American Economic Journal:
Microeconomics
ISSN 1945-7669 (Print) | ISSN 1945-7685 (Online)
The Good News-Bad News Effect: Asymmetric Processing of Objective Information about Yourself
American Economic Journal: Microeconomics
vol. 3,
no. 2, May 2011
(pp. 114–38)
Abstract
We study processing and acquisition of objective information regarding qualities that people care about, intelligence and beauty. Subjects receiving negative feedback did not respect the strength of these signals, were far less predictable in their updating behavior and exhibited an aversion to new information. In response to good news, inference conformed more closely to Bayes' Rule, both in accuracy and precision. Signal direction did not affect updating or acquisition in our neutral control. Unlike past work, our design varied direction and agreement with priors independently. The results indicate that confirmation bias is driven by direction; confirmation alone had no effect. (JEL D82, D83)Citation
Eil, David, and Justin M. Rao. 2011. "The Good News-Bad News Effect: Asymmetric Processing of Objective Information about Yourself." American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 3 (2): 114–38. DOI: 10.1257/mic.3.2.114Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- D82 Asymmetric and Private Information
- D83 Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief
There are no comments for this article.
Login to Comment