Do Beliefs Justify Actions or Do Actions Justify Beliefs? An Experiment on Stated Beliefs, Revealed Beliefs, and Social-Image Manipulation

James Andreoni and Alison Sanchez

No 20649, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We study whether actions are justified by beliefs, as is usually assumed, or whether beliefs are justified by actions. In our experiment, subjects participate in a trust game, after which they have an opportunity to state their beliefs about their opponent's actions. Subsequently, subjects participate in a task designed to "reveal" their true beliefs. We find that subjects who make selfish choices and show strategic sophistication falsely state their beliefs in order to project a more favorable social image. By contrast, their "revealed" beliefs were significantly more accurate, which betrayed these subjects as knowing that their selfishness was not justifiable by their opponent's behavior.

JEL-codes: C9 D03 D83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-evo, nep-exp, nep-gth, nep-hpe, nep-neu and nep-soc
Note: PE
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

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