Title: FinTech Brings a Bias from Psychology Labs to a Two-trillion-dollar Market

Speaker: Yan Hongjun, Professor, DePaul University

Time: 10:00-11:30, July 10th, 2026 (Friday)

Venue: Room 1008, Mingde Business Building (Zhongguancun Campus)

Language: English/Chinese

ABSTRACT:

Personalized services have traditionally been difficult to automate and therefore costly. Modern technology, such as robo-advising, promises to change this but also introduces new challenges. Robo-advisors typically make investment recommendations based on surveys of clients’ preferences. As a result, biases induced by these surveys can become embedded in the algorithmic recommendations and influence investors’ financial decisions. To examine this conjecture, we conduct two studies. First, we administer a nationwide survey of experienced U.S. investors and show that the response-order effect—the influence of the order of listed choices on respondents’ answers—applies to survey questions commonly used by robo-advisors. Second, in collaboration with a leading robo-advisor in China, we conduct a preregistered RCT and show that, despite the large financial stakes involved, the response-order effect significantly alters both the robo-advisor’s risk assessments and its clients’ actual investment decisions, raising new ethical concerns in the FinTech era.