How do People Choose Between Biased Information Sources? Evidence from a Laboratory Experiment

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary Charness ◽  
Ryan Oprea ◽  
Sevgi Yuksel
Keyword(s):  
Laboratory Experiment ◽  
Strong Evidence ◽  
Information Sources ◽  
Prior Beliefs ◽  
Survey Questions ◽  
Binary State ◽  
Abstract Setting ◽  
Biased Information

Abstract People in our experiment choose between two information sources with opposing biases in order to inform their guesses about a binary state. By varying the nature of the bias, we vary whether it is optimal to consult information sources biased towards or against prior beliefs. Even in our deliberately-abstract setting, there is strong evidence of confirmation-seeking and to a lesser extent contradiction-seeking heuristics leading people to choose information sources biased towards or against their priors. Analysis of post-experiment survey questions suggests that subjects follow these rules due to fundamental errors in reasoning about the relative informativeness of biased information sources.

scholarly journals How social preferences provide effort incentives in situations of financial support

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. e0244972
Author(s):  
Christian Knoller ◽  
Stefan Neuß ◽  
Richard Peter
Keyword(s):  
Moral Hazard ◽  
Laboratory Experiment ◽  
Strong Evidence ◽  
Financial Support ◽  
Social Preferences ◽  
Monetary Incentives ◽  
Material Efficiency ◽  
Preventive Effort ◽  
Effort Provision ◽  
Level Effect

When people anticipate financial support, they may reduce preventive effort. We conjecture that the source of financial support can mitigate this moral hazard effect due to social preferences. We compare effort choices when another individual voluntarily provides financial support against effort choices under purely monetary incentives. When financial support is provided voluntarily by another individual, we expect recipients to exert more effort to avoid bad outcomes (level effect) and to reduce effort provision to a lesser degree as financial support becomes more generous (sensitivity effect). We conducted an incentivized laboratory experiment and find some evidence for the level effect and strong evidence for the sensitivity effect. This leads to significant gains in material efficiency with expected wealth being 5.5% higher and 37.3% less volatile.

scholarly journals The Role of Public Broadcasting in Media Bias: Do People React Differently to Pro-government Bias in Public and Private Media?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Taka-aki Asano ◽  
Atsushi Tago ◽  
Seiki Tanaka
Keyword(s):  
Political Ideology ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
Prior Beliefs ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Public Media ◽  
New Information ◽  
Textual Data ◽  
Original Survey ◽  
Biased Information

AbstractPeople often reject new information, especially when it does not fit their prior beliefs. But do publics in advanced democracies reject information from public and private media outlets in the same way? We examine this question in the form of the media’s pro-government bias in the under-examined case of Japan. By combining unique textual data with an original survey experiment, we document that (1) people generally tend to reject pro-government biased information that overly praises government actions; but (2) the reasons why people reject the same biased information vary—based on their expectations of neutrality for public media, and on expectations derived from political ideology for private media. Our study suggests that the basis of people’s motivated reasoning differs when they evaluate content from public and private media.

scholarly journals Irrational Diversification: An Examination of Individual Portfolio Choice

2011 ◽  
Vol 46 (5) ◽  
pp. 1463-1491 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guido Baltussen ◽  
Gerrit T. Post
Keyword(s):  
Laboratory Experiment ◽  
Portfolio Choice ◽  
Strong Evidence ◽  
Stochastic Dominance ◽  
Marginal Distribution ◽  
Substantial Influence ◽  
Portfolio Decisions ◽  
First Order ◽  
Order Stochastic Dominance ◽  
Problem Presentation

AbstractWe study individual portfolio choice in a laboratory experiment and find strong evidence for heuristic behavior. The subjects tend to focus on the marginal distribution of an asset, while largely ignoring its diversification benefits. They follow a conditional 1/n diversification heuristic as they exclude the assets with an “unattractive” marginal distribution and divide the available funds equally between the remaining “attractive” assets. This strategy is applied even if it leads to allocations that are dominated in terms of first-order stochastic dominance and is clearly irrational. In line with these findings, we find that framing and problem presentation have substantial influence on portfolio decisions.

Supplier Selection and Assessment by University Procurement Officers

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dan Bouhnik ◽  
Yahel Giat ◽  
Issachar Zarruk
Keyword(s):  
Strong Evidence ◽  
Supplier Selection ◽  
Information Sources ◽  
Procurement Process ◽  
The Core ◽  
Informal Information ◽  
Information Channels ◽  
Official Sources ◽  
Selection And Assessment

Supplier selection and assessment is at the core of the procurement process. This study investigates how procurement officers in Israel's universities select and assess their suppliers. The authors explore which information channels officers use to assess suppliers and find that incidental and informal information sources are the most frequently used followed by official sources. The authors examine the criteria used by officers to select suppliers and identify quality and price as significantly more important than most other criteria. Finally, the authors do not find strong evidence that officers categorize suppliers to key and non-key suppliers according to the university's goals.

scholarly journals Vote trading in power-sharing systems: A laboratory investigation*

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nikolas Tsakas ◽  
Dimitrios Xefteris ◽  
Nicholas Ziros
Keyword(s):  
Laboratory Experiment ◽  
Laboratory Investigation ◽  
Strong Evidence ◽  
Electoral Systems ◽  
Welfare Effects ◽  
Vote Share ◽  
Power Sharing ◽  
Theoretical Predictions ◽  
Vote Trading

