EITM: Collaborative Research: Reference Point Adaptation and Mental Accounting -- Dynamic Extensions of Prospect Theory

根据前景理论，一个人从收益或损失中获得的满足感被计算为与该人现状财富参考点的偏差。然而，随着时间的推移，随着个人适应财富的变化，每一次收益或损失都有可能改变参考点。我们的试点数据表明，人们更容易根据收益而不是损失来调整他们的参考点。对收益的适应越快，在精神上吸收这些收益就会产生立竿见影的满足感，但对随后的收益就会感到不满，相对于新的、更高的参照点，这会让人感觉不那么令人印象深刻。对损失的较慢适应通过推迟吸收新的、较低的财富水平来减少眼前的痛苦，但也会降低与未来收益或损失相关的满足感。我们的建议旨在调查个体适应得失的准备情况，影响适应的因素，以及适应发生的方式。将使用调查问卷和具有实际货币收益的新的实验性拍卖设计来确定参考点的位置及其在得失后的移动。我们还将继续我们已经开始的研究，在这些研究中，我们使用美国券商的实际交易数据检验了我们对参考点适应性的预测。研究人员最近发现，美国金融市场存在一些异常的价格模式，亚洲市场没有，反之亦然。此外，信息处理的风险偏好和风格在亚洲和西方文化中也有所不同。除了在美国收集数据外，我们还将在韩国和中国进行实验，以探索文化差异是否会影响参考点适应，进而可能导致不同国家在股票回报行为上的差异。

Under prospect theory, a person's satisfaction derived from a gain or loss is calculated as a deviation from that person's status quo wealth reference point. However over time each gain or loss has the potential to alter the reference point as the individual adapts to the change in wealth. Our pilot data suggest that people adapt their reference points more readily to gains than to losses. The quicker adaptation to gains leads to immediate gratification from mentally assimilating those gains, but dissatisfaction with subsequent gains, which feel less impressive relative to the new, elevated reference point. The slower adaptation to losses reduces immediate misery by deferring the assimilation of the new, lower wealth level, but also decreases the satisfaction associated with future gains or losses. Our proposal is designed to investigate individuals' readiness to adapt to gains versus losses, the factors that influence adaptation, and the means by which adaptation occurs. Questionnaires and a new experimental auction design with real monetary payoffs will be used to identify the location of reference points and their movements after gains or losses. We will also continue research we have already begun in which we have tested our predictions about reference point adaptation using actual trading data from United States brokerage houses.Researchers have recently discovered that some anomalous price patterns are present in American financial markets are absent in Asian markets, and conversely. Also, risk preferences and styles of information processing have been shown to differ in Asian and Western cultures. In addition to collecting data in the United States, we will perform experiments in Korea and China to explore whether cultural differences influence reference point adaptation, which in turn may contribute to differences across countries in the behavior of stock returns.