Data and Code for: "Belief Elicitation When More Than Money Matters: Controlling for Control"

Incentive compatible mechanisms for eliciting beliefs typically presume that the<br>utility of money is state independent or that money is the only argument in utility<br>functions. However, subjects may have non-monetary objectives that confound these<br>mechanisms. In particular, psychologists have argued that people favour bets where<br>their ability is involved over equivalent random bets, –a so-called preference for control.<br>We propose a new belief elicitation method that mitigates the control preference. Using<br>this method, we determine that under the ostensibly incentive compatible matching<br>probabilities method, subjects report self-beliefs 18% higher than their true beliefs in<br>order to increase control. Non-monetary objectives account for at least 68% of what<br>would normally be measured as overcon fidence. We also find that control manifests<br>itself only as a desire for betting on doing well; betting on doing badly is perceived<br>as a negative. Our mechanism can be used to yield better measurements of beliefs in<br>contexts beyond the study of overcon fidence.<br><br><br>