How do People Choose Between Biased Information Sources? Evidence from a Laboratory Experiment. Issue 3 (28th January 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Charness, Gary; Oprea, Ryan; Yuksel, Sevgi
• Is Part Of: Journal of the European Economic Association. Volume 19:Issue 3(2021)
• Page Start: 1656
• Page End: 1691
• Publication Date: 2021-01-28
• Subjects: Economics -- Periodicals; Économie politique -- Périodiques; Science économique; Périodique électronique (Descripteur de forme); Ressource Internet (Descripteur de forme); 330
• DOI: 10.1093/jeea/jvaa051
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1542-4766

Abstract

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.