (CRT-L), e a variável dependente será a decisão de alocação dos recursos em duas situações, medida através da apresentação de um case em animação com duas decisões que ilustram situações hipotéticas, uma voltada para o resultado de curto prazo e outra voltada para a estratégia de longo prazo da companhia.
Análise dos Resultados
O teste utilizado foi o qui-quadrado de Person para avaliar as distribuições entre as escolhas nas decisões. Na decisão com baixo comprometimento, verificou-se uma distribuição estatisticamente diferente (alfa de 0,10) para o grupo heurístico daquela esperada (<0,01), o que não aconteceu com o grupo racional (0,15). Na decisão com maior comprometimento ocorreu o mesmo (heurístico com 0,09 e racional com 0,78), mais próximo do esperado (50% / 50%). Foram observadas diferenças nos vieses conforme o comprometimento da decisão (<0,01 para o grupo heurístico e 0,08 para o grupo racional).
Conclusão
As duas principais conclusões são: i) há viés de acordo com o nível de reflexão cognitiva do decisor (tendência ao uso das heurísticas), e ii) o nível de comprometimento de recursos da decisão mobiliza recursos cognitivos e leva inclusive os indivíduos mais heurísticos a tomar decisões mais ponderadas, aproximando a decisão àquela do grupo racional. Há potencial impacto à execução das estratégias decorrente de vieses nas decisões de alocação de recursos, cuja origem é reflexão cognitiva dos indivíduos.
... Die Validierungshypothese 7, die besagte, dass ein hoher CRT-Score mit einem niedrigen 2D:4D assoziiert ist, konnte jedoch nicht bestätigt werden. In der Auswertung der Testergebnisse fand sich der von anderen Autoren beschriebene Zusammenhang nicht wieder(Bosch-Domènech et al., 2014, Cueva et al., 2016. Einen Erklärungsansatz bot auch hier die überdurchschnittlich hohe Bildung der Probanden. ...
Background and Aims The ratio of the 2nd to 4th finger length (2D:4D) as an indicator for prenatal androgen exposure has been the topic of numerous studies throughout many fields of research. This study concentrates on the effect of the prenatal androgen on the development of implicit motives, namely the need for achievement, need for affiliation and need for power. Previous studies examining the 2D:4D ratio and implicit motives used the Picture Story Exercise and were limited in sample size mainly because of the time-consuming testing and scoring process. This study tries to replicate and extend preceding findings using the Implicit Association Test (IAT), an easily accessible and objectively assessable alternative to the Picture Story Exercise to quantify implicit motives. Methods This study was conducted on 203 individuals, 102 female and 101 male, ranging from ages 18 to 65. Each individuals’ hands were scanned for the assessment of 2D:4D, following a questionnaire using, among other tests, three IATs, as well as assessing Cognitive Reflection and time estimation as suggested analogues for the Activity Inhibition, as measured in the Picture Story Exercise. Results The 2D:4D ratio alone was not significantly correlated to any of the implicit motives. However, when separated into groups of high and low impulsivity based on time estimation or the Cognitive Reflection Test, there was a significant negative correlation in the male cohort between the need for power and the 2D:4D ratio (rsp = -0,284, p = 0,032 for time underestimation; rsp = - 0,244, p = 0,048 for high cognitive reflection), thus reproducing the results previously made using the Picture Story Exercise in the group of high Activity Inhibition. The data on IAT and 2D:4D separately for males and females were also compared to the literature for validation. Conclusion The results found in this study are in line with previous findings, indeed confirming a certain influence of prenatal androgen exposition on the development of implicit motives in male adults, when separated for high cognitive reflection / time underestimation reflecting low impulsivity. As the results are similar to those produced in studies using the Picture Story Exercise. This might indicate that the Implicit Association Test in combination with the Cognitive Reflection Test or time estimation is a valid alternative to the Picture Story Exercise and Activity Inhibition
... Our main cognitive performance measure is the reflection score, calculated as the number of "reflective & correct" answers on the CPT and used in our preregistered confirmatory tests. We define two additional performance measures for exploratory analysis: the intuition score, indicating reliance on intuitive thinking, calculated as the number of "intuitive & incorrect" answers on the CPT (see Cueva et al., 2016), and the error score, indicating decision errors, calculated as the number of "non-intuitive & incorrect" answers on the CPT. The reflection and the intuition scores are based on all five questions on the CPT and have a maximum possible score of 5. Since the last two questions on the CPT (i.e., the belief bias and the conjunction fallacy questions) do not have "non-intuitive & incorrect" answers, the error score is based on only the three CRT questions and has a maximum possible score of 3. ...
Experiments comparing intuitive and reflective decisions provide insights into the cognitive foundations of human behavior. However, the relative strengths and weaknesses of the frequently used experimental techniques for activating intuition and reflection remain unknown. In a large-scale preregistered online experiment (N = 3667), we compared the effects of eight reflection, six intuition, and two within-subjects manipulations on actual and self-reported measures of cognitive performance. Compared to the overall control, the long debiasing training was the most effective technique for increasing actual reflection scores, and the emotion induction was the most effective technique for increasing actual intuition scores. In contrast, the reason and the intuition recall, the reason induction, and the brief time delay conditions failed to achieve the intended effects. We recommend using the debiasing training, the decision justification, or the monetary incentives technique to activate reflection, and the emotion induction, the cognitive load, or the time pressure technique to activate intuition.
... Del mismo modo, mientras exista más inteligencia emocional, más claridad racional habrá (Gill y Prowse, 2016;Heckman y Kautz, 2012). Además, como las habilidades cognitivas pueden conducir a ventajas estratégicas, esta inteligencia estratégica puede anticipar el comportamiento de los competidores (Levine et al., 2017) con menos impulsividad (Cueva et al., 2016). Asimismo, esta literatura sobre teoría de juegos incluyó investigaciones sobre juegos arquetípicos de personalidad como en el experimento de Proto et al. (2019) utilizando juegos con individuos que aún no han desarrollado completamente su personalidad, como adolescentes y niños (Sutter et al., 2019), o juegos con individuos que tienen un alto psicoticismo (Martin, 2017). ...
gracias a la teoría de los juegos tenemos una mejor comprensión del comportamiento humano en la economía. Sin embargo, como
esta teoría excluye el aspecto psicológico de la conducta, una revisión del supuesto de racionalidad completa la información perdida en algunos juegos. Como consecuencia, han surgido algunos enfoques que incluyen aspectos conductuales y psicológicos en los juegos. Esto ha generado una gran cantidad de literatura distribuida en líneas de investigación aparentemente independientes, hecho que puede generar confusión. Para
aclarar si la teoría de juegos conductual y psicológica son enfoques independientes, se realizó una revisión sistemática utilizando las directrices
PRISMA para identificar todos los estudios empíricos publicados bajo ambas denominaciones. Se recogieron trabajos que (1) tuvieran variables
psicológicas, (2) estuvieran revisados por pares y (3) tuvieran algún diseño experimental. De los 492 trabajos buscados, 67 se incluyeron en
esta revisión sistemática. Se organizarwon y estudiaron para determinar qué tipo de variables psicológicas incluían y si realmente existen dos enfoques diferentes o no. El término más utilizado es la teoría del juego conductual, en la que se utilizan ampliamente variables como la culpa,
la confianza, la motivación y la reciprocidad. La principal conclusión es que los dos enfoques son realmente el mismo y son los seguidores de
los principales autores de cada corriente los que publican bajo uno u otro nombre.
