IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/tiu/tiucen/53ddb666-a610-4835-b6ba-6985b5fd2761.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Cortisol meets GARP : The Effect of Stress on Economic Rationality

Author

Listed:
  • Cettolin, Elena

    (Tilburg University, Center For Economic Research)

  • Dalton, Patricio

    (Tilburg University, Center For Economic Research)

  • Kop, Willem

    (Tilburg University, Center For Economic Research)

  • Zhang, Wanqing

    (Tilburg University, Center For Economic Research)

Abstract

Rationality is a fundamental pillar of Economics. It is however unclear if this assumption holds when decisions are made under stress. To answer this question, we design two laboratory experiments where we exogenously induce physiological stress in participants and test the consistency of their choices with economic rationality. In both experiments we induce stress with the Cold Pressor test and measure economic rationality by the consistency of participants’ choices with the Generalized Axiom of Revealed Preference (GARP). In the first experiment, participants delay the decision-making task for 20 min until the cortisol level peaks. We find significant differences in cortisol levels between the stressed group and the placebo group which, however, do not affect the consistency of choices with GARP. In a second experiment, we study the immediate effect of the stressor on rationality. Overall, results from the second experiment confirm that rationality is not impaired by the stressor. If anything, we observe that compared to the placebo group, participants are more consistent with rationality immediately after the stressor. Our findings provide strong empirical support for the robustness of the economic rationality assumption under physiological stress.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Cettolin, Elena & Dalton, Patricio & Kop, Willem & Zhang, Wanqing, 2018. "Cortisol meets GARP : The Effect of Stress on Economic Rationality," Discussion Paper 2018-045, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:tiu:tiucen:53ddb666-a610-4835-b6ba-6985b5fd2761
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://pure.uvt.nl/ws/portalfiles/portal/28253675/2018_045.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Robert Sugden, 2004. "The Opportunity Criterion: Consumer Sovereignty Without the Assumption of Coherent Preferences," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(4), pages 1014-1033, September.
    2. Syngjoo Choi & Shachar Kariv & Wieland M?ller & Dan Silverman, 2014. "Who Is (More) Rational?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(6), pages 1518-1550, June.
    3. Marco Castillo & David L. Dickinson & Ragan Petrie, 2017. "Sleepiness, choice consistency, and risk preferences," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 82(1), pages 41-73, January.
    4. Afriat, Sidney N, 1972. "Efficiency Estimation of Production Function," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 13(3), pages 568-598, October.
    5. Federico Echenique & Sangmok Lee & Matthew Shum, 2011. "The Money Pump as a Measure of Revealed Preference Violations," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 119(6), pages 1201-1223.
    6. Heufer, Jan & Hjertstrand, Per, 2015. "Consistent subsets: Computationally feasible methods to compute the Houtman–Maks-index," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 128(C), pages 87-89.
    7. Sugden, Robert, 1991. "Rational Choice: A Survey of Contributions from Economics and Philosophy," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 101(407), pages 751-785, July.
    8. William T. Harbaugh & Kate Krause & Timothy R. Berry, 2001. "GARP for Kids: On the Development of Rational Choice Behavior," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(5), pages 1539-1545, December.
    9. David Son, 2018. "My psychosis and meds," Psychosis, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 10(3), pages 228-234, July.
    10. Syngjoo Choi & Raymond Fisman & Douglas Gale & Shachar Kariv, 2007. "Consistency, Heterogeneity, and Granularity of Individual Behavior under Uncertainty," Economics Working Papers 0076, Institute for Advanced Study, School of Social Science.
    11. Urs Fischbacher, 2007. "z-Tree: Zurich toolbox for ready-made economic experiments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 10(2), pages 171-178, June.
    12. Paola Manzini & Marco Mariotti, 2014. "Welfare economics and bounded rationality: the case for model-based approaches," Journal of Economic Methodology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(4), pages 343-360, December.
    13. Patricio S. Dalton & Sayantan Ghosal, 2018. "Self†fulfilling Mistakes: Characterisation and Welfare," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 128(609), pages 683-709, March.
    14. Varian, H.R., 1991. "Goodness of Fit for Revealed Preference Tests," Papers 13, Michigan - Center for Research on Economic & Social Theory.
    15. Syngjoo Choi & Raymond Fisman & Douglas Gale & Shachar Kariv, 2007. "Consistency and Heterogeneity of Individual Behavior under Uncertainty," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(5), pages 1921-1938, December.
    16. Thomas Buser & Anna Dreber & Johanna Mollerstrom, 2017. "The impact of stress on tournament entry," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 20(2), pages 506-530, June.
    17. Varian, Hal R., 1990. "Goodness-of-fit in optimizing models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 46(1-2), pages 125-140.
    18. Andreas C Drichoutis & Rodolfo M Nayga, 0. "Economic Rationality under Cognitive Load," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 130(632), pages 2382-2409.
    19. Varian, Hal R, 1982. "The Nonparametric Approach to Demand Analysis," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(4), pages 945-973, July.
    20. Dalton, Patricio & Ghosal, Sayantan, 2018. "Self-fulfilling mistakes : Characterization and welfare," Other publications TiSEM 4ea1a236-5307-4b4b-b268-e, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    21. B. Douglas Bernheim, 2009. "Behavioral Welfare Economics," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 7(2-3), pages 267-319, 04-05.
    22. Andreas C Drichoutis & Rodolfo M Nayga, 2020. "Economic Rationality under Cognitive Load," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 130(632), pages 2382-2409.
