Self-serving biases in beliefs about collective outcomes

Shimon Kogan, Florian H. Schneider and Roberto A. Weber

Games and Economic Behavior, 2025, vol. 153, issue C, 315-344

Abstract: Beliefs about collective outcomes play an important role in many contexts. We study biases in the formation of such beliefs. Specifically, we investigate whether self-serving biases in information processing—documented for beliefs about individual outcomes—affect beliefs about collective outcomes. In a first study, we find that people indeed exhibit self-serving biases for collective outcomes, and that such biases are similar to biases for individual outcomes. We also observe that the presence of a market institution for aggregating private information produces, if anything, slightly greater collective self-delusion. In a second study, we investigate the mechanisms driving collective self-delusion and find that anticipatory utility plays a large role, rather than ego-utility considerations.

Keywords: Beliefs; Bayes’ rule; Motivated reasoning; Anticipatory utility; Overconfidence (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 I18 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:gamebe:v:153:y:2025:i:c:p:315-344

DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2025.06.008

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