... Nevertheless, the reason for this result may influenced by gender differences in mathematical or spatial reasoning (Geary et al., 2000;Juanchich et al., 2020;Reinhold et al., 2020). In addition, previous research suggested that intuition could be biased in reasoning tasks (Boissin et al., 2021), which may have contributed to gender differences in CRT (Cueva et al., 2016;Markovits et al., 2018). Thus, the CRT or mathematical nature of the material possible has contributed to the previous findings that women score higher on intuitive reasoning. ...
Gender differences in intuition remain debatable. Previous research found an intuitive bias for women, but women's intuitive decision-makings sometimes were accurate. This study investigated behavioral and neural patterns of gender differences in intuition using the Embedded Chinese Character Task (ECCT) with event-related potentials. Participants judged whether a target character was included in a test character, which required either an intuitive process (the two characters were spatially separated/adjacent) or an analytical process (target characters were embedded in test characters). Women exhibited shorter reaction times and higher accuracy in intuitive materials for both inclusion and exclusion conditions. They elicited a larger P3b component with stronger parietal alpha power activity in the inclusion condition, and a larger P3b component in intuitive materials than men, indicating female preference for intuitive thinking in ECCT. Men elicited a larger N2 component with weaker parietal alpha power activity in the inclusion condition, indicating their preference for deliberative thinking in ECCT. The stereotype that women make wrong choices through intuitive thinking did not hold; instead, women demonstrated higher accuracy and faster speed than men in ECCT through intuition. The neural mechanism of gender difference in non-mathematic intuition is explained.
... Campitelli and Gerrans (2014) demonstrated that the CRT measures numerical ability, rational thinking, and a tendency for open-minded thinking in men and numerical ability and rational thinking in women. Second, previous studies found that women were more likely than men to give more intuitive, albeit incorrect, responses on the CRT (Campitelli & Gerrans, 2014;Cueva et al., 2016;Pennycook et al., 2016;Primi et al., 2016). According to Zhang et al. (2016), the relationship between gender and CRT score is mediated by quantitative self-efficacy, a measure of respondents' perceived competence and fluency with numerical information. ...
This survey study evaluated the relationship between cultural worldview and the occurrence of climate science misconceptions among 688 undergraduates at five colleges in the United States. The Worldview, Misconceptions, and Cognitive Reflection instrument was employed to measure respondents’ cultural worldview, climate science misconceptions using a three-tiered diagnostic test, and cognitive reflection ability. Binary logistic regression was used to test the extent to which hierarchy-egalitarianism, individualism-communitarianism, and cognitive reflection ability impacted the occurrence of ten common climate science misconceptions. Analysis revealed that the understanding of climate change science was low, while certainty of response was high. Misconceptions of climate-weather confusion and the magnitude of global warming were related to learners’ worldview. Motivated reasoning was suggested in hierarchist-leaning learners holding the misconception that recent climate changes are the result of natural cycles. Certain climate science misconceptions were related to learners’ cognitive reflection ability such as the misconception that sudden changes in weather are evidence of climate change, the misconception that global warming is caused by ozone layer depletion, and the misconception that global warming can be reduced by setting limitations on chemical waste released into rivers or by not building nuclear power plants. This investigation yielded an emergent finding and area of future research: respondents in this study differed significantly by gender in their worldview, cognitive reflection, and climate science misconceptions. Recommendations include using an intervention approach to boost numerical skills and quantitative self-efficacy in the climate science classroom, and addressing misconceptions with a refutation text.
... Gender differences may accure due to on average higher cognitive abilities of men and intuitive abilities of women and aversion to risk (Eckel and Grossman, 1998). Results were confirmed by other studies (Campitelli and Gerrans, 2014;Cueva et al., 2016;Pennycook et al., 2016). Campitelli and Gerrans (2014) showed that women struggled with inhibiting the intuitive response, especially in the case of the "bat and ball" problem. ...
... The standard CRT scores (between 0 and 3) were calculated as the total number of correct answers. The alternative iCRT scores (also ranging from 0 to 3) were calculated as number of intuitive but incorrect answers (see Supplementary Materials for the CRT questions and further information) 74 . ...
Humans frequently cooperate for collective benefit, even in one-shot social dilemmas. This provides a challenge for theories of cooperation. Two views focus on intuitions but offer conflicting explanations. The Social Heuristics Hypothesis argues that people with selfish preferences rely on cooperative intuitions and predicts that deliberation reduces cooperation. The Self-Control Account emphasizes control over selfish intuitions and is consistent with strong reciprocity—a preference for conditional cooperation in one-shot dilemmas. Here, we reconcile these explanations with each other as well as with strong reciprocity. We study one-shot cooperation across two main dilemma contexts, provision and maintenance, and show that cooperation is higher in provision than maintenance. Using time-limit manipulations, we experimentally study the cognitive processes underlying this robust result. Supporting the Self-Control Account, people are intuitively selfish in maintenance, with deliberation increasing cooperation. In contrast, consistent with the Social Heuristics Hypothesis, deliberation tends to increase the likelihood of free-riding in provision. Contextual differences between maintenance and provision are observed across additional measures: reaction time patterns of cooperation; social dilemma understanding; perceptions of social appropriateness; beliefs about others’ cooperation; and cooperation preferences. Despite these dilemma-specific asymmetries, we show that preferences, coupled with beliefs, successfully predict the high levels of cooperation in both maintenance and provision dilemmas. While the effects of intuitions are context-dependent and small, the widespread preference for strong reciprocity is the primary driver of one-shot cooperation. We advance the Contextualised Strong Reciprocity account as a unifying framework and consider its implications for research and policy.
