Golman, Loewenstein, Moene, and Zarri (2016) on Belief Consonance

Russell Golman, George Loewenstein, Karl Ove Moene, and Luca Zarri, “The Preference for Belief Consonance.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 30(3): 165-188, Summer 2016 [pdf].

• People like to have beliefs that accord with the beliefs of others. Sharing beliefs enhances our connection to our group. 

• Much of world conflict is about beliefs – often about rather subtle differences in beliefs. Recall that people protect beliefs in which they have invested heavily. 

• Conflict over small differences in beliefs might arise because our beliefs are most threatened by those who are otherwise similar to us. 

• People do not like to have their beliefs challenged, so media have incentives not to challenge beliefs.

• Beliefs might come first, and only then do we develop the “rational” reasons that we hold them; see Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, Pantheon, 2012. 

• Belief consonance can be self-reinforcing: when someone stubbornly refuses to agree with me, I can attribute her stubbornness to her own interest in protecting her initial beliefs – and therefore I do not have to reconsider my own beliefs. 

• In the interest of possessing consonant beliefs, all people might believe X, but believe that everyone else believes “not X”: “pluralistic ignorance”. See Timur Kuran, Private Truths, Public Lies: The Social Consequences of Preference Falsification, Harvard, 1998. 

• In trust and dictator games, people are more generous when paired with members of their own political party.

• Two (complementary?) approaches to the enticements  of belief consonance: (1) desire to match beliefs with a group that you are in, or want to join; and (2) desire to maintain desirable beliefs about yourself. 

• On the whole, belief consonance probably is detrimental to society.

Shakespeare on Women Who Suspect that it is in their Long-Term Interest to Play Coy, But…

Thou know'st the mask of night is on my face,

Else would a maiden blush bepaint my cheek

For that which thou hast heard me speak to-night

Fain would I dwell on form, fain, fain deny

What I have spoke: but farewell compliment!

(Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, Scene 2, Lines 934-938)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

At mine unworthiness that dare not offer

What I desire to give, and much less take

What I shall die to want. But this is trifling;

And all the more it seeks to hide itself,

The bigger bulk it shows. Hence, bashful cunning!

And prompt me, plain and holy innocence!

I am your wife, if you will marry me;

(The Tempest, Act 3, Scene 1, Lines 1370-1376)

Helliwell, et al. (2014) on Good Government and Well-being

John F. Helliwell, Haifang Huang, Shawn Grover, and Shun Wang, “Empirical Linkages between Good Government and National Well-being.” NBER Working Paper No. 20686, November 2014.

• The World Bank provides Worldwide Governance Indicators, with six components: “government effectiveness, regulatory quality, rule of law, and the control of corruption;” “voice and accountability;” and “political stability and absence of violence.” The first four are about delivery of services, the last two about the state of democracy. 

• Does good governance boost subjective well-being (SWB)? If so, through what channels? Beware of misleading correlations: more educated people are happier, but when controlling for health, etc., the effect of education goes away or reverses. It seems that education leads to things that improve happiness, but is not happiness boosting per se. 

• Nonetheless, low corruption and high trust seem to directly boost happiness, as well as making government more efficient. 

• Approximately one quarter of changes in SWB are income-related, while the rest are due to other factors. The determinants of SWB around the world seem to be quite similar. 

• Will a lost wallet be returned? International variation in answering this question is much higher when asked if police will return the wallet than when asked if a stranger will return it. 

• Trust reduces traffic deaths and suicides! 

• The quality of delivery of government services tends to have a greater association with SWB than does the extent of democracy: improvements in government service quality add considerably to SWB, even controlling for the higher GDP that they bring about. For countries that have a high quality of service delivery, however, a stronger democracy improves SWB.

Helliwell (2012) on the Social Context of Well-Being

John F. Helliwell, “Understanding and Improving the Social Context of Well-Being.” NBER Working Paper No. 18486, October 2012.

• Social and pro-social behaviors greatly contribute to well-being; that is, “social engagement …makes people happy [p. 3].” 

• People tend to be happier on weekends than on weekdays, and much of the improvement can be traced to more social activities on weekends. Viewing your boss as a partner in a joint enterprise adds to happiness at work. 

• In a donor-recipient transaction, the donor tends to receive the greater share of happiness gains. 

• People underestimate how much their happiness will increase through pro-social activity, just as they overestimate how much happiness more income or consumption will bring. 

• Social behavior improves happiness which improves health which improves happiness… [Recall the Ifcher and Zarghamee article that documented many benefits of positive affect.] 

• If trust is low but not negligible, an external threat can induce social interactions that allow trust to be built. 

• Happiness at work is much more closely tied to trust than to pay. 

• Elderly people saw substantial health benefits when they created a water club to fight dehydration. It was later learned that the health gains came not from changes in water availability, but from the social interactions connected with the club.

Levitt and List (2007) on Laboratory Experiments

Steven D. Levitt and John A. List, “What Do Laboratory Experiments Measuring Social Preferences Reveal about the Real World?” Journal of Economic Perspectives 21(2): 153-174, Spring, 2007.

• Five laboratory games that reveal something about pro-social behavior: (1) the Ultimatum Game; (2) the Dictator Game; (3) the Trust Game; (4) the Gift Exchange Game (where the first player requests a level of “effort” from the second player -- pdf here); and (5) the Public Goods Game (good video here). In the real world, it can be hard to differentiate between pro-social preferences and sophisticated self-interest seeking. 

• Model notation: action choice a; wealth W; stakes (or value) v; moral cost M; social norms n; and scrutiny s. 

• The higher the negative financial externality an action imposes on others, the higher the moral cost M is taken to be. (Levitt and List also assume that this externality increases with the stakes v). M is higher the greater the deviation between action a and the social norm n. M also is raised by increased scrutiny s. 

• Individual utility is U(a, v, n, s) = M(a, v, n, s) + W(a, v). Higher stakes v can raise W while raising M, too, but the authors assume that W rises more quickly with v. (Another interpretation might be that the norm changes with v, so that selfish behavior receives more social imprimatur.) 

• Scrutiny is different and typically more intense in the lab, exaggerating pro-social behaviors. (Alternatively, scrutiny from one’s children or other family members has no lab parallel.) Further, lab participants might believe that an experiment demands some pro-social behavior. 

• Behavior might be sensitive to factors that unavoidably vary between the lab and the real world: the experimenter cannot fully control the context. Participants bring context with them, and hence are playing a different game. 

• Lab participants self-select, directly or indirectly, while market participants self-select, too.