Persistence is futile: Chasing of past performance in repeated investment choices

When deciding where to invest, individuals choose mutual funds based on recent past performance, despite standard mandated disclaimers that "past performance does not guarantee future results." Investors would receive better long-term returns by choosing funds with lower fees. We explored the impact of fees and past performance on realistic mutual fund selections across three preregistered repeated choice experiments (N=1,600), while manipulating the presence of disclaimers between-participants. Participants persistently chased past performance despite the opportunity to learn about the futility of this strategy during sixty repeated decisions with feedback. The standard regulatory-mandated disclaimer did not help most participants, compared to giving no advice at all, and was even counter-productive for participants with low levels of financial literacy. An alternative disclaimer which explicitly highlighted the advantages of fee minimization reliably helped participants. We show how individuals who lack both financial literacy and prior investment experience are the most susceptible to making poor mutual fund choices, and can benefit the most from behavioral interventions such as the new disclaimer tested here. We discuss how these results generalize into real-world investment decisions, and how to design more efficient disclaimers that can be used beyond investment choices.

Testing the consistency of preferences in discrete choice experiments: an eye tracking study

A within-subjects experiment with eye tracking was implemented to test the consistency of preferences over three repeated choice experiments. The empirical results indicate that after changing the position of the same alternatives in the choice set, participants were consistent with their choices 69 per cent of the time. Moreover, after reverting back to the identical original positions of the alternatives but randomising the order of the choice sets, individuals’ choices were consistent 67 per cent of the time. Eye tracking data revealed that subjects’ visual attention towards the product attributes was also consistent over the sequence of choices. The robustness of these results was further demonstrated by using random parameters models with flexible mixing distributions to calculate willingness-to-pay for the product attributes and compare its consistency across choice experiments.

Preference reversal in curiosity-based information consumption

Curiosity, the cognitive mechanism we use to steer attention between the rapidly growing number of information-consumption channels the modern technological world has to offer, is today more important than ever in our history, for the individual, for societies and economies. We recently introduced a new model of curiosity that weighs two underlying factors to yield the experienced feeling of curiosity. Importantly, these factors differ in their temporal characteristics. First, Interest is a cognitive factor that is relatively stable over time. Second, the Urge to approach information is a motivational factor that decays rapidly starting from an epistemic stimulus onset. Added together, the two factors may yield intertemporal preference-reversal since one stimulus might be preferred now, if it is associated with great Urge, but a different stimulus preferred for future consumption if it is characterized by great Interest. To test whether this unintuitive prediction of the model manifests in behavior we conducted a repeated choice behavioral experiment. In the experiment, one group of participants chose one of two questions to which an answer was promptly delivered. A second group chose from the same set, but for a presentation of answers one week following the choice. We found that participants that received the answer immediately, chose questions that were pre-rated as being associated with greater Urge, while the group that made choices with future epistemic consequences chose questions associated with greater Interest, demonstrating a between-group preference reversal. Such preference reversal is difficult to settle in a uni-dimensional model but our bi-dimensional theoretical framework provides a straightforward account for this result. We discuss the implications of our finding for fostering sustainable curiosity in educational systems, its consequences in an environment of clickbait-economy and potential adverse effects for individuals.

“012012 or 111000”: preference for consumption pattern-seeking

Purpose This paper aims to examine how consumers make choices when they are faced with a fixed set of available options, consisting of both preferred and less-preferred choices, in the domain of food consumption. Specifically, the paper offers a novel perspective to predict repeated choice decisions in food consumption, which is termed as “pattern-seeking” – a consumption choice pattern that involves a coherent repetitive sequence of sub-groupings or coherently concentrated sub-groupings of options. Design/methodology/approach Eight experimental studies that contrast the existing theoretical predictions regarding repeated choices (e.g. primacy effect, recency effect, variety vs consistency) against pattern-seeking were conducted using hypothetical and actual food choices. Findings The results of experimental studies show that an explicit decision pattern (i.e. pattern-seeking) emerges as the most significant predictor of repeated choice in the food consumption domain. Research limitations/implications This study offers a novel perspective on how consumers make repeated choices in the domain of food consumption. Practical implications The results show that consumers prefer food consumption with a pattern (vs non-pattern). Thus, it would be better to generate marketing activities that allow customers to satisfy their pattern-seeking more easily. Originality/value This study advances the literature on repeated food choices by demonstrating that people possess an inherent preference for patterns in food consumption.

Denial Without Determination: The Impact of Systemic Market Access Denial on Consumer Power and Market Engagement

Despite growing evidence showing that people are denied access to market resources for reasons other than individual or market constraints, little research has explored the effect of such denial on the individual consumer. Building from learned helplessness, attribution theory of motivation, and consumer power theory, the current research addresses this issue by showing the impact of repeated access denial on perceptions of power and market engagement. Across five repeated-choice experiments utilizing a financial loan context, the authors show that market access and consumer power exist in a feedback loop, with lack of access leading to lower perceptions of power and, consequently, reduced market engagement or detrimental choice in the market. The authors present a norm-based intervention to encourage market engagement among those who have experienced denial by working through beliefs of market success, but demonstrate the detrimental effect of this intervention on those who have experienced repeated access prior to denial. In response, the authors present an education intervention to encourage smarter choices once consumers have entered the market. They conclude with implications for market access policy.

Modulating Episodic Memory Alters Risk Preference during Decision-making

When choosing between options that vary in risk, we often rely on our experience with options—our episodic memories—to make that choice. Although episodic memory has been demonstrated to be critically involved in value-based decision-making, it is not clear how these memory processes contribute to decision-making that involves risk. To investigate this issue, we tested a group of participants on a repeated-choice risky decision-making task. Before completing this task, half of the participants were given a well-validated episodic induction task—a brief training procedure in recollecting the details of a past experience—known to engage episodic memory processes, and the other half were given a general impressions induction task. Our main finding was that risk-taking following the general impressions induction task was significantly lower than following the episodic induction task. In a follow-up experiment, we tested risk-taking in another group of participants without any prior induction task and found that risk-taking from this no-induction (baseline) group was more similar to the episodic induction than to the general impression group. Overall, these findings suggest engaging episodic memory processes when learning about decision outcomes can alter apparent risk-taking behavior in decision-making from experience.

Choice Poetics by Example

Choice poetics is a formalist framework that seeks to concretely describe the impacts choices have on player experiences within narrative games. Developed in part to support algorithmic generation of narrative choices, the theory includes a detailed analytical framework for understanding the impressions choice structures make by analyzing the relationships among options, outcomes, and player goals. The theory also emphasizes the need to account for players’ various modes of engagement, which vary both during play and between players. In this work, we illustrate the non-computational application of choice poetics to the analysis of two different games to further develop the theory and make it more accessible to others. We focus first on using choice poetics to examine the central repeated choice in “Undertale,” and show how it can be used to contrast two different player types that will approach a choice differently. Finally, we give an example of fine-grained analysis using a choice from the game “Papers, Please,” which breaks down options and their outcomes to illustrate exactly how the choice pushes players towards complicity via the introduction of uncertainty. Through all of these examples, we hope to show the usefulness of choice poetics as a framework for understanding narrative choices, and to demonstrate concretely how one could productively apply it to choices “in the wild.”