Abstract

We present evidence of first impression bias among finance professionals in the field. Equity analysts’ forecasts, target prices, and recommendations suffer from first impression bias. If a firm performs particularly well (poorly) in the year before an analyst follows it, that analyst tends to issue optimistic (pessimistic) evaluations. Consistent with negativity bias, we find that negative first impressions have a stronger effect than positive ones. The market adjusts for analyst first impression bias with a lag. Finally, our findings contribute to the literature on experience effects. We show that a set of professionals in the field, equity analysts, apply U-shaped weights to their sequence of past experiences, with greater weight on first experiences and recent experiences than on intermediate ones.

中文翻译：

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首次印象偏差：来自分析师预测的证据*

摘要

我们提供了该领域金融专业人士的第一印象偏见的证据。股票分析师的预测，目标价格和建议受到第一印象的偏见。如果公司在分析师跟随其前一年的表现特别出色（差），则该分析师倾向于发布乐观（悲观）评估。与消极偏见一致，我们发现负面的第一印象的影响要强于正面的印象。市场会因滞后而调整分析师的第一印象偏差。最后，我们的发现为有关经验效应的文献做出了贡献。我们表明，该领域的一组专业人士（股票分析师）将U形权重应用于他们过去的经历序列，与初次经历和最新经历相比，对中间经历的重视程度更高。