Gambling and investment decision making: A comparison of similar situation

Stock markets are like horse races: both offer uncertain payoffs determined by trading or betting activities. Are investing and gambling behaviours also similar? 48 participants bet in a simulated horse race, invested in a simulated stock market, and completed a questionnaire designed to predict investment/gambling behaviour. Aside from how much/little people invest/bet (Boldness-timidity of betting/investing behaviour) no other observed behaviours were consistent across both tasks. Few questionnaire items were reliably correlated with gambling or investment behaviour. Results suggest knowledge of gambling behaviour may not generalise to stock market investment behaviour and vice versa. Results also suggest that the structural similarity of situations alone is not sufficient to produce consistent behaviour across situations.