Cognitive Dissonance, Pessimism, and Behavioral Spillover Effects

David Lewis Dickinson and Robert J. Oxoby ()

No 2832, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)

Abstract: This paper reports results from a unique two-stage experiment designed to examine the spillover effects of optimism and pessimism. In stage 1, we induce optimism or pessimism onto subjects by randomly assigning a high or low piece rate for performing a cognitive task. We find that participants receiving the low piece rate are significantly more pessimistic with respect to performance on this task. In stage 2 individuals participate in an ultimatum game. We find that minimum acceptable offers are significantly lower for pessimistic subjects, though this pessimism was generated in a completely unrelated environment. These results highlight the existence of important spillover effects that can be behaviorally and economically important - for example, pessimism regarding one’s initial conditions (e.g., living in poverty) may have spillover effects on one’s future labor market outcomes.

Keywords: optimism; pessimism; bargaining; experiments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D84 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe and nep-exp
Date: Written
View list of references

Downloads: (external link)
ftp://repec.iza.org/RePEc/Discussionpaper/dp2832.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Cognitive Dissonance, Pessimism, and Behavioral Spillover Effects (2007)
Working Paper: Cognitive Dissonance, Pessimism, and Behavioral Spillover Effects (2007)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp2832

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)
Address: IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by Mark Fallak ().