Contagion of Wishful Thinking in Markets

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Seybert, Nicholas; Bloomfield, Robert
• 署名单位: University of Texas System; University of Texas Austin; Cornell University
• 刊物名称: MANAGEMENT SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0025-1909
• DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.1080.0973
• 发表日期: 2009
• 页码: 738-751
• 关键词: Wishful thinking; Betting; desirability bias; unrealistic optimism; Motivated reasoning; contagion; MARKETS; investors; Investing; gambling; information aggregation

摘要

Prior research provides only weak and controversial evidence that people overestimate the likelihood of desirable events (wishful thinking), but strong evidence that people bet more heavily on those events (wishful betting). Two experiments show that wishful betting contaminates beliefs in laboratory financial markets because wishful betters appear to possess more favorable information than they actually do. As a consequence, market interaction exacerbates rather than mitigates wishful thinking. This phenomenon, contagion of wishful thinking, could be problematic in many settings where people infer others' beliefs from their behavior.