Cognitive reflection as a predictor of susceptibility to behavioral anomalies

Abstract

To study the effect of cognitive reflection on behavioral anomalies, we used the cognitive reflection test to measure cognitive reflection. The study was conducted on 395 Iranian university students and shows that subjects with lower cognitive reflection are significantly more likely to exhibit the conjunction fallacy, illusion of control, overconfidence, base rate fallacy, and conservatism. In addition, test scores are correlated with risk preferences. The results do not show any relationship between cognitive reflection and self-serving bias or status quo bias. We also find that gender is significantly related to illusion of control and self-serving bias.