Interactivity and Illusions of Ability: How Using Generative AI Affects Investor Judgments

• 成果类型: Article; Early Access
• 署名作者: Croom, Joe
• 署名单位: Indiana University System; Indiana University Bloomington; IU Kelley School of Business
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ACCOUNTING RESEARCH
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0021-8456
• DOI: 10.1111/1475-679X.70017
• 发表日期: 2025
• 关键词: Overconfidence; INFORMATION; confidence; competence; memory; CHOICE; firm

摘要

I use the setting of generative AI (GenAI) to examine how processing tool interactivity affects investors' self-assessments of ability and willingness to invest. Although GenAI can help investors process financial information, I theorize that the interactive nature of GenAI blurs the boundaries between investors' own abilities and those of GenAI, prompting investors to discount their reliance on GenAI and misattribute its abilities to themselves. I rely on the advantages of a laboratory setting to disentangle the interactive element of GenAI from the mere presence of GenAI assistance. Across three experiments, I find that the interactivity underpinning GenAI heightens investors' self-assessments of their own abilities and increases their willingness to invest, despite this interactivity not improving, and in fact hindering, their actual processing of information provided by GenAI. My study thus highlights one potential cost of using GenAI and other highly interactive processing tools.