TY  - UNPD
A1  - Faia, Ester
A1  - Fuster, Andreas
A1  - Pezone, Vincenzo
A1  - Zafar, Basit
T1  - Biases in information selection and processing: survey evidence from the pandemic
T2  - SAFE working paper ; No. 307
N2  - How people form beliefs is crucial for understanding decision-making un- der uncertainty. This is particularly true in a situation such as a pandemic, where beliefs will affect behaviors that impact public health as well as the aggregate economy. We conduct two survey experiments to shed light on potential biases in belief formation, focusing in particular on the tone of information people choose to consume and how they incorporate this information into their beliefs. In the first experiment, people express their preferences over pandemic-related articles with optimistic and pessimistic headlines, and are then randomly shown one of the articles. We find that respondents with more pessimistic prior beliefs about the pandemic are substantially more likely to prefer pessimistic articles, which we interpret as evidence of confirmation bias. In line with this, respondents assigned to the less preferred article rate it as less reliable and informative (relative to those who prefer it); they also discount information from the article when it is less preferred. We further find that these motivated beliefs end up impacting incentivized behavior. In a second experiment, we study how partisan views interact with information selection and processing. We find strong evidence of source dependence: revealing the news source further distorts information acquisition and processing, eliminating the role of prior beliefs in article choice.
T3  - SAFE working paper - 307 
KW  - belief updating
KW  - confirmatory biases
KW  - endogenous information acquisition
KW  - media polarization
KW  - source dependence
KW  - COVID-19
Y1  - 2021
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/58270
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-582706
UR  - https://ssrn.com/abstract=3783215
IS  - February 9, 2021
PB  - SAFE
CY  - Frankfurt am Main
ER  -