Proceedings

in value this will make the loss tangible and they prefer to postpone the pain for as
long as possible, causing in this way more losses. The things seem to be also
connected with the brains activity because several studies have shown that higher
sensitivity to loss entails emotional processes recruiting structures such as the
amygdala and the anterior insula, which are parts of human cortex associated with a
some mostly negative emotions and behaviors, from the generation of fear to the
memory of painful associations (Tom et al, 2007).
4.5. Regret aversion bias
Sometimes where people are confronted with the results of a bad decision they blame
themselves considering that a different way of action would bring a different outcome.
This unpleasant feeling is the emotion of regret. Regret has serious behavioural
implication determined from the anticipation and also from the experience of this
emotion (Zeelenberg et al, 2001)
Usually individuals experience more regret for the actions they have take than for the
action they have forgone (Gilovich et al.1995, Ordonez and Connolly, 2000)
5. GENDER REALLY MATTERS?
In order to test for the described biases a questionnaire was distributed to 1000
participants, students form West University from Timisoara and Polytechnic
University from Timisoara. 888 questionnaires were declared correctly filled and were
used in the second step to determine if men and women are equally susceptible to
certain cognitive and emotional biases at the debut of their investment period.
The questionnaire encloses 38 multiple choice questions that verify the presence of
the 18th biases already discussed. The respondents were asked to state first their
gender and after to fill the form with the answers they consider correct for them. The
asked questions are presented below .The answers susceptible of the bias are market
with bold characters or/and italic characters; in the case of the biases verified by two
questions each answer susceptible of that bias counts 0.5 point. In the case of
2 answers susceptible for a bias for a question, the second susceptible answer counts
0.25 point –the answer market with italics (the questions were randomly distributed in
the questionnaire)
5.1. Overconfidence
How easy you would consider predicting the price increase for a certain stock on the
stock exchange?
• easy
• pretty easy
• pretty hard
• hard
Do you think you could easily estimate what stocks will outperform the market?
• absolutely not
• in a very small part
• yes
~ 846 ~