Coarse Thinking and Persuasion

Sendhil Mullainathan, Joshua Schwartzstein () and Andrei Shleifer

The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2008, vol. 123, issue 2, 577-619

Abstract: We present a model of uninformative persuasion in which individuals "think coarsely": they group situations into categories and apply the same model of inference to all situations within a category. Coarse thinking exhibits two features that persuaders take advantage of: (i) transference, whereby individuals transfer the informational content of a given message from situations in a category where it is useful to those where it is not, and (ii) framing, whereby objectively useless information influences individuals' choice of category. The model sheds light on uninformative advertising and product branding, as well as on some otherwise anomalous evidence on mutual fund advertising.

Date: 2008
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Working Paper: Coarse Thinking and Persuasion (2008)
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The Quarterly Journal of Economics is currently edited by Robert J. Barro, Lawrence F. Katz, Nathan Nunn, Andrei Shleifer and Stefanie Stantcheva

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