    23. Douglas M. Gale & Shachar Kariv & Syngjoo Choi & Raymond Fisman, 2007. "Revealing Preferences Graphically: An Old Method Gets a New Tool Kit," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(2), pages 153-158, May.
    24. Leandro S. Carvalho & Stephan Meier & Stephanie W. Wang, 2016. "Poverty and Economic Decision-Making: Evidence from Changes in Financial Resources at Payday," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(2), pages 260-284, February.
    25. Mas-Colell, Andreu & Whinston, Michael D. & Green, Jerry R., 1995. "Microeconomic Theory," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780195102680.
    26. Daniel Burghart & Paul Glimcher & Stephanie Lazzaro, 2013. "An expected utility maximizer walks into a bar..," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 46(3), pages 215-246, June.
    27. Patricio S. Dalton & Sayantan Ghosal, 2018. "Self‐Fulfilling Mistakes: Characterisation and Welfare," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 128(609), pages 683-709.
    28. Jana Cahlíková & Lubomír Cingl, 2017. "Risk preferences under acute stress," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 20(1), pages 209-236, March.
    29. Cox, James C, 1997. "On Testing the Utility Hypothesis," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 107(443), pages 1054-1078, July.
    30. Gross, John & Kaiser, Dan, 1996. "Two Simple Algorithms for Generating a Subset of Data Consistent with WARP and Other Binary Relations," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 14(2), pages 251-255, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Steven Shead & Robert B Durand & Stephanie Thomas, 2021. "Predicting price intervals under exogenously induced stress," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(9), pages 1-15, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Brocas, Isabelle & Carrillo, Juan D. & Combs, T. Dalton & Kodaverdian, Niree, 2019. "Consistency in simple vs. complex choices by younger and older adults," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 157(C), pages 580-601.
    2. Andreas C Drichoutis & Rodolfo M Nayga, 2020. "Economic Rationality under Cognitive Load," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 130(632), pages 2382-2409.
    3. Carrillo, Juan & Brocas, Isabelle & Combs, T. Dalton, 2015. "Consistency in Simple vs. Complex Choices over the Life Cycle," CEPR Discussion Papers 10457, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    4. Jim Engle-Warnick & Natalia Mishagina, 2014. "Insensitivity to Prices in a Dictator Game," CIRANO Working Papers 2014s-19, CIRANO.
    5. Heufer, Jan, 2014. "Nonparametric comparative revealed risk aversion," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 153(C), pages 569-616.
    6. Dziewulski, Paweł, 2020. "Just-noticeable difference as a behavioural foundation of the critical cost-efficiency index," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 188(C).
    7. Pawel Dziewulski, 2018. "Just-noticeable difference as a behavioural foundation of the critical cost-efficiency," Economics Series Working Papers 848, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    8. Thomas Demuynck & John Rehbeck, 2023. "Computing revealed preference goodness-of-fit measures with integer programming," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 76(4), pages 1175-1195, November.
    9. Uttara Balakrishnan & Johannes Haushofer & Pamela Jakiela, 2020. "How soon is now? Evidence of present bias from convex time budget experiments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 23(2), pages 294-321, June.
    10. Javier A. Birchenall, 2024. "Random choice and market demand," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 57(1), pages 165-198, February.
    11. Mir Adnan Mahmood & John Rehbeck, 2022. "Correcting for Random Budgets in Revealed Preference Experiments," Games, MDPI, vol. 13(2), pages 1-14, April.
    12. Sam Cosaert & Thomas Demuynck, 2015. "Revealed preference theory for finite choice sets," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 59(1), pages 169-200, May.
    13. Smeulders, Bart & Crama, Yves & Spieksma, Frits C.R., 2019. "Revealed preference theory: An algorithmic outlook," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 272(3), pages 803-815.
    14. Castillo, Marco & Freer, Mikhail, 2018. "Revealed differences," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 145(C), pages 202-217.
    15. Yoram Halevy & Dotan Persitz & Lanny Zrill, 2018. "Parametric Recoverability of Preferences," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 126(4), pages 1558-1593.
    16. Müller, Daniel, 2019. "The anatomy of distributional preferences with group identity," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 166(C), pages 785-807.
    17. Matej Opatrny, 2018. "Extent of Irrationality of the Consumer: Combining the Critical Cost Eciency and Houtman Maks Indices," Working Papers IES 2018/11, Charles University Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Economic Studies, revised Apr 2018.
    18. Heufer, Jan & Hjertstrand, Per, 2019. "Homothetic preferences revealed," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 157(C), pages 602-614.
    19. Laurens Cherchye & Thomas Demuynck & Bram De Rock & Joshua Lanier, 2020. "Are Consumers Rational ?Shifting the Burden of Proof," Working Papers ECARES 2020-19, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    20. van Bruggen, Paul & Heufer, Jan, 2017. "Afriat in the lab," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 169(C), pages 546-550.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    economic rationality; GARP; Physiological Stress; Cortisol;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C90 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - General
    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
    • D01 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Microeconomic Behavior: Underlying Principles
    • D91 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:tiu:tiucen:53ddb666-a610-4835-b6ba-6985b5fd2761. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Richard Broekman (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://center.uvt.nl .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.