... In turn, without controlling for strategic reasoning, there are several studies that-in line with our approach-use CRT as a tool to classify participants and to assess the relationship between their ability to engage in cognitive reflection and pro sociality. The results of this type of studies are inconclusive, indeed while some find a positive relation between the CRT and pro sociality (trust and social efficiency) 13,45,46 , some that find a negative relationship [47][48][49][50] . ...
Is pro sociality a natural impulse or the result of a self-controlled behavior? We investigate this issue in a lab in the field experiment with participants from the general adult population in Italy. We find two key results: first, that there is a positive relationship between pro sociality and strategic reasoning. Second, that reflectivity relates to lower pro sociality but only among strategic subjects, indicating that the intuitive view of pro sociality is valid only among strategic individuals. Non-strategic individuals are instead intuitively selfish. We surmise that these results emerge due to a common cognitive root between strategizing and pro sociality, namely empathy.
... Full experimental instructions, including those of all the tasks included in the questionnaire which are used in this study, can be found in Appendix B1 in the supplementary materials. As we show in the supplementary Table S1 (models 1b and 2b), all these results are robust to controlling for the decision maker's gender (Frederick 2005, Bosch-Domènech et al. 2014, Cueva et al. 2016, CRT score (Corgnet et al. 2015, 2016, Capraro et al. 2017a, distributional social preferences (Kanagaretnam et al. 2009, Corgnet et al. 2015, Capraro et al. 2017a), time preferences (Espín et al. 2012(Espín et al. , 2019, and risk preferences (Kanagaretnam et al. 2009, Houser et al. 2010, that could work as potential confounding factors. ...
Human decisions in the social domain are modulated by the interaction between intuitive and reflective processes. Requiring individuals to decide quickly or slowly triggers these processes and is thus likely to elicit different social behaviors. Meanwhile, time pressure has been associated with inefficiency in market settings and market regulation often requires individuals to delay their decisions via cooling-off periods. Yet, recent research suggests that people who make reflective decisions are met with distrust. If this extends to external time constraints, then forcing individuals to delay their decisions may be counterproductive in scenarios where trust considerations are important. In three Trust Game experiments (total n = 1,872), including within- and between-subjects designs, we test whether individuals trust more someone who is forced to respond quickly (intuitively) or slowly (reflectively). We find that trustors do not adjust their behavior (or their beliefs) to the trustee’s time conditions. This seems to be an appropriate response because time constraints do not affect trustees’ behavior, at least when the game decisions are binary (trust vs. don’t trust; reciprocate vs. don’t reciprocate) and therefore mistakes cannot explain choices. Thus, delayed decisions per se do not seem to elicit distrust.
... Cabs are associated with more risk taking, which is consistent with previous studies using administrative and survey data (see, for instance, Cokely and Kelley 2009, Burks et al. 2009, Dohmen et al. 2010, Campitelli and Labollita 2010, Brañas-Garza and Rustichini 2011, 3 Rustichini et al. 2012, Benjamin et al. 2013, Taylor 2013, Booth et al. 2014, Cueva et al. 2015and Park 2016 ). According to Dohmen et al. (2018), however, a closer look at the existing results suggests that the sign of this relationship may change depending on whether lotteries involve both gains and losses or only gains. ...
There is an intense debate whether risk-taking behavior is partially driven by cognitive abilities. The critical issue is whether choices arising from subjects with lower cognitive abilities are more likely driven by errors or lack of understanding than pure preferences for risk. The latter implies that the often-argued link between risk preferences and cognitive abilities (a common finding is that abilities relate negatively to risk aversion and positively to loss aversion) might be a spurious correlation. This experiment reports evidence from a sample of 556 participants who made choices in two risk-related tasks and completed three cognitive tasks, all with real monetary incentives: number-additions (including incentive-compatible expected number of correct additions), the Cognitive Reflection Test (to measure analytical/reflective thinking) and the Remote Associates Test (for convergent thinking). Results are unambiguous: none of our cognition measures plays any systematic role on risky decision making. Using structural equation modeling and factor analysis, we show that cognitive abilities are negatively associated with noisy, inconsistent choices and this effect may make higher ability individuals appear to be less risk averse and more loss averse. Yet we show that errors are more likely to appear when the two payoffs in a given decision exhibit similar probability. Therefore, our results suggest that failing to account for noisy decision making might have led to erroneously inferring a correlation between cognitive abilities and risk preferences in previous studies.
We investigate the relationship between intelligence and prosocial behaviour, using administrative data on cognitive ability, charitable giving, voting, and possession of eco-friendly cars for 1.2 million individuals. We find strong positive associations for all three behaviours, which remain when using twin-pair fixed-effects to account for confounders. We also find that general (fluid) intelligence is a stronger predictor than other dimensions of cognitive ability, and that most of the relationship remains after controlling for a set of mediators, suggesting a direct impact on prosocial behaviour. Finally, we show that cognitive ability is also positively related to a survey measure of altruism.
Introduction
Gender differences in cognitive and operational abilities have been identified. Yet, their interrelationship remains underexplored. This prevents tailored evidence-based selection, allowing discrimination to persist.
Methods
Data from a test battery of operational and cognitive tests was analyzed. In total 2,743 aviation pilot candidates’ test scores were analyzed.
Results
Males had a significantly higher score on mental spatial ability, memory retention, abstract problem solving, multitasking ability (MU), and manual spatial ability (MSA); and females on perceptual speed. Correlations between MU and MSA [difference = 0.269 (95% CI: 0.114; 0.405)] and between MSA and perceptual speed [difference = 0.186 (95% CI: 0.027; 0.332)] were significantly stronger among female applicants. A high MSA score was more predictive of a high score on MU, Perceptual speed, and Memory for female compared with male applicants (p < 0.002 for the MSA score × sex interaction effect in all three cases).
Discussion
Interpretation of test scores in between genders potentially may need to look different for final selection decisions for operational professions, as female test profiles were shown to exhibit greater homogeneity.
Do more intelligent investors take better economic decisions than less intelligent ones? Is risk attitude, in particular risk/loss aversion, linked to cognitive ability? Does an investor's cognitive ability impact his/her patience? Is financial performance positively linked to investor's intelligence? These research questions have become highly relevant with the development of behavioral economics and behavioral finance, following the recognition that humans are not homo economicus. This paper reviews the several strands of literature devoted to answering the above questions. We first discuss the barely debated definitions and measures of intelligence/cognitive ability used in psychology, economics, and finance. We then review the results related to the (controversial) link between risk aversion and cognitive ability. We observe that the literature provides clear results for patience; individuals with a higher level of cognitive ability being more patient on average. Finally, we review the contributions linking (successfully or not) portfolio choice and financial performance to cognitive ability.
