IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/judgdm/v9y2014i2p159-166_7.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Good luck, bad luck, and ambiguity aversion

Author

Listed:
  • Pulford, Briony D.
  • Gill, Poonam

Abstract

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Pulford, Briony D. & Gill, Poonam, 2014. "Good luck, bad luck, and ambiguity aversion," Judgment and Decision Making, Cambridge University Press, vol. 9(2), pages 159-166, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:judgdm:v:9:y:2014:i:2:p:159-166_7
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S1930297500005520/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:judgdm:v:9:y:2014:i:2:p:159-166_7. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/jdm .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.