By Chance or by Choice? Biased Attribution of Others'Outcomes when Social Preferences Matter

Nisvan Erkal, Lata Gangadharan () and Boon Han Koh

No 2021-03, University of East Anglia School of Economics Working Paper Series from School of Economics, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK.

Abstract: Decision makers in positions of power often make unobserved choices under risk and uncertainty. In many cases, they face a trade-off between maximizing their own payoff and those of other individuals. What inferences are made in such instances about their choices when only outcomes are observable? We report fndings from two experiments that investigate whether outcomes are attributed to luck or choices. We show that attribution biases exist in the evaluation of good outcomes. On average, good outcomes of decision makers are attributed more to luck as compared to bad outcomes. This asymmetry implies that decision makers get too little credit for their successes. Interestingly, the biases are exhibited by those individuals who make or would make the less prosocial choice for the group as decision makers, suggesting that a consensus effect may be shaping both the belief formation and updating processes.

Keywords: Decision-making under risk; Beliefs about others' decisions; Attribution biases; Social preferences; Consensus e ect; Experiments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C92 D81 D91 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-03-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm and nep-exp
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ueaeco.github.io/working-papers/papers/ueaeco/UEA-ECO-21-03.pdf main text (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: By chance or by choice? Biased attribution of others’ outcomes when social preferences matter (2022)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:uea:ueaeco:2021-03

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
Reception, School of Economics, University of East Anglia, Norwich Research Park, Norwich, NR4 7TJ, UK

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in University of East Anglia School of Economics Working Paper Series from School of Economics, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Cara Liggins ().