Animal spirits: Examining stock market irrationality via effects of language

Four studies investigated grammatical language effects in a high-stakes situation: stock investment. The grammatical gender of the company name in Spanish (Studies 1 - 2) and the classifier used to describe the company in Chinese (Studies 3 - 4) were shown to affect individuals’ prediction of future stock movement both in the real world (Studies 1 & 3) and in lab experiments (Studies 2 & 4). The language effect depended in part on the direction of the stock’s past movement. In the Spanish grammatical gender studies, upward momentum was consistently greater for companies with grammatically male names than those with grammatically female names. Experimental manipulation suggested that this effect can be plausibly driven by the belief in males’ greater forcefulness and rationality, as shown by the negative comments about a lack of the two qualities casting a greater influence on the female stocks. There was also mixed evidence for a surprising finding about male stocks being more overvalued than female stocks. In the Chinese classifier studies, effects were seen after downward trends: companies described with an animal classifier Zhi were more likely to be expected to reverse a downward trend and go back up compared to companies described with an object classifier Zhi. The different meanings of agency in male vs. female and in animal vs. inanimate beings were discussed.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Psychology

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2022

Author dc:creator

• Liu, Xi

Contributors dc:contributor

• Cohen, Dov
• Albarracín, Dolores
• Cheng, Joey
• Loewenstein, Jeff
• Ji, Li-Jun

• Grammatical Gender
• Stereotypes
• Markets
• Anthropomorphism
• Classifier

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2022 Xi Liu

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/117742

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F117742