糖心TV

David Ronayne (Oxford)

Title of paper 鈥�When good advice is ignored: the role of envy and the sunk-cost fallacy鈥�.

Abstract: In an incentivized online experiment involving 1,500 participants we find that good advice is frequently ignored. In our experiment, participants completed tasks where the higher their submitted score, the higher their chance of winning a bonus. After completing the tasks they were told their score along with the score of another participant who did especially well, aka an 鈥渁dvisor鈥� or 鈥渆xpert鈥�, and were asked if they would like to submit the advisor's answers in place of their own. Of those participants scoring strictly lower than the advisor, approximately a quarter chose not to switch. Participants appeared to trade-off rationality against other, behavioural factors. Specifically, we found that an individual鈥檚 level of envy, as measured by a dispositional envy scale (Smith et al., 1999) was a significant determinant of whether individuals took good advice from an advisor. Envy operated via distinct channels, dependent on the domain of the advice. When the advisor鈥檚 status had been achieved by skill, envy played a 鈥減ositive鈥� role, meaning that participants with a higher level of envy were more likely to take the advice. However, when the advisor鈥檚 status had been achieved by luck, a 鈥渘egative鈥� effect of envy emerged; the strength of which depended on how much higher the advisor鈥檚 score was, relative to the participant鈥檚. Envy played an additional, countervailing role when the advisor was highly-remunerated. Our high-pay treatment caused the probability of accepting good advice to decrease on average by approximately 6-7 percentage points, in both domains. Furthermore, in the skill domain, high-remuneration caused the 鈥減ositive鈥� effect of envy to no longer be present. Interestingly, our second remuneration treatment, where advisors were paid a small amount for each participant that followed their advice, had no effect. Finally, we constructed a novel scale to measure proneness to the sunk-cost fallacy. We found that a participant鈥檚 proneness was negatively associated with the propensity to take good advice, regardless of the domain. In contrast, we found a more general measure of stubbornness to have no predictive power.