Dorien Bangma

INTRODUCTION TO THE FDM TESTS | 27 FDS: Financial decision styles questionnaire The Financial Decision Style (FDS) questionnaire evaluates the extent to which decision- making styles are used in an FDM situation. A decision-making style can be defined as “the learned habitual response pattern exhibited by an individual when confronted with a decision situation” (Scott & Bruce, 1995, p. 820). The FDS is inspired by the General Decision-Making Style (GDMS) questionnaire (Loo, 2000; Scott & Bruce, 1995; Spicer & Sadler-Smith, 2005). Questions of the GDMS have been translated and reformulated in such a way that the general decision situation concerns a financial decision. Similar to the GDMS, the FDS differentiates five decision-making styles corresponding the five-factor model of decision-making by Scott and Bruce (1995): a ‘rational’ decision style characterized by rational considerations and the evaluation of options (e.g., ‘I make financial decisions in a logical and systematic manner’ ), an ‘intuitive’ style characterized by relying on feelings or emotions (e.g., ‘When I make financial decisions, I tend to rely on my intuition’ ), a ‘dependent’ style characterized by the requirement of advice of others (e.g., ‘I rarely make important financial decisions without consulting other people’ ), an ‘avoidant’ style characterized by avoiding and postponing decisions (e.g., ‘I postpone financial decision-making whenever possible’ ) and a ‘spontaneous’ style characterized by impulsivity and spontaneous decisions without prior consideration (e.g., ‘I often make financial decisions in the spur of the moment’ ). One statement of the GDMS was not included in the FDS (i.e., ‘I often make impulsive decisions’ ), because the statement was not exclusively related to the spontaneous style and also correlated with the intuitive style (Scott & Bruce, 1995). The FDS consists, therefore, of 24 statements. For each statement, the participants must indicate to what extent this corresponds with their habitual manners when making a financial decision. Answers are scored on a five-point Likert scale ranging from 1 ( strongly disagree ) to 5 ( strongly agree ). Each decision style is reflected by 4 or 5 statements and for each of the five decision styles a total score can be calculated by adding the scores on these 4 or 5 statements. The FDS is a self-report questionnaire. The use of a specific decision style may be situational dependent, therefore, participants are asked to choose their answers based on financial decisions in general (e.g., when shopping or paying bills). Administration time of the FDS is approximately 5-10 minutes. TDT: Temporal discounting test The Temporal Discounting Task (TDT) is used to evaluate the concept of temporal discounting, which suggests the reduction of the subjective value of an option over time (Green et al., 1994, 1996). A strong temporal discounting tendency complicates decision-making with implications for the future (e.g., choosing between spending or saving money). The TDT is based on previously published procedures (e.g., Barkley et al., 2001; Green et al., 1994, 1996; Scheres et al., 2010) and consists of eighteen hypothetical scenarios. In each scenario, participants are offered a relatively high amount of money, which they can receive later in time. More specifically, they have to wait for a certain period of time (i.e., ‘one week’, ‘one month’ or ‘one year’, depending on the scenario) before they receive a relatively high amount of (hypothetical) money (i.e., €100, €500 or €1000, depending on the scenario). Simultaneously with this offer,