No abstract

To improve our understanding of how people make financial decisions, it is important to investigate what psychological characteristics influence individuals’ positive financial behavior and financial well-being. In this study, we explore the effect of individual differences in self-control and other non-cognitive factors on financial behavior and financial well-being. A survey containing measures of financial behavior, subjective financial well-being, self-control, optimism, deliberative thinking and demographic variables was sent to a representative sample (n=2063)" role="presentation" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; line-height: normal; font-size: 14.399999618530273px; word-wrap: normal; white-space: nowrap; float: none; direction: ltr; max-width: none; max-height: none; min-width: 0px; min-height: 0px; border: 0px; padding: 0px; margin: 0px; color: rgb(80, 80, 80); font-family: Arial, Helvetica, 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'Microsoft Sans Serif', 'Segoe UI Symbol', STIXGeneral, 'Cambria Math', 'Arial Unicode MS', sans-serif; position: relative;"> of the Swedish population. Our findings extend the application of the behavioral lifecycle hypothesis beyond savings behavior, to include general financial behavior. People with good self-control are more likely to save money from every pay-check, have better general financial behavior, feel less anxious about financial matters, and feel more secure in their current and future financial situation.

Export Date: 7 September 2017; Article

SummaryData analysis workflows in many scientific domains have become increasingly complex and flexible. To assess the impact of this flexibility on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) results, the same dataset was independently analyzed by 70 teams, testing nine ex-ante hypotheses. The flexibility of analytic approaches is exemplified by the fact that no two teams chose identical workflows to analyze the data. This flexibility resulted in sizeable variation in hypothesis test results, even for teams whose statistical maps were highly correlated at intermediate stages of their analysis pipeline. Variation in reported results was related to several aspects of analysis methodology. Importantly, meta-analytic approaches that aggregated information across teams yielded significant consensus in activated regions across teams. Furthermore, prediction markets of researchers in the field revealed an overestimation of the likelihood of significant findings, even by researchers with direct knowledge of the dataset. Our findings show that analytic flexibility can have substantial effects on scientific conclusions, and demonstrate factors related to variability in fMRI. The results emphasize the importance of validating and sharing complex analysis workflows, and demonstrate the need for multiple analyses of the same data. Potential approaches to mitigate issues related to analytical variability are discussed.

No abstract

We studied the association of individual differences in objective financial knowledge (i.e. competence), subjective financial knowledge (i.e. confidence), numeric ability, and cognitive reflection on a broad set of financial behaviors and feelings towards financial matters. We used a large diverse sample (N = 2063) of the adult Swedish population. We found that both objective and subjective financial knowledge predicted frequent engagement in sound financial practices, while numeric ability and cognitive reflection could not be linked to the considered financial behaviors when controlling for other relevant cognitive abilities. In addition, both objective and subjective financial knowledge served as a buffer against financial anxiety, while we did not detect similar buffering effects of numeric ability and cognitive reflection. Subjective financial knowledge was found to be a stronger predictor of sound financial behavior and subjective wellbeing than objective financial knowledge. Women reported a lower level of subjective financial wellbeing even though they reported a more prudent financial behavior than men, when controlling for sociodemographics and cognitive abilities. Our findings help to understand heterogeneity in people's propensity to engage in sound financial behaviors and have implications for important policy issues related to financial education.