We study experimentally cooperation in group contests under a new sharing rule that captures elements of coopetitive setups that are often characterized by the tension between cooperation and competition. It introduces an allocation of the obtained prize which is inversely proportional to individual efforts. We use it to study if the pervasive over-expenditure observed in group contests remains even when individual effort is extremely disincentivized and compare its effects with the egalitarian sharing rule. Participants in our experiment make more effort with the egalitarian than with the inverse proportional rule, but we document a sizeable over-expenditure even with the inverse proportional rule. We find that contribution in a public goods game is positively associated with effort in the group contest. Social value orientation, risk attitudes, competitiveness, or other personality traits do not predict behavior consistently.
Brenner and Vriend (2006) argued (experimentally and theoretically) that one should not expect proposers in ultimatum games to learn to converge to the subgame perfect Nash equilibrium offer, as finding the optimal offer is a hard learning problem for (boundedly-rational) proposers. In this paper we show that providing the proposers with given (fixed) acceptance probabilities (essentially eliminating the learning task) leads to somewhat lower offers, but still substantially above the monetary payoff-maximizing offer. By using a Risk Attitude test and a Probability Matching test, we show experimentally that the proposers’ attitude with respect to risk, as well as their ability to interpret and deal with probabilities may matter when it comes to making UG offers. Thus, we argue that the lack of convergence to the minimum offers in ultimatum games may be related to the inherent stochasticity of typical UG experiments, highlighting a possible cause of such deviations that seems a complementary explanation to existing ones.
Many decisions in the economic and social domain are made under time constraints, be it under time pressure or forced delay. Requiring individuals to decide quickly or slowly often elicit different responses. Time pressure has been associated with inefficiency in market settings and market regulation often requires individuals to delay their decisions via cooling-off periods. Yet, recent research suggests that people who make reflective decisions are met with distrust. If this extends to external time constraints, then forcing individuals to delay their decisions may be counterproductive in scenarios where trust considerations are important, such as in market and organizational design. In three Trust Game experiments (total number of participants = 1872), including within- and between-subjects designs, we test whether individuals trust (more) someone who is forced to respond quickly (intuitively) or slowly (reflectively). We find that trustors do not adjust their behavior (or their beliefs) to the trustee’s time conditions. This seems to be an appropriate response because time constraints do not affect trustees’ behavior, at least when the game decisions are binary (trust vs. don’t trust; reciprocate vs. don’t reciprocate) and therefore mistakes cannot explain choices. Thus, delayed decisions per se do not seem to elicit distrust.
The risk attitudes of market participants have an important influence on market behavior. We measure risk aversion, prudence and temperance in a sample of 173 financial experts. These experts are traders, analysts, or work in support or commercial functions in the financial industry, which routinely deals with risk. To assess their risk attitudes relative to the broader population, we compare their decisions with those of a demographically representative sample and of university students that are reported in the study of Noussair et al. (2014). The experts were more risk-seeking and intemperate than individuals in the other two groups. They were also more imprudent than students, though similarly prudent to the general population.
Human decisions in the social domain are modulated by the interaction between intuitive and reflective processes. Requiring individuals to decide quickly or slowly triggers these processes and is thus likely to elicit different social behaviors. Meanwhile, time pressure has been associated with inefficiency in market settings and market regulation often requires individuals to delay their decisions via cooling-off periods. Yet, recent research suggests that people who make reflective decisions are met with distrust. If this extends to external time constraints, then forcing individuals to delay their decisions may be counterproductive in scenarios where trust considerations are important. In three Trust Game experiments (total n = 1,872), including within-and between-subjects designs, we test whether individuals trust more someone who is forced to respond quickly (intuitively) or slowly (reflectively). We find that trustors do not adjust their behavior (or their beliefs) to the trustee's time conditions. This seems to be an appropriate response because time constraints do not affect trustees' behavior, at least when the game decisions are binary (trust vs. don't trust; reciprocate vs. don't reciprocate) and therefore mistakes cannot explain choices. Thus, delayed decisions per se do not seem to elicit distrust.
This paper provides experimental evidence on the relationship between social preferences and cognitive abilities, which we measure using the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT). We elicit social preferences by way of 24 dictatorial situations, in which the Dictator's choice sets include (i) standard Dictator games, where increasing the Dictator's payoff yields a loss for the Recipient, (ii) efficient Dictator games, where increasing the Dictator's payoff also increases that the Recipient's; as well as other situations in which (iii) either the Dictator's or (iv) the Recipient's monetary payoff is held constant. We partition our subject pool into three groups: reflective (scoring 2 or more in the CRT), impulsive (opting twice or more for the "intuitive" but wrong answers in the CRT) and the remainder. We find that impulsive Dictators show a marked inequity aversion attitude, especially in standard Dictator Games. By contrast, reflective Dictators show lower distributional concerns, except for the situations in which the Dictators' payoff is held constant. In this case, reflective Dictators give significantly more.
Excessive working hours—even at night—are becoming increasingly common in our modern 24/7 society. The prefrontal cortex (PFC) is particularly vulnerable to the effects of sleep loss and, consequently, the specific behaviors subserved by the functional integrity of the PFC, such as risk-taking and pro-social behavior, may be affected significantly. This paper seeks to assess the effects of one night of sleep deprivation on subjects' risk and social preferences, which are probably the most explored behavioral domains in the tradition of Experimental Economics. This novel cross-over study employs thirty-two university students (gender-balanced) participating to 2 counterbalanced laboratory sessions in which they perform standard risk and social preference elicitation protocols. One session was after one night of undisturbed sleep at home, and the other was after one night of sleep deprivation in the laboratory. Sleep deprivation causes increased sleepiness and decreased alertness in all subjects. After sleep loss males make riskier decisions compared to the rested condition, while females do the opposite. Females likewise show decreased inequity aversion after sleep deprivation. As for the relationship between cognitive ability and economic decisions, sleep deprived individuals with higher cognitive reflection show lower risk aversion and more altruistic behavior. These results show that one night of sleep deprivation alters economic behavior in a gender-sensitive way. Females' reaction to sleep deprivation , characterized by reduced risky choices and increased egoism compared to males, may be related to intrinsic psychological gender differences, such as in the way men and women weigh up probabilities in their decision-making, and/or to the different neurofunc-tional substrate of their decision-making.
