IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0164412.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Handedness, Earnings, Ability and Personality. Evidence from the Lab

Author

Listed:
  • Marcello Sartarelli

Abstract

Evidence showing that on average left-handed (L), who are 10% in a population, tend to earn less than others is solely based on survey data. This paper is the first to test the relationship between handedness and earnings experimentally and also to assess whether the mechanism underlying it is predominantly cognitive or psychological. Data on 432 undergraduate students show that L do not obtain significantly different payoffs, a proxy for earnings, in a stylised labour market with multiple principals and agents. Similarly, scores in the Cognitive Reflection Test are not significantly different. Data on personality, measured using the Big Five test, show, instead, that L are significantly more agreeable and L females more extroverted. In addition, earnings significantly vary with personality only for L, increasing with extraversion and decreasing with neuroticism. Overall, our results fail to reject the null hypothesis that earnings do not differ by handedness and suggest differences in personality as a novel mechanism to rationalise L’s behaviour.

Suggested Citation

  • Marcello Sartarelli, 2016. "Handedness, Earnings, Ability and Personality. Evidence from the Lab," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(10), pages 1-17, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0164412
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0164412
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0164412
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0164412&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0164412?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Marcello Sartarelli, 2016. "Handedness, Ability, Earnings and Risk. Evidence from the Lab," Working Papers. Serie AD 2016-04, Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas, S.A. (Ivie).
    2. Brañas-Garza, Pablo & Kujal, Praveen & Lenkei, Balint, 2019. "Cognitive reflection test: Whom, how, when," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    3. Cueva, Carlos & Iturbe-Ormaetxe, Iñigo & Mata-Pérez, Esther & Ponti, Giovanni & Sartarelli, Marcello & Yu, Haihan & Zhukova, Vita, 2016. "Cognitive (ir)reflection: New experimental evidence," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 81-93.
    4. Kevin Denny & Vincent O’ Sullivan, 2007. "The Economic Consequences of Being Left-Handed: Some Sinister Results," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 42(2).
    5. Urs Fischbacher, 2007. "z-Tree: Zurich toolbox for ready-made economic experiments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 10(2), pages 171-178, June.
    6. Antonio Cabrales & Raffaele Miniaci & Marco Piovesan & Giovanni Ponti, 2010. "Social Preferences and Strategic Uncertainty: An Experiment on Markets and Contracts," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(5), pages 2261-2278, December.
    7. David W. Johnston & Michael E. R. Nicholls & Manisha Shah & Michael A. Shields, 2013. "Handedness, health and cognitive development: evidence from children in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 176(4), pages 841-860, October.
    8. Ben Greiner, 2004. "The Online Recruitment System ORSEE 2.0 - A Guide for the Organization of Experiments in Economics," Working Paper Series in Economics 10, University of Cologne, Department of Economics.
    9. Joshua Goodman, 2014. "The Wages of Sinistrality: Handedness, Brain Structure, and Human Capital Accumulation," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 28(4), pages 193-212, Fall.
    10. Johnston, David W. & Shah, Manisha & Shields, Michael A., 2007. "Handedness, Time Use and Early Childhood Development," IZA Discussion Papers 2752, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    11. Ben Greiner, 2004. "The Online Recruitment System ORSEE - A Guide for the Organization of Experiments in Economics," Papers on Strategic Interaction 2003-10, Max Planck Institute of Economics, Strategic Interaction Group.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Marcello Sartarelli, 2016. "Handedness, Ability, Earnings and Risk. Evidence from the Lab," Working Papers. Serie AD 2016-04, Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas, S.A. (Ivie).
    2. Matilde Giaccherini & Giovanni Ponti, 2018. "Preference Based Subjective Beliefs," Games, MDPI, vol. 9(3), pages 1-12, July.
    3. Ola Andersson & Marieke Huysentruyt & Topi Miettinen & Ute Stephan, 2017. "Person–Organization Fit and Incentives: A Causal Test," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 63(1), pages 73-96, January.
    4. Englmaier, Florian & Strasser, Sebastian & Winter, Joachim, 2014. "Worker characteristics and wage differentials: Evidence from a gift-exchange experiment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 185-203.
    5. Kyung Hwan Baik & Subhasish M. Chowdhury & Abhijit Ramalingam, 2021. "Group size and matching protocol in contests," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 54(4), pages 1716-1736, November.
    6. Herz, Holger & Schunk, Daniel & Zehnder, Christian, 2014. "How do judgmental overconfidence and overoptimism shape innovative activity?," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 1-23.
    7. David Macro & Jeroen Weesie, 2016. "Inequalities between Others Do Matter: Evidence from Multiplayer Dictator Games," Games, MDPI, vol. 7(2), pages 1-23, April.
    8. M. Bigoni & D. Dragone, 2011. "An experiment on experimental instructions," Working Papers wp794, Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna.
    9. Brunner, Christoph & Hu, Audrey & Oechssler, Jörg, 2014. "Premium auctions and risk preferences: An experimental study," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 467-484.
    10. Topi Miettinen & Sigrid Suetens, 2008. "Communication and Guilt in a Prisoner's Dilemma," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 52(6), pages 945-960, December.
    11. Benjamin Enke & Florian Zimmermann, 2019. "Correlation Neglect in Belief Formation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 86(1), pages 313-332.
    12. Flip Klijn & Joana Pais & Marc Vorsatz, 2013. "Preference intensities and risk aversion in school choice: a laboratory experiment," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 16(1), pages 1-22, March.
    13. Winschel, Evguenia & Zahn, Philipp, 2012. "Effciency concern under asymmetric information," Working Papers 13-07, University of Mannheim, Department of Economics.
    14. Matthias Greiff & Fabian Paetzel, 2012. "The Importance of Knowing Your Own Reputation," MAGKS Papers on Economics 201236, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Department of Economics (Volkswirtschaftliche Abteilung).
    15. Billur Aksoy & Silvana Krasteva, 2020. "When does less information translate into more giving to public goods?," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 23(4), pages 1148-1177, December.
    16. Ciril Bosch-Rosa & Thomas Meissner & Antoni Bosch-Domènech, 2018. "Cognitive bubbles," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 21(1), pages 132-153, March.
    17. Gary Charness & Francesco Feri & Miguel A. Meléndez‐Jiménez & Matthias Sutter, 2014. "Experimental Games on Networks: Underpinnings of Behavior and Equilibrium Selection," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 82(5), pages 1615-1670, September.
    18. Moser, Johannes, 2018. "Hypothetical thinking and the winner's curse: An experimental investigation," VfS Annual Conference 2018 (Freiburg, Breisgau): Digital Economy 181506, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    19. Lucas C. Coffman & Alexander Gotthard-Real, 2019. "Moral Perceptions of Advised Actions," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(8), pages 3904-3927, August.
    20. Ernst Fehr & Holger Herz & Tom Wilkening, 2013. "The Lure of Authority: Motivation and Incentive Effects of Power," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(4), pages 1325-1359, June.

    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:plo:pone00:0164412. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    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.