Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/296004 
Authors: 
Year of Publication: 
2024
Series/Report no.: 
CESifo Working Paper No. 10915
Publisher: 
Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo), Munich
Abstract: 
People often receive good news that makes them feel better about the world around them, or bad news that makes them feel worse about it. This paper studies how the valence of news affects belief updating, absent functional and ego-relevant factors. Using experiments with over 1,500 participants and 5,600 observations, I test whether people engage in motivated reasoning to overly trust good news versus bad news on valence-relevant issues like cancer survival rates, others' happiness, and infant mortality. The estimate for motivated reasoning towards good news is a precisely-estimated null. Modest effects, of one-third the size of motivated reasoning in politics and performance, can be ruled out. Complementary survey evidence shows that most people expect good news to increase happiness, but to not systematically lead to motivated reasoning. These results suggest that belief-based utility is not sufficient in leading people to distort belief updating in order to favor those beliefs.
Subjects: 
motivated reasoning
belief-based utility
experimental economics
JEL: 
C91
D83
D91
Document Type: 
Working Paper
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