Does Cognitive Reflection Relate to Preferences and Socioeconomic Outcomes?

Frank M. Fossen, Levent Neyse and Carsten Schröder

Journal of Political Economy Microeconomics, 2025, vol. 3, issue 2, 303 - 343

Abstract: Previous studies report associations of cognitive reflection, the ability to avoid intuitive but potentially wrong decisions by switching to a contemplative mindset, with individual preferences, mostly relying on student samples and laboratory settings. We assess the association of cognitive reflection with preferences in the general population and real-world socioeconomic outcomes. Our preregistered study tests 16 hypotheses from the literature on the basis of randomly drawn population data and accounting for multiple hypothesis testing. We find that cognitive reflection is significantly associated with interpersonal trust and saving, and suggestively with labor income. We cannot confirm previously reported associations with risk and time preferences.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/732653 (application/pdf)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/732653 (text/html)
Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.

Related works:
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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ucp:jpemic:doi:10.1086/732653

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Political Economy Microeconomics from University of Chicago Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Journals Division ().