Stereotypes and risk attitudes : Evidence from the lab and the field

Recent studies have found correlations between risk attitudes and several sociodemographic characteristics. In this paper, we deploy an artefactual field experiment and study whether subjects non-professionals and financial professionals are aware of these correlations. This is largely confirmed by our results for all subject groups. We show that the subjects attach informational value to sociodemographic information when assessing others’ risk attitudes. This provides external validity to the correlations found between risk preferences and sociodemographics. A person’s self-assessment of risk attitudes is the most helpful device for the subjects’ assessments of others, although experienced professionals make use of it to a minor extent than all other subjects. Classification: Risk Preferences, Financial Advice, Artefactual Field Experiment, Behavioral Finance JEL-Codes: C91, D81, G02 ∗We would like to thank Isadora Dorn, Andreas Roider, Wendelin Schnedler, Andrew Schotter and Israel Waichman for their valuable comments and suggestions. We gratefully acknowledge the comments of the participants of the seminar at Heidelberg University, the ESA World Meeting 2011 in Chicago, the 2011 Experimental Finance Conference in Innsbruck, the 2011 TIBER-X conference in Tilburg and the 2012 IMEBE in Castellón. We also want to thank Christoph Lukes for the programming of the experiment. †[email protected] (+49 6221 542951)/ [email protected] (+49 6221 542940), Heidelberg University, Bergheimer Str. 58, 69115 Heidelberg, Germany