Interpreting cynical beliefs about others

Philipp Sternal

No 465, ECON - Working Papers from Department of Economics - University of Zurich

Abstract: A growing number of studies suggest that individuals are cynical about others’ behavior. But these findings often rely on self-reported rather than actual behavior as benchmark. A well-documented limitation of self-reports is their tendency to overstate good behavior. I introduce a simple, portable test to assess the extent to which inattention to others’ potential misreporting drives apparently cynical beliefs about stated behavior. Drawing people’s attention to the possibility of misreporting in self-reports increases beliefs about others’ stated desirable climate and health behaviors by an average of 0.33 standard deviations, substantially reducing apparent cynicism.

Keywords: Misperception; social desirability; attention (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C90 D83 D91 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-03
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zur:econwp:465

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