[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/restud/v88y2021i1p378-405..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Heads or Tails: The Impact of a Coin Toss on Major Life Decisions and Subsequent Happiness

Author

Listed:
  • Steven D Levitt
Abstract
Little is known about whether people make good choices when facing important decisions. This article reports on a large-scale randomized field experiment in which research subjects having difficulty making a decision flipped a coin to help determine their choice. For important decisions (e.g. quitting a job or ending a relationship), individuals who are told by the coin toss to make a change are more likely to make a change, more satisfied with their decisions, and happier six months later than those whose coin toss instructed maintaining the status quo. This finding suggests that people may be excessively cautious when facing life-changing choices.

Suggested Citation

  • Steven D Levitt, 2021. "Heads or Tails: The Impact of a Coin Toss on Major Life Decisions and Subsequent Happiness," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 88(1), pages 378-405.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:restud:v:88:y:2021:i:1:p:378-405.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/restud/rdaa016
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Uri Gneezy & Alex Imas & John List, 2015. "Estimating Individual Ambiguity Aversion: A Simple Approach," Artefactual Field Experiments 00588, The Field Experiments Website.
    2. Stephan Meier & Alois Stutzer, 2008. "Is Volunteering Rewarding in Itself?," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 75(297), pages 39-59, February.
    3. Stefano DellaVigna, 2009. "Psychology and Economics: Evidence from the Field," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 47(2), pages 315-372, June.
    4. Eric Anderson & Duncan Simester, 2003. "Effects of $9 Price Endings on Retail Sales: Evidence from Field Experiments," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 1(1), pages 93-110, March.
    5. Jonathan Gruber & Sendhil Mullainathan, 2006. "Do Cigarette Taxes Make Smokers Happier?," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Yew-Kwang Ng & Lok Sang Ho (ed.), Happiness and Public Policy, chapter 6, pages 109-146, Palgrave Macmillan.
    6. Easterlin, Richard A., 1974. "Does Economic Growth Improve the Human Lot? Some Empirical Evidence," MPRA Paper 111773, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. John A. List, 2002. "Preference Reversals of a Different Kind: The "More Is Less" Phenomenon," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(5), pages 1636-1643, December.
    8. Uri Gneezy & John A List, 2006. "Putting Behavioral Economics to Work: Testing for Gift Exchange in Labor Markets Using Field Experiments," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 74(5), pages 1365-1384, September.
    9. repec:feb:artefa:0087 is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Ananish Chaudhuri, 2011. "Sustaining cooperation in laboratory public goods experiments: a selective survey of the literature," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 14(1), pages 47-83, March.
    11. Daniel Kahneman & Alan B. Krueger, 2006. "Developments in the Measurement of Subjective Well-Being," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 20(1), pages 3-24, Winter.
    12. Pedersen, Peder J. & Schmidt, Torben Dall, 2014. "Life Events and Subjective Well-being: The Case of Having Children," IZA Discussion Papers 8207, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    13. Armin Falk, 2007. "Gift Exchange in the Field," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 75(5), pages 1501-1511, September.
    14. Dolan, Paul & Peasgood, Tessa & White, Mathew, 2008. "Do we really know what makes us happy A review of the economic literature on the factors associated with subjective well-being," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 94-122, February.
    15. Levitt, Steven D. & List, John A., 2009. "Field experiments in economics: The past, the present, and the future," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(1), pages 1-18, January.
    16. Sendhil Mullainathan & Marianne Bertrand, 2001. "Do People Mean What They Say? Implications for Subjective Survey Data," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(2), pages 67-72, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Blog mentions

    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. Heads or Tails: The Impact of a Coin Toss on Major Life Decisions and Subsequent Happiness
      by maximorossi in NEP-LTV blog on 2016-09-06 01:23:46