Background
When asked to solve mathematical problems, some people experience anxiety and threat, which can lead to impaired mathematical performance (Curr Dir Psychol Sci 11:181–185, 2002). The present studies investigated the link between mathematical anxiety and performance on the cognitive reflection test (CRT; J Econ Perspect 19:25–42, 2005). The CRT is a measure of a person’s ability to resist intuitive response tendencies, and it correlates strongly with important real-life outcomes, such as time preferences, risk-taking, and rational thinking.
Methods
In Experiments 1 and 2 the relationships between maths anxiety, mathematical knowledge/mathematical achievement, test anxiety and cognitive reflection were analysed using mediation analyses. Experiment 3 included a manipulation of working memory load. The effects of anxiety and working memory load were analysed using ANOVAs.
Results
Our experiments with university students (Experiments 1 and 3) and secondary school students (Experiment 2) demonstrated that mathematical anxiety was a significant predictor of cognitive reflection, even after controlling for the effects of general mathematical knowledge (in Experiment 1), school mathematical achievement (in Experiment 2) and test anxiety (in Experiments 1–3). Furthermore, Experiment 3 showed that mathematical anxiety and burdening working memory resources with a secondary task had similar effects on cognitive reflection.
Conclusions
Given earlier findings that showed a close link between cognitive reflection, unbiased decisions and rationality, our results suggest that mathematical anxiety might be negatively related to individuals’ ability to make advantageous choices and good decisions.
Literature on Digit Ratio is rapidly growing in Economics. Quite surprisingly we observe that there is no consensus about how to make an accurate measurement in such a delicate task. Along this brief document we offer some concise guidance of how to scan the hands using digital scanners and provide a comprehensive guideline to make a reliable measurement of the 2D:4D. Furthermore, we point out the most common imaging and measurement errors. We also provide a number of hints aimed to avoid these errors that in some cases may cause systematic inaccuracies.
The Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) is a test introduced by Frederick (2005). The task is designed to measure the tendency to override an intuitive response that is incorrect and to engage in further reflection that leads to the correct response. The consistent sex differences in CRT performance may suggest a role for prenatal sex hormones. A now widely studied putative marker for relative prenatal testosterone is the second-to-fourth digit ratio (2D:4D). This paper tests to what extent 2D:4D, as a proxy for the prenatal ratio of testosterone/estrogens, can predict CRT scores in a sample of 623 students. After controlling for sex, we observe that a lower 2D:4D (reflecting a relative higher exposure to testosterone) is significantly associated with a higher number of correct answers. The result holds for both hands’ 2D:4Ds. In addition, the effect appears to be stronger for females than for males. We also control for patience and math proficiency, which are significantly related to performance in the CRT. But the effect of 2D:4D on performance in CRT is not reduced with these controls, implying that these variables are not mediating the relationship between digit ratio and CRT.
Three different measures of the Big Five personality dimensions were developed from the battery of questionnaires used in the National Merit Twin Study: one from trait self-rating scales, one from personality inventory items, and one from an adjective check list. Behavior-genetic models were fit to what the three measures had in common, and to the variance distinctive to each. The results of the model fitting agreed with other recent studies in showing the Big Five dimensions to be substantially and about equally heritable, with little or no contribution of shared family environment. Heritabilities for males and females did not differ significantly. For Agreeableness and Conscientiousness, some effect of shared environment was found for measure-specific variance on the personality inventory, and for Extraversion and Neuroticism, models involving nonadditive genetic variance or twin contrast effects provided slightly better fits.
In this paper, we undertake an assessment of the rapidly growing body of research on financial literacy. We start with an overview of theoretical research which costs financial knowledge as a form of investment in human capital. Endogenizing financial knowledge has important implications for welfare as well as policies intended to enhance levels of financial knowledge in the larger population. Next, we draw on recent surveys to establish how much (or how little) people know and identify the least financially savvy population subgroups. This is followed by an examination of the impact of financial literacy on economic decision-making in the United States and elsewhere. While the literature is still growing, conclusions may be drawn about the effects and consequences of financial illiteracy and what works to remedy these gaps. A final section offers thoughts on what remains to be learned if researchers are to better inform theoretical and empirical models as well as public policy.
This study examined the differential impact on 79 high school students of a personal financial management course completed 1 to 4 years earlier. This study used a matched sample design based on a school system's records to identify students who had and had not taken a course in personal financial management. The findings indicated that those who took the course were no more financially literate than those who had not. In addition, those who took the course did not evaluate themselves to be more savings-oriented and did not appear to have better financial behavior than those who had not taken the course. The study raises serious questions about the longer - term effectiveness of high school financial literacy courses.
Gene-culture co-evolution emphasizes the joint role of culture and genes for the emergence of altruistic and cooperative behaviors and behavioral genetics provides estimates of their relative importance. However, these approaches cannot assess which biological traits determine altruism or how. We analyze the association between altruism in adults and the exposure to prenatal sex hormones, using the second-to-fourth digit ratio. We find an inverted U-shaped relation for left and right hands, which is very consistent for men and less systematic for women. Subjects with both high and low digit ratios give less than individuals with intermediate digit ratios. We repeat the exercise with the same subjects seven months later and find a similar association, even though subjects' behavior differs the second time they play the game. We then construct proxies of the median digit ratio in the population (using more than 1000 different subjects), show that subjects' altruism decreases with the distance of their ratio to these proxies. These results provide direct evidence that prenatal events contribute to the variation of altruistic behavior and that the exposure to fetal hormones is one of the relevant biological factors. In addition, the findings suggest that there might be an optimal level of exposure to these hormones from social perspective.
This paper reports a three-phase experiment on a stylized labor market. In the first two phases, agents face simple games, which we use to estimate subjects' social and reciprocity concerns. In the last phase, four principals compete by offering agents a contract from a fixed menu. Then, agents "choose to work" for a principal by selecting one of the available contracts. We find that (i) (heterogeneous) social preferences are significant determinants of choices, (ii) for both principals and agents, strategic uncertainty aversion is a stronger determinant of choices than fairness, and (iii) agents display a marked propensity to work for principals with similar distributional concerns. (JEL D82, D86, J41)
Although there have been several reports of high correlations between Wonderlic Personnel Test scores and Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) Full Scale IQ, findings have been inconsistent in psychiatric samples. Sample differences and differences between the WAIS and the revised WAIS (WAIS—R) were considered likely reasons. In this study of relatively nonagitated but chronically ill psychiatric patients (
N = 18), Wonderlic IQ estimation accuracy and Wonderlic/WAIS—R correlations were consistent with data previously reported for the WAIS, and generally support the value of the Wonderlic as a highly economical measure of general intelligence. However, the inability of 1 subject to manage the Wonderlic format suggests that severe visuospatial impairment can invalidate this test. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
This paper explores the interface between personality psychology and economics. We examine the predictive power of personality and the stability of personality traits over the life cycle. We develop simple analytical frameworks for interpreting the evidence in personality psychology and suggest promising avenues for future research.
