Speaker(s):  Francesca Gino

Title:      "Information: when more is less"    

Abstract
Classical decision theory assumes that information is gathered and used because it assists the decision making process. If information is costly, a rational decision maker will acquire it up to the point at which marginal expected costs of acquisition equals marginal expected benefits. In this framework, it is also assumed that more information is always helpful and will never make an agent worse off (free disposability of information). This implies that decision makers should always give information a non-negative value. In short, if information were freely available, rational decision makers would always choose to avail themselves of it: Indeed, a higher level of information cannot hinder decision making since individuals are assumed to be able to dispose of the relevant information and eliminate at no cost the irrelevant one. Through different experimental studies, we question this assumption and argue that additional information may be harmful for decision makers. Moreover, we provide and test possible explanations of how and why additional information may lead to worse decisional outcomes.