Verifying the representativeness heuristic: A field experiment with real-life lottery tickets

Michal Krawczyk and Joanna Rachubik

No 2018-03, Working Papers from Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw

Abstract: Despite having the same probability of being drawn, certain number combinations are more popular than others among the lottery players. One explanation of such a preference is the representativeness heuristic (RH). Unlike previous hypothetical experiments, in the present experiment we used real-life lottery tickets, involving a high payout in case of winning to elicit true preferences. To verify if people prefer randomly-looking number combinations, participants were to choose a preferred ticket. To validate if it is likely to be caused by RH, we correlated preference for “random” sequences with the belief in dependence between subsequent coin tosses. We confirm that people strongly prefer random sequences and that a non-trivial fraction believes in dependence between coin tosses. However, there is no correlation between these two tendencies, questioning the RH explanation. By contrast, participants who have an (irrationally) strong preference for number combinations also tend to make (irrationally) specific predictions in the coin task. Unexpectedly, we find that females are considerably more likely to belong to this group than males.

Keywords: decision bias; gambler’s fallacy; gender difference; hot hand fallacy; lottery choice; misperception of randomness; number preference in lotteries; representativeness heuristic (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 D01 D81 D91 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 20 pages
Date: 2018
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-exp and nep-upt
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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https://www.wne.uw.edu.pl/index.php/download_file/4018/ First version, 2018 (application/pdf)

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Working Paper: Verifying the representativeness heuristic: A field experiment with real-life lottery tickets (2018)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:war:wpaper:2018-03

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