Behavioral Biases Are Temporally Stable

Abstract

Social scientists often consider temporal stability when assessing the usefulness of a construct and its measures, but whether behavioral biases display such stability is relatively unknown. We estimate stability for 25 biases, in a nationally representative sample, using repeated elicitations three years apart. Bias level indicators are largely stable in the aggregate and within-person. Within-person intertemporal rank correlations imply moderate stability and increase dramatically when using other biases as instrumental variables. Additional results reinforce three key inferences: biases are stable, accounting for classical measurement error in bias elicitation data is important, and eliciting multiple measures of multiple biases is valuable.