The Dynamics of Motivated Beliefs
By Florian Zimmermann. 2020
239 citations recorded by the source corpus.
A key question in the literature on motivated reasoning and self-deception is how motivated beliefs are sustained in the presence of feedback. In this paper, we explore dynamic motivated belief patterns after feedback. We establish that positive feedback has a persistent effect on beliefs. Negative feedback, instead, influences beliefs in the short run, but this effect fades over time. We investigate the mechanisms of this dynamic pattern, and provide evidence for an asymmetry in the recall of feedback. Finally, we establish that, in line with theoretical accounts, incentives for belief accuracy mitigate the role of motivated reasoning.
Subfields: Demography, Management Science and Operations Research, Safety Research
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d83b6ca8e8fe29cfef4765445f9f48908afc8a1e
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In Demography
In Management Science and Operations Research
In Safety Research
Citations in the corpus
- Misperceptions About Others (2021, background): “This suggests a possible interaction between endogenous memory of information (e.g., Zimmermann 2020) and the nature of the content regarding others.”
- Requiem for a Nudge: Framing effects in nudging honesty (2020, unknown): “…we observe a higher rate of lying overall, which is in line with the literature on motivated misremembering and belief distortion, among others (e.g., Carlson et al., 2018; Exley and Kessler, 2018; Gneezy et al., 2018b; Zimmermann, 2019; Bicchieri et al., 2019b; Saucet and Villeval, 2019 ).”
- Designing Information Provision Experiments (2020, background): “Researchers have started to use probabilistic information treatments to compare belief updating to Bayesian benchmarks (Eil and Rao, 2011; Mobius et al., 2015; Thaler, 2021; Zimmermann, 2020).”