Heterogeneous motivation and cognitive ability in the lab

Matthew P. Taylor

doi:10.1016/j.socec.2020.101523

Heterogeneous motivation and cognitive ability in the lab

Matthew P. Taylor

Economics

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

4 Scopus citations

Abstract

I test whether economics experiments that estimate the relationships between cognitive ability and economic behavior are biased because they fail to account for differences in motivation among subjects when they measure cognitive ability without compensating them for performance. I find that monetary incentives do not significantly improve average performance on cognitive reflection test (CRT) questions, but subjects classified as low ability based on unpaid scores tend to improve their performance when they are paid for performance relative to high ability subjects. This heterogeneous response to monetary incentives appears to bias estimates of the relationships between cognitive ability and trust and risk aversion downward, but does not have the same systematic effect for strategic reasoning.

Original language	English
Article number	101523
Journal	Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics
Volume	85
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socec.2020.101523
State	Published - Apr 2020

Funding

This research is partially funded by a University of Montana Small Grant. I am grateful for the comments and feedback from Doug Dalenberg, Dave Wozniak, and seminar participants at Montana State University. I also thank Lynzee Lee, Mason Gedlaman, and Aaron Nicholson for assistance with the administration of the experiment, and Cassandra Sevigny for assistance editing the manuscript. All errors are my own.

Keywords

Cognitive ability
Intrinsic motivation
Reasoning
Risk
Trust

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10.1016/j.socec.2020.101523

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abstract = "I test whether economics experiments that estimate the relationships between cognitive ability and economic behavior are biased because they fail to account for differences in motivation among subjects when they measure cognitive ability without compensating them for performance. I find that monetary incentives do not significantly improve average performance on cognitive reflection test (CRT) questions, but subjects classified as low ability based on unpaid scores tend to improve their performance when they are paid for performance relative to high ability subjects. This heterogeneous response to monetary incentives appears to bias estimates of the relationships between cognitive ability and trust and risk aversion downward, but does not have the same systematic effect for strategic reasoning.",

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AB - I test whether economics experiments that estimate the relationships between cognitive ability and economic behavior are biased because they fail to account for differences in motivation among subjects when they measure cognitive ability without compensating them for performance. I find that monetary incentives do not significantly improve average performance on cognitive reflection test (CRT) questions, but subjects classified as low ability based on unpaid scores tend to improve their performance when they are paid for performance relative to high ability subjects. This heterogeneous response to monetary incentives appears to bias estimates of the relationships between cognitive ability and trust and risk aversion downward, but does not have the same systematic effect for strategic reasoning.

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KW - Trust

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Heterogeneous motivation and cognitive ability in the lab

Abstract

Funding

Keywords

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