We examine the risky choices of contestants in the popular TV game show “Deal or No Deal” and related classroom experiments. Contrary to the traditional view of expected utility theory, the choices can be explained in large part by previous outcomes experienced during the game. Risk aversion...

This study attempts to combine two traditional fields in microeconomics: individual decision making under risk and decision making in an interpersonal context. The influence of social comparison on risky choices is explored in an experiment in which participants make a series of choices between...

Social preference models were originally constructed to explain two things: why people spend money to affect the earnings of others and why the income of others influences reported happiness. We test these models in a novel experimental situation where participants face a risky decision that...

The supposed irrelevance of historical costs for rational decision making has been the subject of much interest in the economic literature. In this paper we explore whether individual decision making under risk is affected by the cost of the supplied information. Outside of the lab, it is...

People typically update their beliefs about their own abilities too little in response to feed-back, a phenomenon known as “conservatism”, and some studies suggest that they overweight good relative to bad signals (“asymmetry”). We measure individual conservatism and asymmetry in three...