Hindsight Bias and Trust in Government

Holger Herz, Deborah Kistler, Christian Zehnder and Christian Zihlmann

No 9767, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: We empirically assess whether hindsight bias affects citizens’ evaluation of their political actors. Using an incentivized elicitation technique, we demonstrate that people systematically misremember their past policy preferences regarding how to best fight the Covid-19 pandemic. At the peak of the first wave in the United States, the average respondent mistakenly believes they supported significantly stricter restrictions at the onset of the first wave than they actually did. Exogenous variation in the extent of hindsight bias, induced through a randomized survey experiment, indicates that hindsight bias has a negative causal impact on the change in trust in government.

Keywords: hindsight bias; trust in government; evaluation distortion; biased beliefs (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 D83 D91 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-exp, nep-pol and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_9767

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