We administer the Allais paradox questions to, both, a representative sample of the Dutch population and to student subjects. Three treatments are implemented: one with the original high hypothetical payoffs, one with low hypothetical payoffs and a third with low real payoffs. Our key findings are–(i) a large bulk of violations stems from non-familiarity with large payoffs; (ii) we can identify groups of the general population that have much higher than average violation rates and may, hence, be more prone to making imprudent financial choices; this concerns mainly the lowly educated and unemployed; and (iii) the violation rate in the lab provides a lower bound for the violation rate in the population at large.