IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bon/boncrc/crctr224_2021_223v3.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Fishing for Good News: Motivated Information Acquisition

Author

Listed:
  • Si Chen
  • Carl Heese

Abstract

The literature on motivated reasoning argues that people skew their beliefs to feel moral when acting selfishly. We study information acquisition of decision-makers with a motive to form positive moral self-views and a motive to act selfishly. Theoretically and experimentally, we find that a motive to act selfishly makes individuals 'fish for good news': they are more likely to continue (stop) acquiring information, having received mostly information suggesting that acting selfishly is harmful (harmless) to others. We find that fishing for good news may improve social welfare. Finally, more intelligent individuals have a higher tendency to fish for good news.

Suggested Citation

  • Si Chen & Carl Heese, 2021. "Fishing for Good News: Motivated Information Acquisition," CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper Series crctr224_2021_223v3, University of Bonn and University of Mannheim, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:bon:boncrc:crctr224_2021_223v3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.crctr224.de/research/discussion-papers/archive/dp223
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Jeanne Hagenbach & Rachel Kranton, 2023. "Competition, Cooperation, and Motivated Social Perceptions," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-03792554, HAL.
    2. Pëllumb Reshidi & Alessandro Lizzeri & Leeat Yariv & Jimmy H. Chan & Wing Suen, 2021. "Individual and Collective Information Acquisition: An Experimental Study," NBER Working Papers 29557, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Lata Gangadharan & Philip J. Grossman & Nina Xue, 2022. "Stepping Stone: Identifying self-image concerns from motivated beliefs: Does it matter how and whom you ask?," Monash Economics Working Papers 2022-05, Monash University, Department of Economics.
    4. Jeanne Hagenbach & Charlotte Saucet, 2024. "Motivated Skepticism," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-03770685, HAL.
    5. Claire Rimbaud & Alice Soldà, 2024. "Avoiding the cost of your conscience: belief dependent preferences and information acquisition," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 27(3), pages 491-547, July.
    6. Lata Gangadharan & Philip J. Grossman & Nina Xue, 2021. "Identifying self-image concerns from motivated beliefs: Does it matter how and whom you ask?," Monash Economics Working Papers 2021-17, Monash University, Department of Economics.
    7. Jeanne Hagenbach & Charlotte Saucet, 2024. "Motivated Skepticism," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) hal-03770685, HAL.
    8. Eyting, Markus, 2022. "Why do we discriminate? The role of motivated reasoning," SAFE Working Paper Series 356, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE.
    9. Jeanne Hagenbach & Charlotte Saucet, 2024. "Motivated Skepticism," Working Papers hal-03770685, HAL.
    10. Markus Eyting, 2022. "Why do we Discriminate? The Role of Motivated Reasoning," Working Papers 2208, Gutenberg School of Management and Economics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz.
    11. Hajdu, Gergely & Krusper, Balázs, 2023. "Choice-induced Sticky Learning," Department of Economics Working Paper Series 349, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business.
    12. Eugen Dimant & Fabio Galeotti & Marie Claire Villeval, 2024. "Motivated information acquisition and social norm formation," Post-Print hal-04740082, HAL.
    13. Jeanne Hagenbach & Rachel Kranton, 2023. "Competition, Cooperation, and Motivated Social Perceptions," Working Papers hal-03792554, HAL.
    14. Ay, F. Ceren & Berge, Joel W. & Nødtvedt, Katrine B., 2024. "Strategic curiosity: An experimental study of curiosity and dishonesty," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 217(C), pages 287-297.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Motivated Beliefs; Social Preferences; Information Preferences; Bayesian Persuasion; Belief Utility;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D90 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - General
    • D91 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making

    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:bon:boncrc:crctr224_2021_223v3. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: CRC Office (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.crctr224.de .

    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.