Data for: The effect of cognitive load on economic decision making: A survey and new experiments

Abstract of associated article: Psychologists and economists have examined the effect of cognitive load in a variety of situations from risk taking to snack choice. We review previous experiments that have directly manipulated cognitive load and summarize their findings. We report the results of two new experiments where participants engage in a digit-memorization task while simultaneously performing a variety of economic tasks including: (1) choices involving risk, (2) choices involving intertemporal substitution, (3) choices with anchoring effects, (4) choices over healthy and unhealthy snacks, and (5) math problems. We find that higher cognitive load reduces numeracy as measured by performance in math problems. Moreover, within-subject analysis indicates that cognitive load leads to more risk-averse behavior, more impatience over money, and (nominally) more likelihood to anchor. We do not find any evidence that cognitive load increases impatience over consumption goods or unhealthy snack choices. Exploiting the panel nature of our data set, we find that those individuals who are most sensitive to cognitive load, as measured by a large drop in their own math performance across 1- and 8-digit memorization treatments, are driving much of the effect.

关联文章摘要：心理学家与经济学家已在多种情境中考察认知负荷（cognitive load）的影响，涵盖风险决策至零食选择等研究范畴。本文综述了此前直接操纵认知负荷的相关实验研究，并总结其核心发现。本文报告两项全新实验的结果：参与者在完成数字记忆任务的同时，需执行多项经济学任务，具体包括：(1) 风险决策任务；(2) 跨期替代（intertemporal substitution）决策任务；(3) 存在锚定效应（anchoring effects）的决策任务；(4) 健康与不健康零食的选择任务；(5) 数学计算题。研究发现，更高水平的认知负荷会降低通过数学计算题表现所衡量的数学运算能力（numeracy）。进一步的被试内分析（within-subject analysis）表明，认知负荷会导致更显著的风险规避倾向、对金钱的时间贴现倾向更强，以及（名义上）更易受锚定效应影响。本研究未发现认知负荷会提升对消费品的急躁程度，或对不健康零食的选择产生显著影响的证据。借助本数据集的面板数据属性，我们发现，在1位与8位数字记忆任务处理条件下自身数学表现出现大幅下滑的个体——即对认知负荷最为敏感的群体——主导了绝大多数的实验效应。