INVESTMENT PSYCHOLOGICAL BIASES IN THE UNITED STATES AND ITALY

Traditional finance is rooted in the standard utility theory. However, a relatively new field, behavioral finance, argues that some investment decisions are affected by psychological biases, rendering them not optimal. This study explores ten such psychological biases across the United States (U .S.) and Italy, with the objective of exploring whether the two countries display different behavioral biases and to what degree they are different. Utilizing data collected by a survey, the results show the presence of investment psychological tendencies in both the U.S. and Italy. These biases can influence investment behavior in a positive or negative manner. There are also some differences between selected biases in the two countries. The results also show that gender and individual cultural characteristics can also have an impact on investment biases present in the country in question