英文摘要 |
Motivated by psychological evidence that cognitive constraints affect investors in processing information, this study investigates whether analysts are subject to cognitive dissonance and how limited cognitive processing power influences analysts' issuance of investment recommendation. Cognitive dissonance is a defense mechanism to avoid psychological discomfort when the evidence is inconsistent with one's prior perception. Such cognitive constraints may limit analysts' attention to certain stocks or information. We use preceding unfavorable recommendations to proxy analysts' negative perceptions and find that analysts delay their incorporating positive signals into the recommendations. This paper contributes to the analyst behavior literature by providing empirical evidence that analysts' underreaction to new information for unfavorable category stocks is partly attributable to the cognitive dissonance. The documented significantly longer duration for the recovering stocks is consistent with the effectiveness of contrarian investment strategies. |