Motivated Memory in Economics—A Review

Andrea Amelio and Florian Zimmermann
Additional contact information
Andrea Amelio: Department of Economics, University of Bonn, 53113 Bonn, Germany

Games, 2023, vol. 14, issue 1, 1-15

Abstract: Motivated reasoning refers to the idea that people hold certain beliefs about themselves or the world due to their desire to do so, rather than striving for accuracy. This type of belief formation can lead to overconfidence and polarization, as well as facilitate immoral behavior at both the individual and collective levels. One of the supply-side mechanisms for motivated reasoning is motivated memory, or the selective retrieval of past experiences or information based on self-serving criteria. In this article, we review the still young economics literature on motivated memory. Summarizing both theoretical and empirical work, we highlight the key results this literature has produced. We also discuss open questions and potentially exciting avenues for future research in this area.

Keywords: motivated reasoning; memory; beliefs; experiments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C C7 C70 C71 C72 C73 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4336/14/1/15/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4336/14/1/15/ (text/html)

Related works:
Working Paper: Motivated Memory in Economics - a Review (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:gam:jgames:v:14:y:2023:i:1:p:15-:d:1053355

Access Statistics for this article

Games is currently edited by Ms. Susie Huang

More articles in Games from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().