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DR@W: New Inisights - Lajos Kossuth-Cabrejos (WBS Behavioural Science Group)
This study conducts a lab-in-the-field experiment to test whether people prefer to insure against future emotional losses by hedging against one鈥檚 social identity when the outcome is uncertain. Using the 2018 FIFA World Cup as the setting, we find that, when given the choices of betting decisions, the majority of the sampled England supporters (77%) do not engage in psychic hedging, i.e., betting for the other team to win. Yet, we find evidence to suggest that these England supporters suffered the largest drop in happiness compared to other betting strategies when England lost, on average. The decision to hedge, as well as having been randomly allocated to hedge, had the same effect on individual鈥檚 happiness as the baseline – keeping the endowment and not engaging in betting altogether – when England lost. By contrast, we did not find significant emotional benefits from betting for England to win for the individuals when England won.