Self-Image and Willful Ignorance in Social Decisions

Grossman, Zachary; Weele, Joël van der

doi:10.1093/jeea/jvw001

Cited by 244 publications

(161 citation statements)

References 65 publications

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“…Some decision makers may be described as avoiders; these agents want to choose the selfish option, but also want to maintain a positive self-image or avoid the guilt from being explicitly selfish. Remaining uninformed may serve as an excuse and help achieve both goals (Grossman and van der Weele, 2017). Thus, in the ENDO treatment such decision makers should try to match with an adviser who has sent less information in the previous periods.…”

Section: Behavioral Conjecturesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We find that in the market setting, most advisers suppress ethically relevant information at 1 A number of papers shows that people engage in "willful" or "strategic ignorance" of inconvenient information as an excuse of selfish behavior. The first studies demonstrating this behavior are Ehrich and Irwin (2005) and Dana et al (2007), followed by fast growing number of replications and follow-ups (Nyborg, 2011;Conrads and Irlenbusch, 2013;Grossman, 2014;Feiler, 2014;Bartling et al, 2014;Exley, 2015;Kajackaite, 2015;van der Weele, 2013;Grossman and van der Weele, 2017). Related work shows how self-serving interpretations of ambiguity of risk and ambiguity increase selfishness in sharing decisions (Haisley and Weber, 2010;Di Tella et al, 2015;Exley, 2015;Garcia et al, 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Shooting the Messenger? Supply and Demand in Markets for Willful Ignorance

Shalvi¹,

Soraperra²,

Weele³

et al. 2019

SSRN Journal

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We investigate the role of advisers in the transmission of ethically relevant information, a critical aspect of executive decision making in organizations. In our laboratory experiment, advisers are informed about the negative externalities associated with the decision-maker's choices and compete with other advisers. We find that advisers suppress about a quarter of "inconvenient" information. Suppression is not strategic, but based on the advisers' own preferences in the ethical dilemma. On the demand side, a substantial minority of decision makers avoid advisers who transmit inconvenient information (they "shoot the messenger"). Overall, by facilitating assortative matching, a competitive market for advisers efficiently caters to the demand for both information and information avoidance. Decision-makers are less likely to implement their preferred option when they are randomly matched to advisers and there is no scope for assortative matching.

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Section: Behavioral Conjecturesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Shooting the Messenger? Supply and Demand in Markets for Willful Ignorance

Shalvi¹,

Soraperra²,

Weele³

et al. 2019

SSRN Journal

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“…Previous work that has examined choice-set revealing (or hiding) behavior has done so with the presumption of its being a tool primarily to obtain a positive (or prevent a negative) image in the eyes of others, especially with respect to perceptions of generosity and fairness (Cappelen, Halvorsen, Sørensen, & Tungodden, 2017;Dana, Cain, & Dawes, 2006;Dana, Weber, & Kuang, 2007;Grossman & van der Weele, 2017). In contrast, we leave open the possibility for other motivations, and we investigate what those motivations are.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Often times, they even incur costs to do so. Such concerns for a good impression and social image are not limited to strategic situations where reputation matters (i.e., involve direct or indirect reciprocity), so it seems that people have an intrinsic desire to uphold a favorable social image of themselves, which has been documented in many laboratory studies featuring one-shot, anonymous interactions lacking the threat of punishment or the promise of reward (Andreoni, Rao, & Trachtman, 2017;Cappelen et al, 2017;Dana et al, 2006Dana et al, , 2007Grossman & van der Weele, 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The lesser of two evils: Explaining a bad choice by revealing the choice set

Molnár¹,

Chaudhry²

2018

Preprint

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Making the right choice sometimes involves selecting the "lesser of two evils," and only seeing the chosen option can lead others to misunderstand the decision maker's intentions.Are decision-makers intrinsically driven to fix this misjudgment by revealing the choice set? If so, why, and what is the effect on the audience? Previous studies could not examine this desire to be understood because the research designs did not isolate the decision to reveal information from the original choice. In two experiments (N=448 pairs), we show that people are willing to pay ex post to reveal their choice set to the recipient, even after a one-shot anonymous interaction with no reputational consequences, and in some cases even when doing so reveals their selfish intentions. We find that this revealing behavior is effective at improving recipients' rating of their outcome when it signals generous intentions, but not when it signals selfish intentions. The choice to reveal is driven by concern for the beliefs of strangers, but only when revealing signals generous intentions; those who reveal a choice that appears selfish report doing so out of a desire to be or appear honest. And though some people leave a misunderstanding in place when it is self-enhancing to do so, almost no one is willing to create a misunderstanding (by hiding the other option), even when it could conceal selfish behavior. (226 words) JEL classification C91, D64, D82, D83, D84

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“…This relies on two assumptions. First, the demand for positive self-image is linked to the desire to appear pro-social not only in the eyes of others (Bénabou and Tirole, 2006;Battigalli and Dufwenberg, 2007) but also in one's own eyes (Ariely et al, 2009;Grossman and Van Der Weele, 2017). Second, people are able to distort their memory.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Motivated Memory in Dictator Games

Saucet

Villeval

2018

SSRN Journal

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Abstract:The memory people have of their past behavior is one of the main sources of information about themselves. To study whether people retrieve their memory self-servingly in social encounters, we designed an experiment in which participants play binary dictator games and then have to recall the amounts allocated to the receivers. We find evidence of motivated memory through selective recalls: dictators remember more their altruistic than their selfish choices. A causal effect of the responsibility of decisions is identified, as the recall asymmetry disappears when options are selected randomly by the computer program. Incentivizing memory accuracy increases the percentage of dictators' correct recalls only when they behaved altruistically. In contrast, there is no clear evidence of motivated memory through biased, i.e., overly optimistic recalls: dictators recall selectively but they do not bias strategically the direction and magnitude of these recalls. Keywords:Motivated memory, asymmetric recalls, self-image, dictator games JEL codes: Motivated Memory in Dictator GamesCharlotte Saucet * and Marie Claire Villeval † December 22, 2018 AbstractThe memory people have of their past behavior is one of the main sources of information about themselves. To study whether people retrieve their memory self-servingly in social encounters, we designed an experiment in which participants play binary dictator games and then have to recall the amounts allocated to the receivers. We find evidence of motivated memory through selective recalls: dictators remember more their altruistic than their selfish choices. A causal effect of the responsibility of decisions is identified, as the recall asymmetry disappears when options are selected randomly by the computer program. Incentivizing memory accuracy increases the percentage of dictators' correct recalls only when they behaved altruistically. In contrast, there is no clear evidence of motivated memory through biased, i.e., overly optimistic recalls: dictators recall selectively but they do not bias strategically the direction and magnitude of these recalls.

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Self-Image and Willful Ignorance in Social Decisions

Cited by 244 publications

References 65 publications

Shooting the Messenger? Supply and Demand in Markets for Willful Ignorance

Shooting the Messenger? Supply and Demand in Markets for Willful Ignorance

The lesser of two evils: Explaining a bad choice by revealing the choice set

Motivated Memory in Dictator Games

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