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Self-Image and Willful Ignorance in Social Decisions

Zachary Grossman (zgrossman@ucmerced.edu) and Joël J. van der Weele

Journal of the European Economic Association, 2017, vol. 15, issue 1, 173-217

Abstract: Avoiding information about adverse welfare consequences of self-interested decisions, or willful ignorance, is an important source of socially harmful behavior. To understand this issue, we analyze a Bayesian signaling model of an agent who cares about self-image and has the opportunity to learn the social benefits of a personally costly action. We show that willful ignorance can serve as an excuse for selfish behavior by obfuscating the signal about the decision-maker's preferences, and help maintain the idea that the agent would have acted virtuously under full information. We derive several behavioral predictions that are inconsistent with either outcome-based preferences or social-image concern and conduct experiments to test them. Our findings, as well as a number of previous experimental results, offer support for these predictions and thus, the broader theory of self-signaling.

JEL-codes: C72 C91 D83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (177)

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