The aim of the present study was to examine the impact of professional financial experience on the relationships between financial knowledge and beliefs on financial planning for retirement (FPR) in young adults. We designed a domain-specific personal belief inventory comprising all important components involved in FPR. Financial professionals (n = 145) demonstrated greater knowledge of the financial retirement system compared with non-professionals (n = 382). The two groups, however, differed neither in objective nor self-rated general financial literacy. In non-professionals, higher financial literacy was positively linked to trust in the 2nd pension pillar, self-assessed competence in FPR, personal engagement in FPR, perceiving FPR as less emotionally loaded and FPR task as less complex. These predicted relationships were not found among professionals. Thus, professional experience in financial domain seems to bring a deeper and particularized insight into the pros and cons of the pension system, and consequently vacillates beliefs about FPR.

The present research conceptually replicates and extends the results of a study on the relation between individuals' sex, their risk attitudes and stereotype threat (Carr & Steele, 2010). The authors reported that differences between men and women in risk aversion emerged only after activating negative stereotypes about women's performance in mathematics. A total of 321 Slovaks, randomly assigned to control or experimental treatments, answered questions on their risk aversion, anxiety, analytical reasoning and gender self-concept. We expected to observe differences between men and women only after activating stereotypes. Aware of the issues with the consistency of different risk aversion measures, we investigated whether the effect of stereotype threat on risk aversion differs across three different risk aversion measures. Additionally, we explored whether this effect depends on how the stereotype threat is activated (explicit vs. implicit activation). Finally, to explain the mechanism through which stereotypes foster women's risk aversion, we explored the moderating effect of gender self-concept and mediating effects of anxiety and analytical reasoning on the relationship between stereotype threat and risk aversion. In general, the study found no differences between men and women in risk aversion and did not replicate the original effect of stereotype threat on risk aversion.