Revisiting mental accounting classic paradigms: Replication Registered Report of the problems reviewed in Thaler (1999)

Abstract

Mental accounting, the internal categorization system individuals adopt to manage their financial activities, may result in suboptimal decisions or decision-making not aligned with one’s own goals. In a Registered Report with an online US sample recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk using CloudResearch, we conducted a replication of 17 classic problems reviewed in Thaler 1999 J. Behav. Decis. Mak. 12 , 183–206. (doi: 10.1002/(SICI)1099-0771(199909)12:33.0.CO;2-F ) ( N = approx. 500 per problem; overall: N = 1007). We concluded a mostly successful replication: out of the 17 problems, we found empirical support for 11, mixed empirical support for three and no empirical support for three. Extending the replication, we provided an initial test of four untested predictions described in Thaler 1999 J. Behav. Decis. Mak. 12 , 183–206. (doi: 3.0.CO;2-F" xlink:type="simple">10.1002/(SICI)1099-0771(199909)12:33.0.CO;2-F) , of which we found empirical support for two, mixed support for one and no support for one. Materials, data, and analysis code are available on: https://osf.io/v7fbj/ . This Registered Report has been officially endorsed by Peer Community in Registered Reports: https://doi.org/10.24072/pci.rr.100375 .

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