860 vIII. EMERGING  ISSuES AND  NEW  DIRECTIONS
These measures of noncognitive skills pre -
dicted adult outcomes with a strength simi -
lar to measures of cognitive ability. His mea -
sures of noncognitive skills are commonly 
available from the administrative records of 
schools. Kautz and Zanoni (2019) use early 
measures of behavior in school to predict 
graduation and college attendance.
Similar to Ralph Tyler’s suggestion of 
using participation in extracurricular ac -
tivities to measure noncognitive skills, Lle -
ras (2008) measured noncognitive skills in 
part by using 10th graders’ participation 
in sports, academic clubs, and fine arts ac -
tivities. Participation in these activities pre -
dicted educational attainment 10 years later, 
even after controlling for cognitive ability as 
measured by achievement tests.
Similarly, some studies have measured 
self- control using psychological scales, while 
others have used behavioral measures. A 
meta-  analysis by Pratt and Cullen (2000) re -
vealed that behavioral measures are at least 
as good at predicting crime as measures 
based on self-  reported taxonomies. In a sim -
ilar vein, Benda (2005) used both types of 
measures in the same study and found that 
behavioral measures predict crime better 
than psychological scales.
Hirschi and Gottfredson (1993) suggested 
that objective behavioral measures might be 
preferred to self-  reports, partly because the 
act of filling out a survey requires some level 
of self-  control. Answering survey questions 
is in itself a task that relies on skills beyond 
the ones targeted by the survey. Similarly, 
any self-  reported questionnaire is also based 
on a behavior in two distinct ways. On the 
one hand, completing the questionnaire is a 
behavior that could be influenced by aspects 
of the situation, such as through incentives 
to respond in a particular way or survey ad -
ministration conditions. On the other hand, 
many questionnaires require respondents to 
reflect on past behavior, which could in turn 
depend on the situation or incentives they 
faced at the time. For example, one com -
monly used Big Five item asks respondents 
the extent to which they agree with the state -
ment, “I see myself as someone who tends 
to be lazy” (John & Srivastava, 1999). The 
extent to which they might have behaved in 
a lazy way might depend on the incentives 
they faced to work hard at the time.Some criticize this approach and argue 
that it is tautological to use measures of 
behavior to predict other behaviors, even 
though the measures are taken early in life 
to predict later life behaviors.39 However, 
as suggested by Figure 42.1, all tasks or be -
haviors can be used to infer a skill as long 
as the measurement accounts for other rel -
evant skills and incentives of the situation 
in which the task is performed. In addition, 
many of the recent studies in economics 
use early measures of behaviors to predict 
behaviors in adulthood (see, e.g., Heckman 
et al., 2013, 2018; Heckman, Humphries, 
& Kautz, 2014). Self-  reported scales should 
not be assumed to be more reliable than be -
haviors, although personality psychologists 
often assume so. The question is which mea -
surements are most predictive and which 
can be implemented in practice. The litera -
ture suggests that there are objective mea -
surements of noncognitive skills that are not 
plagued by reference bias.
Measuring Economic  Preferences
In economic theory, preferences for risk and 
time are considered to be fundamental driv -
ers of a wide range of decisions. Economists 
assume that people make choices so as to 
maximize their well-being or “utility.” At -
titudes toward risk are commonly embodied 
by the “coefficient of risk aversion,” a pa -
rameter that governs the shape of an indi -
vidual’s utility function. Risk preference af -
fects decisions beyond those directly related 
to uncertainty (e.g., whether to buy insur -
ance). Attitudes toward time are captured by 
discount rates. They represent how people 
compare the value of outcomes that occur 
today to the value of outcomes that occur in 
the future. More recently, economists have 
devoted increasing attention to an expanded 
list of preferences such as altruism or trust, 
and to behavioral biases that skew decisions.
Choices on incentivized tasks are one way 
to measure preferences.40 Games and choice 
tasks have been developed to elicit each pref -
erence with careful attention devoted to en -
suring that they are incentive compatible.41 
For example, attitudes toward risk are com -
monly elicited by having an individual make 
a series of choices between a lottery and an 
increasing fixed payment (see Harrison & 