University of Leicester
Browse
Pulford & Gill 2014.pdf (115.59 kB)

Good luck, bad luck, and ambiguity aversion

Download (115.59 kB)
journal contribution
posted on 2014-10-17, 12:15 authored by Briony Dawn Pulford, Poonam Gill
We report a series of experiments investigating the influence of feeling lucky or unlucky on people’s choice of known- risk or ambiguous options using the traditional Ellsberg Urns decision-making task. We induced a state of feeling lucky or unlucky in subjects by using a rigged wheel-of-fortune game, which just missed either the bankrupt or the jackpot outcome. In the first experiment a large reversal of the usual ambiguity aversion effect was shown, indicating that feeling lucky made subjects significantly more ambiguity seeking than usual. However, this effect failed to replicate in five refined and larger follow-up experiments. Thus we conclude that there is no evidence that feeling lucky reliably influences ambiguity aversion. Men were less ambiguity averse than women when there were potential gains to be had, but there were no gender differences when the task was negatively framed in terms of losses.

History

Citation

Judgment and Decision Making, 2014, 9 (2), pp. 159-166 (8)

Author affiliation

/Organisation/COLLEGE OF MEDICINE, BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES AND PSYCHOLOGY/School of Psychology

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Published in

Judgment and Decision Making

Publisher

Society for Judgment and Decision Making

issn

1930-2975

Copyright date

2013

Available date

2014-10-17

Publisher version

http://journal.sjdm.org/vol9.2.html

Language

en

Usage metrics

    University of Leicester Publications

    Categories

    Exports

    RefWorks
    BibTeX
    Ref. manager
    Endnote
    DataCite
    NLM
    DC