We design experiments to jointly elicit risk and time preferences for the adult Danish population. We find that joint elicitation results in estimates of time preferences that are dramatically lower than those found in previous studies. Estimation of latent time preferences requires that one specify a theoretical structure to understand risk and time choices, but we show that our main results are robust to popular alternative specifications such as quasi-hyperbolic or hyperbolic discounting and prospect theoretic formulations of choice under uncertainty. We also find evidence that behavior is consistent with standard, exponential discounting models. These results have direct implications for attempts to elicit time preferences, as well as debates over the appropriate domain of the utility function when characterizing risk aversion and time consistency.
We conduct dictator game experiments in which women and men are allowed to split $10 with a completely unknown person or a person of known gender. Subjects also complete personality and cognitive tests. We find that (a) gender information significantly affects giving only in the case of women, who give systematically less to women than to men and persons of unknown gender; (b) largely on account of this difference, women give less than men on average, although the difference is not statistically significant; and (c) giving is significantly explained, especially for women, by personality measures and the cognition score.
This paper undertakes an assessment of a rapidly growing body of economic research on financial literacy. We start with an overview of theoretical research which casts financial knowledge as a form of investment in human capital. Endogenizing financial knowledge has important implications for welfare as well as policies intended to enhance levels of financial knowledge in the larger population. Next, we draw on recent surveys to establish how much (or how little) people know and identify the least financially savvy population subgroups. This is followed by an examination of the impact of financial literacy on economic decision-making in the United States and elsewhere. While the literature is still young, conclusions may be drawn about the effects and consequences of financial illiteracy and what works to remedy these gaps. A final section offers thoughts on what remains to be learned if researchers are to better inform theoretical and empirical models as well as public policy.
This paper reconsiders the wide agreement that females are more risk averse than males. We survey the existing experimental literature, finding that significance and magnitude of gender differences are task specific. We gather data from 54 replications of the Holt and Laury risk elicitation method, involving about 7,000 subjects. Gender differences appear in less than 10% of the studies and are significant but negligible in magnitude once all the data are pooled. Results are confirmed by structural estimations, which also support a constant relative risk aversion representation of preferences. Gender differences correlate with the presence of a safe option and fixed probabilities in the elicitation method.
This paper examines the relationship between public good game (PGG) contributions and cognitive abilities assessed by the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT). Employing two additional treatment conditions, the paper explores (i) whether CRT-scores are linked to preferences for cooperation or to a better understanding of the incentive structure; and (ii) the association between CRT-scores and contributions, if choices are elicited under time pressure. A time limit should make it harder for participants to base their choices on cognitive reflection. I find a strong and positive relationship between CRT-scores and contributions in a standard one-shot PGG. This relationship is fully moderated by the presence of time pressure. Thus, features of the decision environment can affect the link between cognitive abilities and PGG contributions. Finally, there is only a weak relationship between CRT-scores and the ability to understand the incentive structure.
This paper experimentally analyses the relationship between cognitive ability and strategic behaviour. In our experiment, individuals play in a sequential game, where computing the equilibrium is challenging. On completion of the game, we measure each player’s cognitive ability using Raven’s Progressive Matrices test. Our results reveal that the number of strategic decisions (played in the sequential game) increases significantly among those individuals with higher cognitive ability (measured by the Raven’s test), compared to those with lower cognitive ability. These results clearly confirm that individuals with higher cognitive abilities play more strategically.
This article establishes that a low-dimensional vector of cognitive and noncognitive skills explains a variety of labor market and behavioral outcomes. Our analysis addresses the problems of measurement error, imperfect proxies, and reverse causality that plague conventional studies. Noncognitive skills strongly influence schooling decisions and also affect wages, given schooling decisions. Schooling, employment, work experience, and choice of occupation are affected by latent noncognitive and cognitive skills. We show that the same low-dimensional vector of abilities that explains schooling choices, wages, employment, work experience, and choice of occupation explains a wide variety of risky behaviors.
Many studies have looked at how individual player traits influence individual choice in the repeated prisoner's dilemma, but few studies have looked at how the average traits of pairs of players influence the average choices of pairs. We consider cognitive ability, patience, risk tolerance, and the Big Five personality measures as predictors of individual and average group choices in a 10-round repeated prisoner's dilemma. We find that a pair's average cognitive ability measured by Raven's cognitive ability test predicts average cooperation rates robustly and average earnings more modestly. Openness predicts both greater joint cooperation and the use of reciprocity to sustain cooperation.
We compare two different measures of impulsive or intuitive behavior, the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) and a well-established psychological scale known as “Faith in Intuition” (FI), and investigate their relation to common biases in probability judgment. Using data from two laboratory experiments and a series of classroom experiments, the evidence we obtain is mixed. CRT scores and FI correlated in two data sets out of three. Both measures appear to be partially informative for some of the biases, but the effects are not systematic and depend on which exact probability-judgment question is used. Overall, CRT scores explain more variance in probability-judgment biases than FI scores. Further, gender effects interact with FI but not with CRT.
Students at the United States Naval Academy have the opportunity to take a Career Starter Loan (CSL). Two military-oriented banks offer these large personal loans at very low interest rates to all students. Thus the CSL provides a novel opportunity to study the behavior of a sample of borrowers that is not selected due to credit history and is often too liquidity-constrained to invest. Using survey data, this paper examines borrowers’ investment and consumption decisions in relation to their cognitive ability (measured by the Cognitive Reflection Test, the SAT, and grade point average), personality traits (captured by the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator), and other demographic characteristics. Tobit models reveal that: (1) cognitive ability is positively associated with more investment and riskier choices; (2) some MBTI personality traits are strong predictors of investment behavior; (3) individuals with prior investment experience or who view themselves as financially literate tend to invest more and with more risk; (4) these findings are largely consistent across students from all income levels.
We assess the effect of cognitive abilities on withdrawal decisions in a bank-run game. In our setup, depositors choose sequentially between withdrawing or keeping their funds deposited in a common bank. Depositors may observe previous decisions depending on the information structure. Theoretically, the last depositor in the sequence of decisions has a dominant strategy and should always keep the funds deposited, regardless of what she observes (if anything). Recognizing the dominant strategy, however, is not always straightforward. If there exists strategic uncertainty (e.g., if the last depositor has no information regarding the decisions of predecessors), then the identification of the dominant strategy is more difficult than in a situation with no strategic uncertainty (e.g., the last depositor is informed about all previous decisions). We find that cognitive abilities, as measured by the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT), predict withdrawals in the presence of strategic uncertainty (participants with stronger abilities tend to identify the dominant strategy more easily) but that the CRT does not predict behavior when strategic uncertainty is absent.
