Charlotte SAUCET
PUBLICATIONS / WORKING PAPERS
Motivated Skepticism
with J. Hagenbach - accepted at the Review of Economic Studies - [Paper] [Online appendix].
We experimentally study how individuals read strategically-transmitted information when they have preferences over what they will learn. Subjects play disclosure games in which Receivers should interpret messages skeptically. We vary whether the state that Senders communicate about is ego-relevant or neutral for Receivers, and whether skeptical beliefs are aligned or not with what Receivers prefer believing. Compared to neutral settings, skepticism is significantly lower when it is self-threatening, and not enhanced when it is self-serving. These results shed light on a new channel that individuals can use to protect their beliefs in communication situations: they exercise skepticism in a motivated way, that is, in a way that depends on the desirability of the conclusions that skeptical inferences lead to. We propose two behavioral models that can generate motivated skepticism. In one model, the Receiver freely manipulates his beliefs after having made skeptical inferences. In the other, the Receiver reasons about evidence in steps and the depth of his reasoning is motivated.
The causal effect of a health treatment on beliefs, stated preferences and memories
with A. Prati - Journal of Health Economics - March 2024 - [Paper]
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The paper estimates the causal effect of a health treatment on patients’ beliefs, preferences and memories about the treatment. It exploits a natural experiment which occurred in the United Kingdom during the COVID-19 vaccination campaign. UK residents could choose to opt into the vaccination program, but not which vaccine they received. The assignment to a vaccine offered little objective information for learning about its qualities, but triggered strong psychological demand for reassuring beliefs. We surveyed a sample of UK residents about their beliefs on the different COVID-19 vaccines before and after receiving their jab. Before vaccination, individuals exhibit similar prior beliefs and stated preferences about the different vaccines. After vaccination, however, they update their beliefs overly optimistically about the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine they received, state that they would have chosen it if they could and have distorted memories about their past beliefs.
These results cannot be explained by conventional experience effects. At the aggregated level, they show that random assignment to a health treatment predicts a polarization of opinions about its quality. At the individual level, these findings provide a novel test of the predictions of motivated beliefs in a real-world health setting.
Is motivated memory (just) a matter of mood ?
with A. Prati - R&R at Experimental Economics
Why are people overconfident in spite of the negative feedback they receive? Psychology and economic studies have put forward the role of biased memory. Individuals tend to better recall positive feedback than negative feedback. The typical explanation for this asymmetry is the self-enhancement effect: people prioritize positive information to enhance their self-image. An alternative explanation is the mood-congruency effect: positive information is easier to recall for individuals in non-negative mood. In a laboratory experiment where we exogenously manipulate mood, we test the existence and the relative dominance of these two effects. Our results support the self-enhancement hypothesis: individuals better recall positive than negative feedback, even when they are in a negative mood. When they do not recall, they exhibit overly optimistic recall of past feedback, regardless of their mood. Conversely, we find no clear evidence of mood congruency. These results suggest that mood does not impact recall accuracy of self-relevant information, and overconfident behaviors can be alleviated by intervening on individuals’ beliefs.
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Unethical Amnesia Responds more to Instrumental than to Hedonic Motives
with F. Galeotti and M.C. Villeval - PNAS - Sept. 2020 - [Paper].
Humans care about morality. Yet, they often engage in actions that contradict their moral self. Unethical amnesia is observed when people do not remember or remember less vividly these actions. This paper explores two reasons why individuals may experience unethical amnesia. Forgetting past unethical behavior may be motivated by purely hedonic or affective reasons, such as the willingness to maintain one’s moral self-image, but also by instrumental or strategic motives, in anticipation of future misbehavior. In a large-scale incentivized online experiment (n = 1,322) using a variant of a mind game, we find that hedonic considerations are not sufficient to motivate the forgetting of past cheating behavior. This is confirmed in a follow-up experiment (n = 1,005) in which recalls are elicited the same day instead of 3 week apart. However, when unethical amnesia can serve as a justification for a future action, such as deciding on whether to keep undeserved money, motivated forgetting is more likely. Thereby, we show that motivated forgetting occurs as a self-excuse to justify future immoral decisions.
Motivated Memory in Dictator Games
with M.C. Villeval - Games and Economic Behavior - Sept. 2019 - [Paper].
The memory people have of their past behavior is one of the main sources of information about themselves. To study whether people retrieve their memory self-servingly in social encounters, we designed an experiment in which participants play binary dictator games and then have to recall the amounts allocated to the receivers. We find evidence of motivated memory through selective recalls: dictators remember more their altruistic than their selfish choices. A causal effect of the responsibility of decisions is identified, as the recall asymmetry disappears when options are selected randomly by the computer program. Incentivizing memory accuracy increases the percentage of dictators' correct recalls only when they behaved altruistically.
In contrast, there is no clear evidence of motivated memory through biased memory errors, i.e., overly optimistic recalls: dictators recall selectively but they do not bias the direction and magnitude of these recalls in a self-serving way.