This paper experimentally studies how motivated reasoning affects information transmission. Senders are randomly matched with receivers whose ideology is either aligned or misaligned with the truth, and either face incentives to be rated as truthful by receivers or face no incentives. These...

Using a novel experimental design that directly elicits individuals’ mental models, we show that making choices can lead individuals to adopt models that exaggerate the importance of their choice variable for payoff-relevant outcomes. In other words, one key factor in the economic environment...

Can algorithms help people predict behavior in high-stakes prisoner’s dilemmas? Participants watching the pre-play communication of contestants in the TV show Golden Balls display a limited ability to predict contestants’ behavior, while algorithms do significantly better. We provide...

This study analyzes investors’ perception of different amounts of information and its impact on stock price estimates. We initiate a questionnaire-based stock price forecast competition among 196 undergraduate students in business administration. We show that providing more information...

I examine how reference-dependent states (such as gains and losses) affect investors’ learning from financial information. In a dynamic learning environment, I show that trading in the loss domain not only affects behavior but also biases expectations: Conditional on receiving the same...

Economists have developed various methods to elicit risk preferences, which can help forecast decision-making in risky scenarios. However, risk elicitation can be complex, and there remain unresolved challenges. Our research demonstrates that repeated exposure to risk elicitation tasks, such as...

We modify the Acquiring-a-Company game to study lying in ultimatum bargaining. Privately informed sellers send messages about the alleged value of their company to potential buyers. Via random information leaks, buyers can learn the true value before proposing a price which the seller finally...

Matching markets can be unstable when individuals prefer to be matched to a partner who also wants to be matched with them. Through a pre-registered and theory-guided laboratory experiment, we provide evidence that such reciprocal preferences exist, significantly decrease stability in matching...

We report the results of an experiment on selective exposure to information. A decision maker interested in learning about an uncertain state of the world can acquire information from one of two sources which have opposite biases: when informed on the state, they report it truthfully; when...

We study how contingent thinking - that is, reasoning through all possible contingencies without knowing which is realized - affects belief updating. According to the Bayesian benchmark, beliefs updated after exposure to new information should be equivalent to beliefs assessed for the...