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Do Beliefs Justify Actions or Do Actions Justify Beliefs? An Experiment on Stated Beliefs, Revealed Beliefs, and Social-Image Manipulation / James Andreoni, Alison Sanchez.

NBER Working papers Available online

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Format:
Book
Author/Creator:
Andreoni, James.
Contributor:
National Bureau of Economic Research.
Sanchez, Alison.
Series:
Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w20649.
NBER working paper series no. w20649
Language:
English
Physical Description:
1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);
Place of Publication:
Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2014.
Summary:
We study whether actions are justified by beliefs, as is usually assumed, or whether beliefs are justified by actions. In our experiment, subjects participate in a trust game, after which they have an opportunity to state their beliefs about their opponent's actions. Subsequently, subjects participate in a task designed to "reveal" their true beliefs. We find that subjects who make selfish choices and show strategic sophistication falsely state their beliefs in order to project a more favorable social image. By contrast, their "revealed" beliefs were significantly more accurate, which betrayed these subjects as knowing that their selfishness was not justifiable by their opponent's behavior.
Notes:
Print version record
October 2014.

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