On the Heritability of Consumer Decision Making: An Exploratory Approach for Studying Genetic Effects on Judgment and Choice

Simonson, Itamar; Sela, Aner

doi:10.1086/657022

Cited by 77 publications

(49 citation statements)

References 81 publications

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“…They found significant heritability for 7 out of 23 product preferences surveyed (e.g., for dark chocolate, hybrid cars, and science fiction), and for 13 out of 39 items concerning consumer judgment and decision making (e.g., compromise options, loss aversion, near-future temporal discounting, and maximizing versus satisfying). Near the conclusion of their article, Simonson and Sela (2011) suggested that twin research might reveal the genetic predispositions that lead certain consumers to prefer a certain type of mobile phone, which leads nicely to our study.…”

supporting

confidence: 62%

The Heritability and Genetic Correlates of Mobile Phone Use: A Twin Study of Consumer Behavior

et al. 2012

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There has been almost no overlap between behavior genetics and consumer behavior research, despite each field's importance in understanding society. In particular, both have neglected to study genetic influences on consumer adoption and usage of new technologies — even technologies as important as the mobile phone, now used by 5.8 out of 7.0 billion people on earth. To start filling this gap, we analyzed self-reported mobile phone use, intelligence, and personality traits in two samples of Australian teenaged twins (mean ages 14.2 and 15.6 years), totaling 1,036 individuals. ACE modeling using Mx software showed substantial heritabilities for how often teens make voice calls (.60 and .34 in samples 1 and 2, respectively) and for how often they send text messages (.53 and. 50). Shared family environment – including neighborhood, social class, parental education, and parental income (i.e., the generosity of calling plans that parents can afford for their teens) — had much weaker effects. Multivariate modeling based on cross-twin, cross-trait correlations showed negative genetic correlations between talking/texting frequency and intelligence (around –.17), and positive genetic correlations between talking/texting frequency and extraversion (about .20 to .40). Our results have implications for assessing the risks of mobile phone use such as radiofrequency field (RF) exposure and driving accidents, for studying adoption and use of other emerging technologies, for understanding the genetic architecture of the cognitive and personality traits that predict consumer behavior, and for challenging the common assumption that consumer behavior is shaped entirely by culture, media, and family environment.

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supporting

confidence: 62%

The Heritability and Genetic Correlates of Mobile Phone Use: A Twin Study of Consumer Behavior

et al. 2012

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“…We build on an emerging literature wherein behavioral genetic techniques are used to study the genetic and environmental sources of variation in economic decision making (Barnea et al 2010;Cesarini et al 2008Cesarini et al , 2009aCronqvist and Siegel 2011;Simonson and Sela 2011;Zhong et al 2009;Zyphur et al 2009;Wallace et al 2007). We find that well-documented behavioral anomalies such as the conjunction fallacy, loss aversion, default bias, and representativeness are moderately heritable.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Behavioral Genetics of Behavioral Anomalies

et al. 2012

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A number of recent papers have examined the environmental and genetic sources of individual differences in economic and financial decision making. Here we contribute to this burgeoning literature by extending it to a number of key behavioral anomalies that are thought to be of importance for consumption, savings, and portfolio selection decisions. Using survey-based evidence from more than 11,000 Swedish twins, we demonstrate that a number of anomalies such as, for instance, the conjunction fallacy, default bias, and loss aversion are moderately heritable. In contrast, our estimates imply that variation in common environment explains only a small share of individual differences. We also report suggestive evidence in favor of a shared genetic architecture between cognitive reflection and a subset of the studied anomalies. These results offer some support for the proposition that the heritable variation in behavioral anomalies is partly mediated by genetic variance in cognitive ability. Taken together with previous findings, our results underline the importance of genetic differences as a source of heterogeneity in economic and financial decision making.

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“…More recent work has extended the literature by studying the genetic heritability of the formation of preferences (Cesarini et. al 2009, andSimonson andSela 2011) and financial decision-making (Barnea et al 2010, andCesarini et al 2010 Most of the attrition is due to death (e.g., of fatal diseases or accidents) and migration. 10 There are two other closely related branches in the literature.…”

Section: Existing Evidencementioning

confidence: 99%