Investigation of anomalies based on cognitive reflection levels of university students in scope of behavioral finance

From the earliest periods of the economy literature to the neo-classical period, it was accepted that the subject of social sciences, which is the main research subject, is not rational in terms of human beings and the assumption that the individual cannot always exhibit characteristics that are framed as economic people (homo economicus) at anytime, anywhere. However, in this period, acceptance of the individual cannot always be rational is based on the fact that the individual is a being with senses or feelings. The assumption that the individual is rational and will consider his economic interests, which has become an imposition of the branches such as statistics and econometrics in almost all of the studies carried out in the fields of business and economics from the Neo-Classical period to the present, has become the main topic of discussion in the behavioral literature in the last 30-40 years. However, the assumption, as in the neo-classical economics, refers to a violation that the individual is a human being and that the brain structure systematically shows certain anomalies, not a deviation that his / her feelings, fears, desires, etc., as a person is a human being. Systematic behavioral errors (anomalies or biases) arising from the mental structure of the individual - the mental process called system 1 - and observed in all individuals are categorized with the help of a cognitive reflection test in which the cognitive level of the individual is determined. The level of cognition is measured by the ability to respond to the intuitive first response that can be misleading in the mind and to evaluate the situation by giving a command to the mind – by using system 2 - when it is necessary to make an inferential mindset for any situation. It is understood that the cognitive reflection level of the individual on which the behavioral finance is based and the behavioral anomalies observed in the individual (availability, representation and anchoring) caused by the heuristics are found to have a direct relationship. In this study, it is aimed to contribute to the limited work already done in relation to the overconfidence, mental accounting, base-rate fallacy and exponential growth of the x behavioral biases - in 2002, Kahneman and in 2017 Thaler won the Nobel Prize in economics - in which studies on finance, marketing and economics were intensified.