 Intuitive Biases in Choice versus Estimation: Implications for the Wisdom of CrowdsJoseph P. Simmons, Leif D. Nelson, Jeff Galak and Shane Frederick Journal of Consumer Research, 2011, vol. 38, issue 1, 1 - 15 Abstract: Although researchers have documented many instances of crowd wisdom, it is important to know whether some kinds of judgments may lead the crowd astray, whether crowds' judgments improve with feedback over time, and whether crowds' judgments can be improved by changing the way judgments are elicited. We investigated these questions in a sports gambling context (predictions against point spreads) believed to elicit crowd wisdom. In a season-long experiment, fans wagered over $20,000 on NFL football predictions. Contrary to the wisdom-of-crowds hypothesis, faulty intuitions led the crowd to predict "favorites" more than "underdogs" against point spreads that disadvantaged favorites, even when bettors knew that the spreads disadvantaged favorites. Moreover, the bias increased over time, a result consistent with attributions for success and failure that rewarded intuitive choosing. However, when the crowd predicted game outcomes by estimating point differentials rather than by predicting against point spreads, its predictions were unbiased and wiser. Date: 2011 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:jconrs:doi:10.1086/658070 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Consumer Research is currently edited by Bernd Schmitt, June Cotte, Markus Giesler, Andrew Stephen and Stacy Wood More articles in Journal of Consumer Research from Journal of Consumer Research Inc. |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.