Cognitive Biases: Mistakes or Missing Stakes?

Abstract Despite decades of research on heuristics and biases, evidence the effect large incentives cognitive biases is scant. We test four widely documented biases: base-rate neglect, anchoring, failure contingent thinking, intuitive reasoning. In laboratory experiments with 1,236 college students in Nairobi, we implement three incentive levels: no incentives, standard lab payments, very high incentives. find that stakes increase response times by 40% but improve performance only mildly or not at all. none tasks do come close to debiasing participants.