 The ego is no fool: Absence of motivated belief formation in strategic interactionsGiovanni Burro and Alessandro Castagnetti Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), 2024, vol. 109, issue C Abstract: We investigate whether individuals are more easily fooled by others when they enhance their personal characteristics and abilities. We use an experiment in which participants complete an IQ test and then play a sender–receiver game. The experiment has a 2x2 factorial design. First, we determine the state either by the receiver’s relative performance or by a randomly drawn number. Second, monetary incentives, which are common knowledge, are such that the sender is better off (worse off) when the receiver’s action is about him being of high (low) rank, while the receiver benefits from selecting the action that matches his true rank. We find that receivers are not more likely to believe senders or to move their action further from their prior beliefs when they provide news that carries ego-relevant information about themselves, compared to the cases in which the news carries no ego-relevant information. Keywords: Belief formation; Motivated beliefs; Communication games (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:soceco:v:109:y:2024:i:c:s2214804324000077 DOI: 10.1016/j.socec.2024.102167 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics) is currently edited by Pablo Brañas Garza More articles in Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics) from Elsevier |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.