Fishing for Good News: Motivated Information Acquisition

Si Chen and Carl Heese

Journal of Political Economy Microeconomics, 2026, vol. 4, issue 2, 656 - 700

Abstract: The motivated reasoning literature argues that people skew their beliefs to feel moral when acting selfishly. We study the information acquisition of decision-makers with a motive to form positive moral self-views and one to act selfishly. The selfish motive makes individuals dynamically fish for good news: they are more likely to continue acquiring information, having so far observed information indicating that acting selfishly is harmful to others, and more likely to stop after information indicating that it is harmless. Further analysis finds no evidence the selfish motive worsens others’ outcomes and suggests that this is due to individuals fishing for good news.

Date: 2026
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