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Victor Haghani & Richard Dewey, 2017. "Rational Decision-Making Under Uncertainty: Observed Betting Patterns on a Biased Coin," Papers 1701.01427, arXiv.org.
    2. Angerer, Silvia & Dutcher, E. Glenn & Glätzle-Rützler, Daniela & Lergetporer, Philipp & Sutter, Matthias, 2021. "The Formation of Risk Preferences through Small-Scale Events," IZA Discussion Papers 14679, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Mussida Chiara & Zanin Luca, 2019. "Voluntary Mobility of Employees for Better Job Opportunities Given a Temporary Contract: Insights Regarding an Age-Varying Association Between the Two Events," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 19(2), pages 1-27, April.
    4. Gabriel Leite Mota, 2022. "Unsatisfying ordinalism: The breach through which happiness (re)entered economics," Regional Science Policy & Practice, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 14(3), pages 513-528, June.
    5. Henry S. Farber, 2016. "Employment, Hours and Earnings Consequences of Job Loss: U.S. Evidence from the Displaced Workers Survey," Working Papers 589a, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Industrial Relations Section..
    6. Andrew Leigh, 2024. "Ten Lessons for Economic Policymakers," Economic Papers, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 43(2), pages 105-111, June.
    7. Qiyan Ong & Jianying Qiu, 2023. "Paying for randomization and indecisiveness," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 67(1), pages 45-72, August.
    8. Javier A. Birchenall, 2024. "Random choice and market demand," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 57(1), pages 165-198, February.
    9. Chew, Soo Hong & Miao, Bin & Shen, Qiang & Zhong, Songfa, 2022. "Multiple-switching behavior in choice-list elicitation of risk preference," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 204(C).
    10. Mariela E Jaffé & Leonie Reutner & Rainer Greifeneder, 2019. "Catalyzing decisions: How a coin flip strengthens affective reactions," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(8), pages 1-14, August.
    11. Chiara Mussida & Luca Zanin, 2020. "I found a better job opportunity! Voluntary job mobility of employees and temporary contracts before and after the great recession in France, Italy and Spain," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 59(1), pages 47-98, July.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Maria Pereira & Filipe Coelho, 2013. "Untangling the Relationship Between Income and Subjective Well-Being: The Role of Perceived Income Adequacy and Borrowing Constraints," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 14(3), pages 985-1005, June.
    2. Ekaterina Oparina & Sorawoot Srisuma, 2022. "Analyzing Subjective Well-Being Data with Misclassification," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 40(2), pages 730-743, April.
    3. Rubén Arrondo & Ana Cárcaba & Eduardo González, 2021. "Drivers of Subjective Well-being in Spain: Are There Gender Differences?," Applied Research in Quality of Life, Springer;International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies, vol. 16(5), pages 2131-2154, October.
    4. Iddisah Sulemana, 2016. "Are Happier People More Willing to Make Income Sacrifices to Protect the Environment?," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 127(1), pages 447-467, May.
    5. DECANCQ, Koen & FLEURBAEY, Marc & SCHOKKAERT, Erik, 2014. "Inequality, income, and well-being," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2014018, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    6. Sun Youn Lee & Fumio Ohtake, 2021. "How Conscious Are You of Others? Further Evidence on Relative Income and Happiness," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 22(8), pages 3321-3356, December.
    7. Andrew E. Clark & Paul Frijters & Michael A. Shields, 2006. "Income and happiness: Evidence, explanations and economic implications," PSE Working Papers halshs-00590436, HAL.
    8. Chen, Le-Yu & Oparina, Ekaterina & Powdthavee, Nattavudh & Srisuma, Sorawoot, 2022. "Robust Ranking of Happiness Outcomes: A Median Regression Perspective," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 200(C), pages 672-686.
    9. Stutzer, Alois & Frey, Bruno S., 2010. "Recent Advances in the Economics of Individual Subjective Well-Being," IZA Discussion Papers 4850, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    10. Levitt, Steven D. & List, John A., 2009. "Field experiments in economics: The past, the present, and the future," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(1), pages 1-18, January.
    11. Sebastian Kube & Michel André Maréchal & Clemens Puppe, 2013. "Do Wage Cuts Damage Work Morale? Evidence From A Natural Field Experiment," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 11(4), pages 853-870, August.
    12. Chen, Le-Yu & Oparina, Ekaterina & Powdthavee, Nattavudh & Srisuma, Sorawoot, 2019. "Have Econometric Analyses of Happiness Data Been Futile? A Simple Truth about Happiness Scales," IZA Discussion Papers 12152, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    13. Metcalfe, Robert & Dolan, Paul, 2012. "Behavioural economics and its implications for transport," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 24(C), pages 503-511.
    14. Odermatt, Reto & Stutzer, Alois, 2017. "Subjective Well-Being and Public Policy," IZA Discussion Papers 11102, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    15. Brown, Philip H. & Tierney, Brian, 2009. "Religion and subjective well-being among the elderly in China," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 38(2), pages 310-319, March.
    16. Kelly Kilburn & Sudhanshu Handa & Gustavo Angeles & Peter Mvula & Maxton Tsoka & UNICEF Office of Research - Innocenti, 2016. "Happiness and Alleviation of Income Poverty: Impacts of an unconditional cash transfer programme using a subjective well-being approach," Papers inwopa857, Innocenti Working Papers.
    17. Bruno S. Frey & Anthony Gullo, 2021. "Does Sports Make People Happier, or Do Happy People More Sports?," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 22(4), pages 432-458, May.
    18. Hajdu, Tamás & Hajdu, Gábor, 2011. "A hasznosság és a relatív jövedelem kapcsolatának vizsgálata magyar adatok segítségével [Examining the relation of utility and relative income using Hungarian data]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(1), pages 56-73.
    19. Marcus Dittrich & Bianka Mey, 2015. "Are people satisfied with their time use? Empirical evidence from German survey data," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 35(4), pages 2903-2914.
    20. Sule Alan & Kadir Atalay & Thomas F. Crossley, 2008. "The Adequacy of Retirement Savings: Subjective Survey Reports by Retired Canadians," Canadian Public Policy, University of Toronto Press, vol. 34(s1), pages 95-118, November.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Quitting; Happiness; Decision biases;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D12 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:restud:v:88:y:2021:i:1:p:378-405.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/restud .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.