Behavioral Finance: The Explanation of Investors’ Personality and Perceptual Biases Effects on Financial Decisions

Rasoul Sadi, Hassan Ghalibaf Asl, Mohammad Reza Rostami, Aryan Gholipour, Fattaneh Gholipour

International Journal of Economics and Finance · 2011 · 135 citations · 14 references

DOIFull text

Open access

TL;DR

Perceptual errors significantly influence investors’ buying and selling decisions. The study aims to identify common perceptual errors among investors and examine their relationship with personality traits. A random sample of 200 Tehran stock market investors completed questionnaires, and parametric analysis and correlation tests were used to evaluate the hypotheses. Significant correlations were found linking personality traits to perceptual biases—extroversion and openness with hindsight and overconfidence biases, neuroticism with randomness bias, escalation of commitment with availability bias, and inverse relationships between conscientiousness and randomness bias and between openness and availability bias.

Abstract

One of the important factors on investors financial decisions are perceptual errors which affect their decisions while buying and selling stock. The good of this study is to recognize the popular perceptual errors among investors and its connection with their personality. Therefore, 200 of the investors in Tehran's stock market were taken randomly as samples and the needed data was gathered through questions, using the parametric analysis and correlation we have tried to check the accuracy of the hypotheses. The finding demonstrates that the offered perceptual errors have got a significant correlation with the investors' personality. The conclusions exhibit that there is direct correlation between extroversion and openness whit hindsight bias and over confidence bias, between neuroticism and randomness bias, between escalation of commitment and availability biases. Also, there is a reverse correlation between conscientiousness and randomness bias, between openness and availability bias.

References

14