Cognitive (Ir)reflection: New Experimental Evidence

Abstract

We study whether cognitive ability explains choices in a wide variety of behavioral tasks, including risk and social preferences, by collecting evidence from almost 1,200 subjects across eight experimental projects. Since Frederick (2005)'s Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) has been administered to all subjects, our dataset is one of the largest in the literature. We divide the subjects pool into three groups depending on their CRT performance. Reflective subjects are those answering at least two of the three CRT questions correctly. Impulsive ones are those who are unable to suppress the instinctive impulse to follow the intuitive although incorrect answer in at least two 2 questions, and the remaining subjects form a residual group. We find that females score significantly worse than males in the CRT, and in their wrong answers impulsive ones are observed more frequently. The 2D-4D ratio, which is higher for females, is correlated negatively with subject's CRT score. In addition, we find that differences between CRT groups in risk aversion depend on the elicitation method used. Finally, impulsive subjects have higher social preferences, while reflective subjects are more likely to satisfy basic consistency conditions in lottery choices.