Fishing for Good News: Motivated Information Acquisition

Si Chen () and Carl Heese ()

CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper Series from University of Bonn and University of Mannheim, Germany

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.

Keywords: Motivated Beliefs; Social Preferences; Information Preferences; Bayesian Persuasion; Belief Utility (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D90 D91 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 94
Date: 2021-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-exp, nep-isf, nep-mic and nep-upt
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (19)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bon:boncrc:crctr224_2021_223v3

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