Self Centred Beliefs: An Empircal Approach

Eugenio Proto and Daniel Sgroi

CAGE Online Working Paper Series from Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE)

Abstract: We perform an experiment designed to assess the accuracy of beliefs about distributions. The beliefs relate to behavior (mobile phone purchasing decisions, hypothetical restaurant choices), attitudes (happiness, politics) and observable characteristics (height, weight) and are typically formed through real world experiences. We nd a powerful and ubiquitous bias in perceptions that is \self-centered" in the sense that an individual's beliefs about the population distribution changes with their own position in the distribution. In particular, those at extremes tend to perceive themselves as closer to the middle of the distribution than is the case. We discuss possible explanations for this bias

Keywords: subjective beliefs; attitudes; observable characteristics; self-centered bias (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/resear ... ns/75.2012_proto.pdf

Related works:
Working Paper: Self-Centered Beliefs: An Empirical Approach (2012)
Working Paper: Self-Centered Beliefs: An Empirical Approach (2012)
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:cge:wacage:75

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CAGE Online Working Paper Series from Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jane Snape ().