Asymmetric Naïveté: Beliefs About Self-Control

Anastassia Fedyk ()
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Anastassia Fedyk: Haas School of Business. University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, California 94720

Management Science, 2025, vol. 71, issue 7, 6047-6068

Abstract: Do individuals anticipate time inconsistency in others? This paper jointly investigates beliefs about one’s own and others’ present bias. In an online laboratory experiment, participants engaged in a real-effort task display little awareness of their own present bias but anticipate present bias in others. Structurally, I estimate a present bias parameter β of 0.82. Participants perceive others’ β to be 0.87, indicating substantial sophistication, contrasted with 1.03 for themselves, indicating full naïveté. At the individual level, asymmetric naïveté correlates with overoptimism regarding one’s own versus others’ task enjoyment and time availability. The wedge in beliefs about present bias can inform equilibrium outcomes in a number of collaborative, competitive, and hierarchical settings, including teams in the workplace, management practices such as deadlines and tournament incentive schemes, and household consumption decisions.

Keywords: economics: behavior and behavioral decision making; microeconomics: intertemporal choice; utility-preference (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:71:y:2025:i:7:p:6047-6068

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