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Self-attribution bias in consumer financial decision-making: How investment returns affect individuals’ belief in skill

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  • Hoffmann, Arvid O.I.
  • Post, Thomas

Abstract

Self-attribution bias is a long-standing concept in psychology research and refers to individuals’ tendency to attribute successes to personal skills and failures to factors beyond their control. Recently, this bias is also being studied in household finance research and is considered to underlie and reinforce investor overconfidence. To date, however, the existence of self-attribution bias amongst individual investors is not directly empirically tested. That is, it remains unclear whether good (vs. bad) returns indeed make investors believe more (vs. less) strongly that skills drive their performance. Using a unique combination of survey data and matching trading records of a sample of clients from a large discount brokerage firm, we find that (1) the higher the returns in a previous period are, the more investors agree with a statement claiming that their recent performance accurately reflects their investment skills (and vice versa); and (2) while individual returns relate to more agreement, market returns have no such effect.

Suggested Citation

  • Hoffmann, Arvid O.I. & Post, Thomas, 2014. "Self-attribution bias in consumer financial decision-making: How investment returns affect individuals’ belief in skill," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 23-28.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:soceco:v:52:y:2014:i:c:p:23-28
    DOI: 10.1016/j.socec.2014.05.005
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    15. Yulin Liu & Luyao Zhang, 2022. "Cryptocurrency Valuation: An Explainable AI Approach," Papers 2201.12893, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2023.
    16. Caglayan, Mustafa & Talavera, Oleksandr & Zhang, Wei, 2021. "Herding behaviour in P2P lending markets," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 27-41.
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    19. Andrzej Baniak & Peter Grajzl, 2016. "Controlling Product Risks when Consumers Are Heterogeneously Overconfident: Producer Liability versus Minimum-Quality-Standard Regulation," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 172(2), pages 274-304, June.
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Consumer financial decision-making; Household finance; Investment decisions; Self-attribution bias;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D14 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Saving; Personal Finance
    • G02 - Financial Economics - - General - - - Behavioral Finance: Underlying Principles
    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions

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