Mindful Economics: The Production, Consumption, and Value of Beliefs

Roland Benabou and Jean Tirole

Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2016, vol. 30, issue 3, 141-64

Abstract: In this paper, we provide a perspective into the main ideas and findings emerging from the growing literature on motivated beliefs and reasoning. This perspective emphasizes that beliefs often fulfill important psychological and functional needs of the individual. Economically relevant examples include confidence in ones' abilities, moral self-esteem, hope and anxiety reduction, social identity, political ideology, and religious faith. People thus hold certain beliefs in part because they attach value to them, as a result of some (usually implicit) tradeoff between accuracy and desirability. In a sense, we propose to treat beliefs as regular economic goods and assets--which people consume, invest in, reap returns from, and produce, using the informational inputs they receive or have access to. Such beliefs will be resistant to many forms of evidence, with individuals displaying non-Bayesian behaviors such as not wanting to know, wishful thinking, and reality denial.

JEL-codes: D12 D83 D84 Z12 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
Note: DOI: 10.1257/jep.30.3.141
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (325)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.30.3.141 (application/pdf)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/attachments?retrie ... 5cA21LfzelfqmySqp5Wo (application/zip)

Related works:
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:aea:jecper:v:30:y:2016:i:3:p:141-64

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/subscriptions

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Perspectives is currently edited by Enrico Moretti

More articles in Journal of Economic Perspectives from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().