We study belief updating about relative performance in an egorelevant task. Manipulating beliefs about the ego-relevance of the task, we show that subjects update their beliefs about relative performance more optimistically as direct belief utility increases. This finding provides clean evidence...

We study belief updating about relative performance in an ego-relevant task. Manipulating the perceived ego-relevance of the task, we show that subjects update their beliefs optimistically because they derive direct utility flows from holding positive beliefs. This finding provides a behavioral...

During the last three decades the ascent of behavioral economics clearly helped to bring down artificial disciplinary boundaries between psychology and economics. Noting that behavioral economics seems still under the spell of the rational choice tradition and, indirectly, of behaviorism we...