IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/2111.06062.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Supply of Motivated Beliefs

Author

Listed:
  • Michael Thaler

Abstract

When people choose what messages to send to others, they often consider how others will interpret the messages. A sender may expect a receiver to engage in motivated reasoning, leading the receiver to trust good news more than bad news, relative to a Bayesian. This paper experimentally studies how motivated reasoning affects information transmission in political settings. Senders are randomly matched with receivers whose political party's stances happen to be aligned or misaligned with the truth, and either face incentives to be rated as truthful or face no incentives. Incentives to be rated as truthful cause senders to be less truthful; when incentivized, senders send false information to align messages with receivers' politically-motivated beliefs. The adverse effect of incentives is not appreciated by receivers, who rate senders in both conditions as being equally likely to be truthful. A complementary experiment further identifies senders' beliefs about receivers' motivated reasoning as the mechanism driving these results. Senders are additionally willing to pay to learn the politics of their receivers, and use this information to send more false messages.

Suggested Citation

  • Michael Thaler, 2021. "The Supply of Motivated Beliefs," Papers 2111.06062, arXiv.org, revised Sep 2023.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2111.06062
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/2111.06062
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Emily Oster & Ira Shoulson & E. Ray Dorsey, 2013. "Optimal Expectations and Limited Medical Testing: Evidence from Huntington Disease," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(2), pages 804-830, April.
    2. Kai Barron, 2021. "Belief updating: does the ‘good-news, bad-news’ asymmetry extend to purely financial domains?," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 24(1), pages 31-58, March.
    3. David Eil & Justin M. Rao, 2011. "The Good News-Bad News Effect: Asymmetric Processing of Objective Information about Yourself," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 3(2), pages 114-138, May.
    4. Alexander Coutts, 2019. "Good news and bad news are still news: experimental evidence on belief updating," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 22(2), pages 369-395, June.
    5. Michael Thaler, 2020. "Good News Is Not a Sufficient Condition for Motivated Reasoning," Papers 2012.01548, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2024.
    6. McKelvey Richard D. & Palfrey Thomas R., 1995. "Quantal Response Equilibria for Normal Form Games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 6-38, July.
    7. Matthew Gentzkow & Jesse M. Shapiro, 2010. "What Drives Media Slant? Evidence From U.S. Daily Newspapers," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 78(1), pages 35-71, January.
    8. Michael Thaler, 2024. "The Fake News Effect: Experimentally Identifying Motivated Reasoning Using Trust in News," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 16(2), pages 1-38, May.
    9. Eric Maskin & Jean Tirole, 2004. "The Politician and the Judge: Accountability in Government," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(4), pages 1034-1054, September.
    10. Barron, Kai, 2019. "Lying to appear honest," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Economics of Change SP II 2019-307, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    11. Shaul Shalvi & Ivan Soraperra & Joël van der Weele & Marie Claire Villeval, 2019. "Shooting the Messenger? Supply and Demand in Markets for Willful Ignorance," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 19-071/I, Tinbergen Institute.
    12. Thaler, Michael, 2021. "Gender differences in motivated reasoning," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 191(C), pages 501-518.
    13. Erik Peterson & Shanto Iyengar, 2021. "Partisan Gaps in Political Information and Information‐Seeking Behavior: Motivated Reasoning or Cheerleading?," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 65(1), pages 133-147, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Elias Tsakas, 2021. "Identification of misreported beliefs," Papers 2112.12975, arXiv.org.
    2. Kashner, Daniel & Stalinski, Mateusz, 2024. "Preempting polarization: An experiment on opinion formation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 234(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ester Faia & Andreas Fuster & Vincenzo Pezone & Basit Zafar, 2024. "Biases in Information Selection and Processing: Survey Evidence from the Pandemic," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 106(3), pages 829-847, May.
    2. Thaler, Michael, 2021. "Gender differences in motivated reasoning," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 191(C), pages 501-518.
    3. Michael Thaler, 2024. "The Fake News Effect: Experimentally Identifying Motivated Reasoning Using Trust in News," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 16(2), pages 1-38, May.
    4. Castagnetti, Alessandro & Schmacker, Renke, 2022. "Protecting the ego: Motivated information selection and updating," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 142(C).
    5. Shimon Kogan & Florian H. Schneider & Roberto A. Weber, 2021. "Self-Serving Biases in Beliefs about Collective Outcomes," CESifo Working Paper Series 8975, CESifo.
    6. Daniel J. Benjamin, 2018. "Errors in Probabilistic Reasoning and Judgment Biases," NBER Working Papers 25200, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Ryan Oprea & Sevgi Yuksel, 2022. "Social Exchange of Motivated Beliefs," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 20(2), pages 667-699.
    8. Kai Barron & Christina Gravert, 2022. "Confidence and Career Choices: An Experiment," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 124(1), pages 35-68, January.
    9. Francesco Capozza & Ingar Haaland & Christopher Roth & Johannes Wohlfart, 2021. "Studying Information Acquisition in the Field: A Practical Guide and Review," CEBI working paper series 21-15, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics. The Center for Economic Behavior and Inequality (CEBI).
    10. Christoph Drobner, 2020. "Motivated Beliefs and Anticipation of Uncertainty Resolution," Munich Papers in Political Economy 07, Munich School of Politics and Public Policy and the School of Management at the Technical University of Munich.
    11. Banerjee, Ritwik & Gupta, Nabanita Datta & Villeval, Marie Claire, 2020. "Feedback spillovers across tasks, self-confidence and competitiveness," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 123(C), pages 127-170.
    12. Dzung Bui & Lena Draeger & Bernd Hayo & Giang NghiemŸ, 2020. "Consumer Sentiment During the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Role of Others' Beliefs," MAGKS Papers on Economics 202049, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Department of Economics (Volkswirtschaftliche Abteilung).
    13. Assenza, Tiziana, 2021. "The Ability to 'Distill the Truth'," TSE Working Papers 21-1280, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE), revised Mar 2022.
    14. Kai Barron, 2021. "Belief updating: does the ‘good-news, bad-news’ asymmetry extend to purely financial domains?," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 24(1), pages 31-58, March.
    15. Roy-Chowdhury, V., 2022. "Self-Confidence and Motivated Memory Loss: Evidence from Schools," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 2213, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    16. Yves Le Yaouanq & Peter Schwardmann, 2022. "Learning About One’s Self," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 20(5), pages 1791-1828.
    17. Joshua E. Blumenstock & Matthew Olckers, 2020. "Gamblers Learn from Experience," Papers 2011.00432, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2021.
    18. Michael Thaler, 2020. "Good News Is Not a Sufficient Condition for Motivated Reasoning," Papers 2012.01548, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2024.
    19. Nisvan Erkal & Lata Gangadharan & Boon Han Koh, 2022. "By chance or by choice? Biased attribution of others’ outcomes when social preferences matter," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 25(2), pages 413-443, April.
    20. Erkal, Nisvan & Gangadharan, Lata & Koh, Boon Han, 2023. "Do women receive less blame than men? Attribution of outcomes in a prosocial setting," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 210(C), pages 441-452.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2111.06062. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://arxiv.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.