Exploring Choice Errors in Children

Choice mistakes may be consequential. While we have plentiful evidence on adult behaviour, children’s choices are much less studied, yet not only may they shed light on adult behaviour, but they are themselves important, as potentially leading to low educational attainment, unhealthy food choices, and risky behaviours. In this paper, we study experimentally how children’s choice consistency and ability to avoid mistakes change with age. We study choice by primary school children in two (ubiquitous) domains: riskless and risky choice. We elicit complete choice functions over deterministic choices, while for lotteries we introduce a novel experimental design, documenting as a particular type of framing effect, consistent with correlation neglect, so far only studied in adults. With plentiful evidence of choice errors in adults, unsurprisingly choice errors and inconsistencies abound in children - strikingly though, in some cases already by age 10-11 children display error rates which are close to those observed in adults. Our results are well captured by a model of limited, stochastic consideration. Our experiment is rich enough to highlight the shape that potential interventions could take, aiming at increasing children’s consideration capacity. Different socioeconomic backgrounds seem to matter, though, reassuringly, the gap does tend to close over time.