Revealing Risky Mistakes through Revisions

We argue that choices that are modified, absent any informational change, can be characterized as mistakes. In an experiment, we allow subjects to choose from budgets over binary lotteries. To identify mistakes, which we interpret as deviations from optimizing behavior, we allow subjects to revise a subset of their initial choices. The set of revised decisions improve under several standard definitions of optimality. These mistakes are prevalent: subjects modify over 75% of their initial choices when given the chance. Subjects make larger mistakes when inexperienced and when choosing over lotteries with small probabilities of winning