The social construction of ignorance: Experimental evidence

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Soraperra, Ivan; van der Weele, Joel; Villeval, Marie Claire; Shalvi, Shaul
• 署名单位: University of Amsterdam; Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS); Ecole Normale Superieure de Lyon (ENS de LYON); Universite Claude Bernard Lyon 1; Universite Jean Monnet; Universite Lyon 2; IZA Institute Labor Economics
• 刊物名称: GAMES AND ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0899-8256
• DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2022.12.002
• 发表日期: 2023
• 页码: 197-213
• 关键词: social interactions; Information avoidance; assortative matching; ethical behavior; experiment

摘要

We experimentally study the social transmission of inconvenient information about the externalities generated by one's own decision. In the laboratory, we pair uninformed decision makers with informed senders. Compared to a setting where subjects can choose their information directly, we find that social interactions increase selfish decisions. On the supply side, senders suppress almost 30 percent of inconvenient information, driven by their own preferences for information and their beliefs about the decision maker's preferences. On the demand side, about one-third of decision makers avoids senders who transmit inconvenient information (shooting the messenger), which leads to assortative matching between information-suppressing senders and information-avoiding decision makers. Having more control over information generates opposing effects on behavior: selfish decision makers remain ignorant more often and donate less, while altruistic decision makers seek out informative senders and give more. We discuss applications to information sharing in social networks and to organizational design. (c) 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons .org /licenses /by /4 .0/).