Find Your Investor Type With These Quizzes - Behavioral Finance Chapter 7
Chapter 7 of Behavioral Finance and Investor Types by Michael M. Pompian is where theory finally meets practice. After six chapters of background, frameworks, and definitions, you actually get to take the quizzes and figure out what type of investor you are. Two quizzes, to be specific.
The Two-Step Process
Pompian designed a two-step diagnostic. Step 1 figures out your overall orientation. Step 2 identifies the specific biases that come with that orientation.
Both tests are objective, meaning multiple choice. No open-ended “describe your feelings about money” stuff. Just pick an answer and tally your results.
Here’s the thing worth noting before you start. Just because you land in one category doesn’t mean you won’t have traits from another. A Preserver might show some Independent tendencies. A Follower might have a bias that’s usually linked to Accumulators. These aren’t rigid boxes. They’re starting points for understanding your dominant patterns.
Step 1: The BIT Orientation Quiz
The first quiz is 10 questions. Each question has four answer choices labeled a through d. Each letter maps to one of the four Behavioral Investor Types:
- a answers point to Preserver (safety-focused, protective)
- b answers point to Accumulator (action-oriented, aggressive)
- c answers point to Independent (research-driven, analytical)
- d answers point to Follower (relies on others, passive)
The questions cover things like: what’s your main role in managing money, what happens when markets drop, how do you feel about following a plan, what do you do when a friend gives you a hot stock tip.
Some of the questions are pretty transparent. Like “Imagine yourself at a sporting event. Which role are you most likely to play?” Where defensive player = Preserver, offensive player = Accumulator, coach = Independent, fan = Follower. You can see where each answer is going. Pompian actually acknowledges this. He says the questions might seem obvious, but the initial identification still matters.
Whichever letter you pick most often is your dominant orientation. Simple.
Step 2: The Bias Identification Quiz
This is where it gets more interesting. Step 2 has 20 questions, each on a Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree scale. Each question tests for a specific behavioral bias, and each bias is linked to one of the four investor types.
Here’s how the biases break down by orientation:
Preserver biases: anchoring (fixating on purchase price), loss aversion (losses hurt way more than gains feel good), endowment (getting emotionally attached to investments), status quo (thinking about changes but never making them), mental accounting (putting money in separate mental buckets for different purposes).
Accumulator biases: self-control (buying things you want even if it’s financially dumb), overconfidence (thinking your investment knowledge is above average), affinity (investing in companies whose products you like), outcome (caring only about making money, not following a plan), illusion of control (believing you’ll do better making your own calls).
Independent biases: availability (jumping on new investments too quickly), self-attribution (taking credit for wins, blaming others for losses), conservatism (refusing to change your mind once it’s made up), representativeness (assuming past patterns will repeat), confirmation (seeking out info that proves you were right).
Follower biases: regret (past mistakes making you change your current strategy), framing (trusting big-name firms over small ones just because of brand), hindsight (looking back and thinking mistakes were “obviously” avoidable), cognitive dissonance (focusing only on the positives of an investment), recency (weighting recent performance over long-term track records).
Why Both Steps Matter
You could skip Step 1 and just take the bias quiz. But Pompian recommends doing both because knowing your orientation gives you context. If you know you’re a Preserver, you can focus on the Preserver-linked biases first since those are the ones most likely to trip you up.
But also, you might score as an Accumulator in Step 1 and still show strong hindsight bias from the Follower category in Step 2. That’s normal. The orientation tells you the big picture. The bias quiz fills in the details.
So What Do You Do With the Results?
Pompian is honest here. The quizzes are just a diagnostic tool. Knowing your type and your biases doesn’t automatically fix anything. That would be like saying knowing you’re a stress-eater will stop you from reaching for chips at midnight.
The value is in awareness. Once you know your dominant tendencies, you can build strategies around them. And that’s what the next four chapters cover, one for each investor type: Preserver, Follower, Independent, and Accumulator. Each chapter goes deep into how to actually deal with the biases that come with that type.
The whole point of this exercise is to prevent destructive behaviors from getting in the way of your financial goals. Not to label yourself and call it a day.
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