"Bizarre Beliefs & Rational Choices: A Behavioral (& Neuroimaging) Investigation"
Year: 2009
Type: preprint
Abstract: Political actors often arrive at very different beliefs from the very same information. In some cases, such divergent – even bizarre – beliefs can lead to extreme political behavior such as ethnic mobilization and war. This paper presents some preliminary behavioral results from two experiments designed to test one mechanism behind biased belief updating: aversive associations with political symbols. The experiments examined the effects of aversive memories on conditional belief formation by comparing two groups (aversively conditioned and a control) estimating likelihoods in a modified card game and then making choices with monetary payoffs based those estimated likelihoods. Our results lend provisional support to the hypothesis that aversive memories lead to increased estimates of the negative event and the choice of actions to avoid it, even when subjects share a common prior belief and are exposed to the same information.
Source: SSRN Electronic Journal
Author: John W. Schiemann
Institution: Fairleigh Dickinson University
Language: English
Subfield: General Decision Sciences
Field: Decision Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2534031082