Cognitive (Ir)reflection: New Experimental Evidence

Carlos Cueva, Inigo Iturbe-Ormaetxe, Esther Mata-Pérez (), Giovanni Ponti (), Marcello Sartarelli, Haihan Yu and Zhukova Vita ()
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Esther Mata-Pérez: Dpto. Fundamentos del Análisis Económico
Haihan Yu: Dpto. Fundamentos del Análisis Económico
Zhukova Vita: Dpto. Fundamentos del Análisis Económico

Working Papers. Serie AD from Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas, S.A. (Ivie)

Abstract: We study whether cognitive ability explains choices in a wide variety of behavioral tasks, including riskand social preferences, by collecting evidence from almost 1,200 subjects across eight experimentalprojects. Since Frederick (2005)'s Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) has been administered to allsubjects, our dataset is one of the largest in the literature. We divide the subjects pool into three groupsdepending on their CRT performance. Reflective subjects are those answering at least two of the threeCRT questions correctly. Impulsive ones are those who are unable to suppress the instinctive impulseto follow the intuitive although incorrect answer in at least two 2 questions, and the remaining subjectsform a residual group. We find that females score significantly worse than males in the CRT, and intheir wrong answers impulsive ones are observed more frequently. The 2D-4D ratio, which is higherfor females, is correlated negatively with subject's CRT score. In addition, we find that differencesbetween CRT groups in risk aversion depend on the elicitation method used. Finally, impulsive subjectshave higher social preferences, while reflective subjects are more likely to satisfy basic consistencyconditions in lottery choices.

Keywords: behavioral economics; cognitive reflection; gender; laboratory experiment; personality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D81 J16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 37 pages
Date: 2015-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-exp, nep-neu and nep-upt
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Cognitive (ir)reflection: New experimental evidence (2016)
Working Paper: Cognitive (Ir)reflection: New Experimental Evidence (2015)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ivi:wpasad:2015-02

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