We study the effect of the addition of a futures market, in which contracts maturing in the last period of the life of the asset can be traded. Our experiment has two treatments, one in which a spot market operates on its own, and a second treatment in which a spot and futures market are active simultaneously. We find that the futures market reduces spot market mispricing among a trader population prone to bubbles, while having no effect on mispricing in a group not prone to it. Thus, overall, futures markets aid price discovery in the spot market, although the futures markets themselves exhibit considerable overpricing. Individuals with higher cognitive reflection test (CRT) scores achieve greater earnings, as they tend to sell in the overpriced futures market, while traders with lower CRT score make purchases in the futures market. We also consider the predictive power of an enhanced CRT measure (ECRT), which weights two types of incorrect answers differently.
Economists and psychologists have developed a variety of experimental methodologies to elicit and assess individual risk attitudes. Choosing which to utilize, however, is largely dependent on the question one wants to answer, as well as the characteristics of the sample population. The goal of this paper is to present a series of prevailing methods for eliciting risk preferences and outline the advantages and disadvantages of each. We do not attempt to give a comprehensive account of all the methods or nuances of measuring risk, but rather to outline some advantages and disadvantages of different methods.
We measured the game behavior and analytic reasoning skills of expert strategic reasoners: professional GO players. We argue for a distinction between what we call "strategic" and "analytic" reasoning skills and present separate measures to elicit strategic and analytic abilities. The paper investigates the behavior of our subject pool in many different types of one-shot games, including the Traveler's Dilemma, Centipede, Kreps, and Matching Pennies games. We observe that increased strategic skill predicts a greater probability of Nash behavior, while greater analytic skill predicts more efficient (cooperative) play, even when such behavior is inconsistent with individual rationality.
Recent experimental studies suggest that risk aversion is negatively related to cognitive ability. In this paper we report evidence that this relation might be spurious. We recruit a large subject pool drawn from the general Danish population for our experiment. By presenting subjects with choice tasks that vary the bias induced by random choices, we are able to generate both negative and positive correlations between risk aversion and cognitive ability. Structural estimation allowing for heterogeneity of noise yields no significant relation between risk aversion and cognitive ability. Our results suggest that cognitive ability is related to random decision making, rather than to risk preferences.
This study investigated the relation of the "Big Five" personality di- mensions (Extraversion, Emotional Stability, Agreeableness, Consci- entiousness, and Openness to Experience) to three job performance criteria (job proficiency, training proficiency, and personnel data) for five occupational groups (professionals, police, managers, sales, and skilled/semi-skilled). Results indicated that one dimension of person- ality. Conscientiousness, showed consistent relations with all job per- formance criteria for all occupational groups. For the remaining per- sonality dimensions, the estimated true score correlations varied by occupational group and criterion type. Extraversion was a valid pre- dictor for two occupations involving social interaction, managers and sales (across criterion types). Also, both Openness to Experience and Extraversion were valid predictors of the training proficiency criterion (across occupations). Other personality dimensions were also found to be valid predictors for some occupations and some criterion types, but the magnitude of the estimated true score correlations was small (p < .10). Overall, the results illustrate the benefits of using the 5- factor model of personality to accumulate and communicate empirical findings. The findings have numerous implications for research and practice in personnel psychology, especially in the subfields of person- nel selection, training and development, and performance appraisal.
z-Tree (Zurich Toolbox for Ready-made Economic Experiments) is a software for developing and conducting economic experiments. The software is stable and allows programming almost any kind of experiments in a short time. In this article, I present the guiding principles behind the software design, its features, and its limitations
Given C samples, with ni observations in the ith sample, a test of the hypothesis that the samples are from the same population may be made by ranking the observations from from 1 to Σni (giving each observation in a group of ties the mean of the ranks tied for), finding the C sums of ranks, and computing a statistic H. Under the stated hypothesis, H is distributed approximately as χ(C – 1), unless the samples are too small, in which case special approximations or exact tables are provided. One of the most important applications of the test is in detecting differences among the population means.** Based in part on research supported by the Office of Naval Research at the Statistical Research Center, University of Chicago.
We study experimentally how players learn to make decisions if they face many different (normal-form) games. Games are generated randomly from a uniform distribution in each of 100 rounds. We find that agents do extrapolate between games but learn to play strategically equivalent games in the same way. If either there are few games or if explicit information about the opponent''s behavior is provided (or both) convergence to the unique Nash equilibrium generally occurs. Otherwise this is not the case and play converges to a distribution of actions which is Non-Nash. Action choices, though, that cannot be explained by theoretical models of either belief-bundling or action bundling are never observed. Estimating different learning models we find that Nash choices are best explained by finer categorizations than Non-Nash choices. Furthermore participants scoring better in the "Cognitive Reflection Test" choose Nash actions more often than other participants.
This paper analyzes cognitive effort in 6 different one-shot p-beauty games. We use both Raven and Cognitive Reflection tests to identify subjects' abilities. We find that the Raven test does not provide any insight on beauty contest game playing but CRT does: subjects with higher scores on this test are more prone to play dominant strategies.
Although there is an increasing interest in examining the relationship between cognitive ability and economic behavior, less is known about the relationship between cognitive ability and social preferences. We investigate the relationship between consequential measures of cognitive ability and measures of social preferences. We have data on a series of small-stakes dictator-type decisions, known as Social Value Orientation (SVO), in addition to choices in a larger-stakes dictator game. We also have access to the grade point averages(GPA) and SAT (formerly referred to as the Scholastic Aptitude Test) outcomes of our subjects. We find that subjects who perform better on the Math portion of the SAT are more generous in both the dictator game and the SVO measure. By contrast we find that subjects with a higher GPA are more selfish in the dictator game and more generous according to the SVO. We also find some evidence that the subjects with higher GPA and higher SAT out-comes offer more consistent responses. Our results involving GPA and social preferences complement previous work which employ measures of cognitive ability which are sensitive to the intrinsic motivation of the subject. Our results involving SAT scores are without precedent in the literature and suggest that measures of cognitive ability, which are less sensitive to the intrinsic motivation of the subject, are positively related to generosity.