Abstract Vote trading in power-sharing systems—i.e., systems in which a voter’s utility with respect to the election’s outcome is proportional to the vote share of her favourite party—is, in theory, welfare improving. However, trading votes for money in majoritarian systems may have detrimental welfare effects, especially when voters’ preference intensities are similar (Casella et al., 2012). We use a laboratory experiment to test the effect of vote trading in each of these popular electoral systems on voter welfare and find strong evidence in support of the above intuitions: vote trading in power-sharing systems boosts aggregate welfare across all considered specifications, but it is not welfare improving in majoritarian systems. Importantly, and contrary to theoretical predictions, a substantial share of subjects consistently lose from vote trading even in power-sharing systems, indicating that its welfare effects are not unambiguous.

scholarly journals Risky Shifts And The Model Of Communicative Events

2011 ◽  
Vol 4 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Maha El Shinnawy ◽  
Ajay Vinze ◽  
Amr Mortagy
Keyword(s):  
Laboratory Experiment ◽  
Factorial Design ◽  
Group Composition ◽  
Group Interaction ◽  
Task Characteristics ◽  
Collaborative Systems ◽  
Group Polarization ◽  
Prior Beliefs ◽  
Extreme Position ◽  
Group Members

Group interaction frequently results in group members changing their prior beliefs to a more extreme position.  This is referred to as group polarization. Using the model of communicative events, this paper proposes that task, medium of communication, group composition and their interaction will have an effect on the phenomenon of group polarization. A laboratory experiment was conducted to address these questions.   A 2x2x2 factorial design was used to analyze the results.   The analysis indicates that polarization does in fact occur and that the level of polarization varies depending on: the medium of communication, the task characteristics and their interaction. The composition of the group does not have a significant effect on polarization. The findings reported in this study have significance for developers, users and researchers of collaborative systems and for social-psychologists who study the phenomenon of group enhanced attitude shifts.

Concurrent Electrodermal and Eyeblink Conditioning With Masked and Unmasked Stimuli

2021 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-42
Author(s):  
José Luis Marcos ◽  
Azahara Marcos
Keyword(s):  
Unconditioned Stimulus ◽  
Strong Evidence ◽  
Eyeblink Conditioning ◽  
Noise Burst ◽  
Conditioning Phase ◽  
Contingency Awareness ◽  
Blank Screen ◽  
Neutral Face ◽  
Fearful Face

Abstract. The aim of this study was to determine if contingency awareness between the conditioned (CS) and unconditioned stimulus (US) is necessary for concurrent electrodermal and eyeblink conditioning to masked stimuli. An angry woman’s face (CS+) and a fearful face (CS−) were presented for 23 milliseconds (ms) and followed by a neutral face as a mask. A 98 dB noise burst (US) was administered 477 ms after CS+ offset to elicit both electrodermal and eyeblink responses. For the unmasking conditioning a 176 ms blank screen was inserted between the CS and the mask. Contingency awareness was assessed using trial-by-trial ratings of US-expectancy in a post-conditioning phase. The results showed acquisition of differential electrodermal and eyeblink conditioning in aware, but not in unaware participants. Acquisition of differential eyeblink conditioning required more trials than electrodermal conditioning. These results provided strong evidence of the causal role of contingency awareness on differential eyeblink and electrodermal conditioning.

Eye Movements of Children and Adults While Reading Television Subtitles

2007 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 196-205 ◽  
Author(s):  
Géry d'Ydewalle ◽  
Wim De Bruycker
Keyword(s):  
Eye Movements ◽  
Foreign Language ◽  
Age Differences ◽  
Information Sources ◽  
Native Language ◽  
Verbal Information ◽  
Single Text ◽  
Grade 5 ◽  
Reading Patterns ◽  
Attentional System

Abstract. Eye movements of children (Grade 5-6) and adults were monitored while they were watching a foreign language movie with either standard (foreign language soundtrack and native language subtitling) or reversed (foreign language subtitles and native language soundtrack) subtitling. With standard subtitling, reading behavior in the subtitle was observed, but there was a difference between one- and two-line subtitles. As two lines of text contain verbal information that cannot easily be inferred from the pictures on the screen, more regular reading occurred; a single text line is often redundant to the information in the picture, and accordingly less reading of one-line text was apparent. Reversed subtitling showed even more irregular reading patterns (e.g., more subtitles skipped, fewer fixations, longer latencies). No substantial age differences emerged, except that children took longer to shift attention to the subtitle at its onset, and showed longer fixations and shorter saccades in the text. On the whole, the results demonstrated the flexibility of the attentional system and its tuning to the several information sources available (image, soundtrack, and subtitles).

Process Accountability as a De-Escalation Technique

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 63-74
Author(s):  
Klaus Moser ◽  
Hans-Georg Wolff ◽  
Roman Soucek
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Information Search ◽  
Employment Relationship ◽  
Escalation Of Commitment ◽  
Tunnel Vision ◽  
Course Of Action ◽  
Performance Problems ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Biased Information

Abstract. Escalation of commitment occurs when a course of action is continued despite repeated drawbacks (e.g., maintaining an employment relationship despite severe performance problems). We analyze process accountability (PA) as a de-escalation technique that helps to discontinue a failing course of action and show how time moderates both the behavioral and cognitive processes involved: (1) Because sound decisions should be based on (hopefully unbiased) information search, which requires time to gather, the effect of PA on de-escalation increases over time. (2) Because continuing information search creates behavioral commitment, the debiasing effect of PA on information search diminishes over time. (3) Consistent with the tunnel vision notion, the effects of less biased information search on de-escalation decrease over time.

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