Motivated False Memory

The Formation of Risk Preferences Through Small-Scale Events

“…Conversely, bad outcomes are more likely to be misremembered as good than good outcomes as bad. This supports the idea that memories can be used as a consumption good (Gilboa et al, 2016) and that they often deviate from actual outcomes (Chew et al, 2020). Even though memories are selectively formed, in the main experiment we find that they have no effect on subsequent risky choices over and above actual outcomes (of winning or losing the first lottery).…”

“…Given that individuals may perceive small-scale events as insignificant, they may easily be forgotten. Even if not, memories may be incorrect (Chew et al, 2020;Zimmermann, 2020) or systematically biased due to motivated reasons (Bénabou, 2015;Bénabou and Tirole, 2016). For macroeconomic shocks, memories have been found to influence risky choices -in particular, because they shift beliefs about future realizations of risk -but it was an open question if small-scale events (that are much more frequent than large shocks) have any influence at all and if so, whether and to what extent actual outcomes and memories matter.…”

Motivated Errors

“…Our second main contribution is to show a new way in which motivated decisions arise: individuals make unambiguous decision errors when motivated to do so -acting as if they suffer from cognitive limitations or behavioral biases -which we call "motivated errors." 11 Documenting motivated errors in decisions connects us to a recent literature on motivated errors in beliefs, which has documented that agents appear unable to recall information when it allows them to hold selfserving beliefs (see Chew, Huang andZhao (2018), Zimmermann (2018) and Saucet and Villeval (2019), which -guided by Bénabou and Tirole (2002) -show that motivated reasoning leads to false or selective memory). That said, we find it unlikely that the motivated errors in decisions we document are solely reflective of motivated beliefs (e.g., we find it unlikely that subjects believe that the smaller of 400 and 200 is below 200, even when motivated to do so).…”

Comportements (non) éthiques et stratégies morales

“…Par exemple, Chew et al [2018] ont mis en évidence des phénomènes d'illusions positives ou d'affabulation. La plupart des expériences économiques sur la mémoire mettent en évidence l'asymétrie des souvenirs des individus selon qu'ils reçoivent une bonne ou une mauvaise nouvelle à propos de leur performance dans un test d'intelligence (e.g., Chew et al [2018] ;Zimmermann [2019]). Peu d'expériences économiques ont exploré la mémoire motivée dans le domaine éthique contrairement à la psychologie (e.g., Shu et al [2011] sur la mémoire des mensonges).…”