Not Learning from Others

John J. Conlon, Malavika Mani, Gautam Rao, Matthew Ridley and Frank Schilbach

No 30378, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We study social learning using experiments where two people independently learn relevant information and can share it to make accurate private decisions. Across three experiments, people are substantially less sensitive to information others discover than to equally-relevant information they discovered themselves. This holds when they must learn information from others through discussion; when the experimenter perfectly communicates the information; and even when participants observe others’ information with their own eyes. Our results therefore stem not from a failure to elicit information from others but a systematic tendency to underweight it relative to one’s own information. Our findings illustrate a powerful barrier to social learning that might underlie many documented cases of failure to learn from others.

JEL-codes: D03 D83 D9 D91 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe and nep-exp
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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