Publications
Publications
- 2022
Confidence, Self-Selection and Bias in the Aggregate
By: Benjamin Enke, Thomas Graeber and Ryan Oprea
Abstract
The influence of behavioral biases on aggregate outcomes like prices and allocations depends in part on self-selection: whether rational people opt more strongly into aggregate interactions than biased individuals. We conduct a series of betting market, auction and committee experiments using 15 classic cognitive bias tasks. We document that some cognitive errors are strongly reduced through self-selection, while others are not affected at all. A large part of this variation is explained by the quality of people's meta-cognition. In some cognitive tasks, confidence and performance are strongly positively correlated, while for others this link is absent or even negative.
Keywords
Citation
Enke, Benjamin, Thomas Graeber, and Ryan Oprea. "Confidence, Self-Selection and Bias in the Aggregate." NBER Working Paper Series, No. 30262, July 2022.