L'auteur discute un modele a cinq facteurs de la personnalite qu'il confronte a d'autres systemes de la personnalite et dont les correlats des dimensions sont analyses ainsi que les problemes methodologiques
A general two-stage theory of human inference is proposed. A distinction is drawn between heuristic processes which select items of task information as ‘relevant’, and analytic processes which operate on the selected items to generate inferences or judgements.
These two stages are illustrated in a selective review of work on both deductive and statistical reasoning. Factors identified as contributing to heuristic selection include perceptual salience, linguistic suppositions and semantic associations. Analytic processes are considered to be context dependent: people reason from experience, not from inference rules. The paper includes discussion of the theory in comparison with other contemporary theories of human inference, and in relation to the current debate about human rationality.
Many human behaviors, from mating to food acquisition and aggressiveness, entail some degree of risk. Testosterone, a steroid hormone, has been implicated in a wide range of such behaviors in men. However, little is known about the specific relationship between testosterone and risk preferences. In this article, we explore the relationship between prenatal and pubertal testosterone exposure, current testosterone, and financial risk preferences in men. Using a sample of 98 men, we find that risk-taking in an investment game with potential for real monetary payoffs correlates positively with salivary testosterone levels and facial masculinity, with the latter being a proxy of pubertal hormone exposure. 2D:4D, which has been proposed as a proxy for prenatal hormone exposure, did not correlate significantly with risk preferences. Although this is a study of association, the results may shed light on biological determinants of risk preferences.
In an experiment using two-bidder first-price sealed bid auctions with symmetric independent private values, we scan also the right hand of each subject. We study how the ratio of the length of the index and ring fingers (2D:4D) of the right hand, a measure of prenatal hormone exposure, is correlated with bidding behavior and total prots. 2D:4D has been reported to predict competitiveness in sports competition (Manning and Taylor, 2001, and Honekopp, Manning and Muller, 2006), risk aversion in an investment task (Dreber and Homan, 2007, Garbarino et al., 2010), and the average profitability of high-frequency traders in financial markets (Coates, Gurnell and Rustichini, 2009). We do not find any significant correlation between 2D:4D on either bidding or profits. However, our study raises an issue of ethnic differences with respect to 2D:4D.
Although there is an increasing interest in examining the relationship between cognitive ability and economic behavior, less is known about the relationship between cognitive ability and social preferences. We investigate the relationship between significant measures of intelligence and measures of social preferences. We have data on a series of small-stakes dictator-type decisions, known as Social Value Orientation (SVO), in addition to choices in a larger-stakes dictator game. We also have access to the grade point averages (GPA) and SAT (formerly referred to as the Scholastic Aptitude Test) outcomes of our subjects. We find that subjects who perform better on the math portion of the SAT are more generous in both the dictator game and the SVO measure. By contrast we find that subjects with a higher GPA are more selfish in the dictator game and more generous according to the SVO. We also find that the consistency of the subjects is related to GPA but we do not find evidence that it is related to either portion of the SAT.
The present study investigated the relationship of traits from the 5-factor model of personality (often termed the “Big Five”) and general mental ability with career success. Career success was argued to be comprised of intrinsic success (job satisfaction) and extrinsic success (income and occupational status) dimensions. Data were obtained from the Intergenerational Studies, a set of 3 studies that followed participants from early childhood to retirement. The most general findings were that conscientiousness positively predicted intrinsic and extrinsic career success, neuroticism negatively predicted extrinsic success, and general mental ability positively predicted extrinsic career success. Personality was related to career success controlling for general mental ability and, though adulthood measures of the Big Five traits were more strongly related to career success than were childhood measures, both contributed unique variance in explaining career success.
This paper demonstrates gender differences in risk aversion and ambiguity aversion. It also contributes to a growing literature relating economic preference parameters to psychological measures by asking whether variations in preference parameters among persons, and in particular across genders, can be accounted for by differences in personality traits and traits of cognition. Women are more risk-averse than men. Over an initial range, women require no further compensation for the introduction of ambiguity but men do. At greater levels of ambiguity, women have the same marginal distaste for increased ambiguity as men. Psychological variables account for some of the interpersonal variation in risk aversion. They explain none of the differences in ambiguity. (JEL: J24, D03, D80) (c) 2009 by the European Economic Association.
ABSTRACT The genetic and environmental etiology of the five-factor model of personality as measured by the revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R) was assessed using 123 pairs of identical twins and 127 pairs of fraternal twins. Broad genetic influence on the five dimensions of Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness was estimated at 41%, 53%, 61%, 41%, and 44%, respectively. The facet scales also showed substantial heritability, although for several facets the genetic influence was largely nonadditive. The influence of the environment was consistent across all dimensions and facets. Shared environmental influences accounted for a negligible proportion of the variance in most scales, whereas nonshared environmental influences accounted for the majority of the environmental variance in all scales.
In a large-scale laboratory experiment, we investigate whether subjects' scores on the cognitive reflection test (CRT) are related to their susceptibility to the base rate fallacy, the conservatism bias, overconfidence, and the endowment effect.
We use a simple, three-item test for cognitive abilities to investigate whether established behavioral biases that play a prominent role in behavioral economics and finance are related to cognitive abilities. We find that higher test scores on the cognitive reflection test of Frederick [Frederick, S., 2005. Cognitive reflection and decision-making. Journal of Economic Perspectives 19, 25-42] indeed are correlated with lower incidences of the conjunction fallacy and conservatism in updating probabilities. Test scores are also significantly related to subjects' time and risk preferences. Test scores have no influence on the amount of anchoring, although there is evidence of anchoring among all subjects. Even if incidences of most biases are lower for people with higher cognitive abilities, they still remain substantial.
Because the rewards of academic performance in college are often delayed, the delay-discounting model of impulsiveness (Ainslie (1975) [Ainslie, G. Specious reward: A behavioral theory of impulsiveness and impulse control. Psychological Bulletin, 82 (4), 463–496] predicts that academic performance should tend to decrease as people place less weight on future outcomes. To test this hypothesis, we estimated (hyperbolic) discount rates for real delayed monetary rewards (US20) using second-price auction procedures with 247 undergraduates at two liberal arts colleges. College GPA was reliably correlated with discount rates, r=−.19 (p=.003), and remained reliable after partialling out SAT scores. The results add to the external validity of the discounting model of impulsiveness, and point to a possible contributor to academic performance of interest in the study of higher education.
We find that the actual willingness to pay for various consumer goods can be manipulated by an uninformative anchor, replicating Ariely et al. (2003). We furthermore demonstrate that the anchoring effect decreases but does not vanish with higher cognitive ability.