Self-control and financial decision-making: a test of a novel depleting task
Self-control and financial decision-making: a test of a novel depleting task

Summary/Abstract: The aim of the study is to test the efficacy of a novel depleting task, which could be used to obtain a measure of self-control in the financial domain. In the paper we postulate that if participants receive a surprising, emotionally taxing stream of negative outcomes (i.e. they lose a majority of gambles with a positive expected value (EV)), their capacity to control their actions will be significantly reduced, and thus it will be more likely that they will make a gamble with a negative EV. Results show that participants subject to the depleting task have a lower expected final payoff from their gambles, but that this is the result of a lower level of engagement in gambles with a positive EV, and not the result of a higher level of participation in gambles with a negative EV. The lack of the latter means that our hypothesis is not supported by the evidence, although a post-experiment assessment of affect confirms that the depleting task strained the participants on an emotional level.

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